PIE PLEASE
GERARD & BONNIE EMERY
©
On a trip some years ago my wife and I went to the east coast.While travelling the beautiful Province of Quebec, my wife who does not speak French asked me what all these little signs at the side of the road were. "A vendre," I said " for sale." "Oh I see " she said. "It seems that the signs are every where." As we travelled further east along the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, we did see more and more for sale signs. I commented that it was like all of Quebec was for sale. We even saw an elderly lady sitting in a rocking chair in her driveway with a for sale sign beside her. We had a good laugh about that.
My wife was amazed at all the different signs that showed grades of the road, telling drivers how much of an incline was ahead. She had never seen these kinds of signs before. Also the other noticeable thing was that every small town had a church. If there were two houses then there was a church. All of these churches had elaborate steeples with bronze or gold crosses on them and wide front steps with large gothic wooden doors. Also a thing that I noticed was there was no litter to be seen anywhere, all these little villages looked like they had all been swept clean.
Some of these villages had a town store, and a hardware store and a restaurant, and of course the town church. Others had some very large estate looking homes. Of these elaborate homes you could spy between the hedges some fancy flower gardens.On the north side of the road were very poor looking but well kept houses, all had vegetable gardens The south side of the road backed onto the Saint Lawrence River. People seemed friendly enough when asked for directions or if there was places of interest. If a person spoke french [which I do ] they became a lot more talkative and open.
The first night we spent in Quebec we stayed at a small hotel in a town called Saint Simion, we reserved a room on the top floor of the hotel. We had to share a washroom with the other hotel guests, but the rooms were clean and comfortable, and it was the only place in town. I inquired about some place to eat our dinner and was told about a restaurant beside the ferry that we had to take across the next morning. Then we drove around for a short while and found a couple of antique shops, we also bought some snacks for later on that evening. We headed to our room to change into some fresh clothes and went to the pier for dinner.
After a wonderful dinner, the waitress asked in French did we want dessert, we were told they had raspberry pie made fresh on the premises. We opted for that and then the girl asked did we want cream with our pie. We were given a choice of de la cream sure, de la cream douce, ou de la cream douce. Wanting to show off to my wife how good my french was I ordered de la cream douce. A minute or two later the waitress came back with a couple of plates of delicious looking raspberry pie except for one small detail, the waitress saw the concern in our faces, and asked, "Was there a problem?" I said "That there was, I just wondered why our pie was swimming in table cream?" She said "This is what you had asked for." I said "Oh my mistake I meant whipped cream." She offered to take the pies back and get us fresh ones. We declined and said it would be O K we would eat the pies as they were. I apologized to my wife who was giving me the evil eye. I said to the waitress I guess we looked kind of foolish and she said no that people here have their pie this way all the time. I think she was being diplomatic, and trying to save my wife and I embarrassment. We finished our meal and left her a large tip. As we opened the door to leave we heard peals of laughter coming from the inside of the restaurant. To this day we can't look a piece of raspberry pie in the face without starting to laugh as well.
© GERARD EMERY & BONNIE EMERY
. Updated: 28.11.2008 with the agreement of author.
