BOSTON CREAM PIES

We all loved our piece of the pie back then. On Friday afternoons, everyone cheered when the Table Talk Pie truck pulled into camp and parked behind the mess hall. That meant Boston cream pies for Saturday night.

Remember the mess hall? Sure you do. Blue tables resting upon blue sawhorses. Backless blue benches. Hard-won racing pennants festooning the rough-milled rafters.

Remember the galley? I do, vividly. Enter through the right-hand swinging door. To your left were the steam cleaner and shelves for the china. Dead ahead, a door opened onto a back porch. Diagonally to your right were the foot-thick doors to the ice chest, which held block ice in a special top compartment because cold air sinks. Turn right ninety degrees and you entered the Babe's domain, with its great black gas-fired stoves and kettles large enough to cook a camper. To the left of the stoves an inside door led into a storeroom, which had another door leading out onto the back porch. Here, in this storeroom, the Boston cream pies slept their final night before we were allowed to consume them.

I happen to be the friendly type. (Why not be friendly? You never know what may come of it.) I was friends with nearly everybody at Viking, the galley crew among them. I also notice things. One day, while I was back near the stoves, I noticed an old white-painted, beat-up Master lock hanging in the open position on a nail next to the inside storeroom door. The following evening, as the galley was being battened down, I noticed that the same lock now secured the hasp on that door. Then I understood: that lock was the only thing that stood between me and all the Boston cream pie I could eat.

Over the next few days I surreptitiously measured the lock's dimensions against my finger joints, the handle of my rigging knife, the bridge of my glasses. These dimensions I noted in code in the margins of my next Sunday letter home, whose main content was an appeal to my mother to keep the letter for me. She did, glad for a letter longer than usual. After the final banquet, while everyone else was saying goodbye to their friends, I bid a silent "see you later" to my friend, that old lock.

Before school started that fall, I bought a Master lock of the same dimensions. The keys were stashed in a safe spot, the lock painted with several coats of white and hung in a secluded sunny spot in the backyard. Every few weeks I carried it out to the driveway, threw it up in the air, and let it land in the gravel. By spring the lock -- its paint chipped and yellowed, its surface scratched and dented and randomly rusted -- had aged ten years.

Packing for camp next summer was a delight. My lock and its keys were rolled up in a pair of socks. The first few weeks of camp crept slowly by. Finally the time was right and my courage up. Friday night I was a waiter, and after dinner I hung around with the galley crew. The old lock dangled from its customary nail by the inside storeroom door. The Babe had gone out to his cabin, and while the crew finished stacking plates I slipped the old lock off its nail and into my pocket, careful not to shut the shackle. In its place I hung my replacement lock. When the crew was done, they locked up the coolers and the ice chest. From inside they latched the hook on the storeroom door that went out onto the back porch. Then they closed and locked the interior door from galley to storeroom, unwittingly using my lookalike substitute. At ten that night, armed with a flashlight, I snuck back into the galley and unlocked the inside storeroom door using my key. Giddily, I lightened the stack on the floor by one cream pie. After securing the old lock to the hasp, I retreated to the beach to taste the forbidden fruit of a year's planning.

Bright and early Saturday morning, the galley crew used their key to unlock the storeroom and started helping the Babe to fix breakfast. That evening I caught a few murmurings about a missing pie, but no one was quite sure. By Monday, however, the simple hook on the inside of the exterior storeroom had been replaced with a barrel bolt.

Friday evening, my lock again hung on the nail by the interior door. By ten that night the cache was lighter by two pies -- it's important to share -- and the old lock was back in place, guarding against wanton marauders.

The discovery was made sometime after lunch on Saturday. That afternoon the whole camp knew that there were pies missing. By Monday the barrel bolt securing the door to the porch had been superseded by two stout boards which, when slotted into their iron stops, would prevent a hurricane from coming through. Another board barred the single storeroom window. This was getting better than I could possibly have hoped. The pies were a reward sufficient unto themselves. But to watch as the powers-that-be fortified and refortified the wrong door was the purest pleasure.

The following Friday ... well, you know the drill. Three pies later -- sharing is very important -- the old lock was again in place. Bold and unabashed, we were enjoying our unjust deserts while sitting on the steps of the kitchen porch. We were cocky. We were good, and knew it, and told each other so.

Our sole warning was a faint whiff of smoke. Back then, we all smoked cigarettes. No big deal, we thought at first; just have to share some with the newcomer. Plenty to go around. But wait a minute. Pipe smoke -- hmm. The only one in camp who smoked a pipe was ... Mr. Reynolds!

Remember how steep the path was, that path from the back of the galley down to the beach? We made it down that path, in the dark, in about fifteen seconds flat. Mr. Reynolds chose not to chance breaking a leg. After all, he had three half-eaten pies to show for his efforts, as well as the satisfaction of, if now catching us, at least acquainting us with the fear of God. Certain I would be interrogated, I buried my lock and its keys on the beach. The interrogation never materialized. But by morning the beach -- or my memory, or both -- had reshaped itself and lost its landmarks.

On Monday the outside storeroom boasted yet another shiny new lock. But that wasn't what kept us out of the storeroom for the rest of the summer. It was a fear of pipe smoke.

-- Al See