FOUNTAIN CITY — Helen Mercer would appreciate it if whoever opens her sweet potato pie this October would not cut through the bottom of the aluminum pan. Somebody did last year, and she heard about it in Ohio before the supper dishes were dry.
“I put a little cardboard under it this time,” Mercer said. “You’ll have to take that off. I wrote it on there, but tell Faye too.”
Mercer has been responsible for the sweet potato pie at Cedar Branch Fellowship’s fall supper since before she moved away in 1994. Her name is in a pie ledger the Fountain City congregation began keeping in 1961. Each October someone copies the assignments onto a sheet beside the fellowship hall telephone, and Mercer gets a call at her current address outside Dayton.
She mails the pie in a box marked “pie.” Church treasurer Dale Voyles records the postage in the supper expenses, though Mercer has never asked to be paid back. This year’s entry is $18.65.
“The column’s not set up for anything that big,” Voyles said. “So I write it over in the margin. When I run out of margin I turn the book sideways.”
Nobody has proposed giving the assignment to someone closer to Broadway. Faye Lindsey, who sets out the desserts, said Mercer’s usually arrives before the local pies anyway. She puts it on the counter to thaw and calls Ohio after supper with a report on how it went. Mercer also asks whether the church has replaced the refrigerator, which still has a folded bulletin under the front foot.
The postage receipt is filed with the grocery receipts.