The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe

Author:Ben Philippe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

20

Key Lime Season

NUMBER OF INDIVIDUAL PIES PRODUCED PER DAY: Thirty to sixty.

CARDBOARD BOX ASSEMBLY SPEED: Twenty-five seconds.

KEY LIME JUICING SPEED: Four average-sized key limes per minute.

NUMBER OF CURRENTLY BAND-AIDED FINGERS: Three.

CREAM-WHIPPING SPEED WHEN PICKING UP KITCHEN SLACK: Hummingbird on five cups of coffee.

RISK OF DEVELOPING CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME BY AGE EIGHTEEN: High.

Spring at the Bone Yard came with yet another tradition, something that Austin had no shortage of between UT Longhorns gear, the music festivals, and annual film events that peppered downtown. In this instance, apparently, it all came down to key lime pie.

“As in: condensed milk, sour cream, lime juice, and graham cracker?” Norris asked incredulously.

He had arrived early to find a sweat-stained Jim McElwees installing a very hand-painted placard under the Bone Yard’s sign: Key Lime Days Ahead, framed with neon limes and an acid-green pie.

“Don’t forget the whipped cream,” Big Jim answered, tapping the board and confirming himself as the proud artist. “Special homemade recipe. None of that canned nonsense!”

“Cool,” Norris commented. “Is this, um, seasonal?”

“Through the spring and the summer! This bad boy is our ice cream truck. In the summer we deliver it around town. People love it! Give the people what they want—in a timely fashion and at their door—and you can charge eighteen dollars a pop! Free life lesson for you, Nor!”

No one could say that Big Jim’s zest for life wasn’t infectious. Ha. Zest. Norris had smiled and gone in assuming that this simple menu addition would not change much in his life, unaware of how utterly wrong he was.

“Ha, is that what he said?” Maddie scoffed, adding the seventeenth case of limes to the backup storage. Norris followed her lead and placed the eighteenth case on top. Julio was right behind them, carrying number nineteen.

“Let me tell you how it usually goes.” She launched into her explanation. “Spring rolls in and we get about five dozen of these things delivered in three days, because Dad bulk orders. Every year he bulk orders. He has an old bandmate who farms them in Fairview. He thinks he’s getting a deal, but really these are standard prices. I’ve checked online.”

“Every year we tell him.” Julio sighed, picking up the narrative. “And every year he forgets.”

“It’s Key Lime Spring. Key Lime Prom. Key Lime Graduation. Summer finally rolls around,” Maddie continued, sending a quick text without missing a beat. “And our delivery guys always bail by the end of the summer because their band has gotten a new gig, or because the heat is just too much. Plus, the smell of baked-in lime and sugar gets to you. Believe me.”

“So by the end of the summer,” Maddie said again, “we’re drafting servers and busboys to pick up the slack and do delivery in the morning and evening. Not to mention that these things rot. They rot real bad. Half of these will go to waste. That’s usually when Mom and Bobby come in here to try to salvage what they can.”

Bobby was the twins’ father and one of the brothers-in-law.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.