Once upon a time, in a land known as Chicago, a terrible thing happened.  This terrible thing was called the Prohibition.  For those of you who do not know, the Prohibition began in 1919 and ended in 1933.  It made alcohol illegal.  Even though alcohol was now illegal, people, as people do, broke the law.

Alcohol has this weird property, and, while I do not know the scientific term for it, it tends to make people addicted to the substance in the text. (alcohol)
We will start our story in 1923.  The prohibition has been working steadily for four years, as have the bootleggers (people who smuggled alcohol to drink easies, which were hidden underground alcohol bars.).  Many men have been killed in the past years of this hard time, all for a drink.  Police men would have much trouble figuring out the plans of the bootleggers and mobsters, because they were always thinking up new ideas on how to get past guards and cops and FBI agents.  many of these ideas included:  hiding bottles in boots (which was where the term bootleggers cam from), hiding bottles in hay and barrels of fruits, and one mobster lady would even hide gallons of alcohol under her skirt.

However clever these ideas were, none of them compare to the story that I am about to tell you.  The text books keep this story out because it is so ridiculous, it can’t be true.  But true it is.  Now you will learn what really happened during the prohibition.  This story is about the Great Pie Prohibition.

We now look in on a small apartment in Chicago.  The mobster Johnny “deadfoot” Martino, one of the Legendary Al Capone’s henchmen, was faced with a problem.  Their last idea, smuggling in alcohol disguised as ketchup bottles, was foiled when a policeman ordered a hamburger and asked for ketchup.  An innocent worker brought him the bottle which poured out alcohol.  Half of the “evidence” was lost (most likely into the cop’s mouth (even the good guys like a drink now and then))  Johnny had to think of a new plan.

The idea struck him like a pie in the face.  Literally.  His wife made a pie and tripped, throwing the pie into his face.  After five minutes of swearing and profanity, and three minutes of washing up, and two minutes of tripping down the stairs (he still had some pie in his eye), he sat back down for whatever other meals his wife had made.  Turns out, his wife had made two pies, so he was sat down to another pie.  when he cut the top with the knife, it caved in.  Johnny realized that there was a lot of unused space in a pie (especially if it was made by his wife)  This is actually when the idea struck him.  What if… No, it’s too absurd.  But it just might… No, it wouldn’t.  But what if it….  How could it?

This carried on for several minutes.  Finally he arrived to the conclusion that he would.  Would what, you ask?  You will see that in a minute or two, depending on how fast you read.

We now jump to the next day, around noon, at a small bakery.  An FBI agent, searching for alcohol, stops for a snack.

“Hello sir,” the agent says to the bakery owner.  “What do you have for desserts?”

“Well, we have yer plain donuts, yer jelly donuts, yer donut holes, yer bread, yer raisin bread, yer bean bread, and stuff of the likes.”

“Ummmm, what about the pies?”

“what pies?”

“The pies I saw in the back room.”

“We don’t have any pies.”

“I can see them right now!”  The agent was quite confused by then.

“You can’t see any pies.”

“I know what I can or cannot see, and I can see about fifty pies right now, in the back room!  The door is open!  Wide open!”

“No it isn’t.”

“Well, take a look behind you!”

The bakery shop owner took a look behind him.  He moved over to the door and closed it.  “No it isn’t, see?”

By then the agent was getting angry.  “Look, just gimme a pie.  How much does it cost?”

“I told you, we don’t have any pies back there!  Just a-”

The owner got a scared look in his eyes for a second, and the agent just barely saw it.

“What do you have back there?”  This had turned from a snack into an interrogation.

“not pies with a- uh, pie fillin’ in them!”

“Let me have a look.”

“No!  I already told you we have no pies back there!”

“That wasn’t a question, I’ll have you arrested if you don’t let me have a look.”

“promise you’ll give me a head start?”

“What?  No, you’re coming in with me.”

Reluctantly, the shop owner followed the agent, forced to do so by his conscience and a gun.  The door creaked open in the same manner as a locked door might.

“The agent waved to the door in context with his gun.  “Open it.”

The shop owner fumbled with his keys.  “Let’s see now.  House key, shop key, oh, here we go.  The back door in the shop key.”

The agent stared at the shop owner.

Out of instinct, the shop owner stared back.

“Well?”  The agent asked queried expectantly.

“Yes?”

“Well, I want you to open the door!”

“oh, right.”  (Keep in mind that this is the same man who takes about a hundred orders a day, and never forgets a single one.)

The shop owner bent down slowly (A little too slowly, if you ask some people.) and fumbled to insert the key in the hole.

scratch, scritch, scratch, scrape.

The shop owner could not get the key to go in.

“You’re stalling!” The agent accused angrily. “Give me that key!”

And with that, the agent tore the key from the shop owner’s hand, and inserted the key.  Well, he tried at least.

Scratch, scritch, scratch, scrape.

Finally the key went in.  The key turned, causing a complex mechanical process to occur- well, this isn’t a mechanics class, so I’ll keep it short.  The key unlocked the door.  The door was opened by the agent.  My sentences look like something from a 1st grade grammar book.

“See?  I told you there were pies back here.”  The agent looks at the shop owner with satisfaction.

The shop owner got an idea. “okay, you proved me wrong, let’s go.”

“Wait!”  The agent glared at the shop owner.  “We still have to look at those pies.”

The shop owner now wore a sad, scared face.  His idea had failed.

The two men walked slowly into the back room.  The agent opened one of the boxes labeled “pie”.  It contained, what else, but a pie.  A blueberry pie to be exact.  The agent tossed the shop owner a quarter and took a bite out of his newly purchased pie.

the agent remembered that it wasn’t polite to eat someones food in front of them without saying something about it.

“It’s really quite good, tasteful and the like, but it has a sort of glassy, alcohol-ish taste to it.”  Then he realized that he had bitten into a bottle of alcohol, as well as a blueberry pie.  The agent opened a few other pie boxes and disassembled the contained pies.  They all had an alcohol bottle concealed inside them.

The agent and the shop owner exchanged a long look, the former’s bold, and the latter’s scared.

“You are under arrest for bootleg, containing alcohol on the premises, and for lying about the pies.”

So, that was the mobster’s idea, and, for the most part, it was a good one.  You see, the pies were not only sent to many many places in the U.S., and it was mainly (well, really completely) the shop owner’s fault that he didn’t take out the alcohol and patch up the pies for sale.  Eventually, the people who were buying the pies for the alcohol came to want the pies more than the hidden treasure hidden inside the delicious food.  However, the police didn’t know that, and pies were banned alongside of alcohol.  The war lasted for several years, and many people died, many pies were lost, and many feelings were hurt.  This is what happens when you don’t share pies: people become suspicious and dig into the pies for alcohol.

So, if you ever make a pie, make sure you share it, because otherwise you are in for a lot of trouble.

The End.

P.S. Then Buffy entered the door and staked Edward.