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I'm an Ohioan, a buckeye, rooted in Mount Vernon just a few miles north of the geographical center of the state. My father never lived anyplace other than Knox County, nor any town other than Mount Vernon, except for the first four months of his life. He was born seven miles northwest in tiny Fredericktown.

That my dad lived such a long life - 90 - is attributable, in part, to pie. That's what he would say anyway. In Ohio, pie is a meal, a food group!

The man never met a pie he didn't like, with the possible exception of coconut crème and butterscotch. Fruit was his filling of choice: apple, cherry, peach, rhubarb, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, elderberry, grape, plum, banana and even raisin. Now he didn't bake the pies - women's work, he said - but he did pick, clean, sort and chop the fruit.

My mother rolled out a pie every few days: flakey, crusty, aromatic, lip-smackingly good. After mom died, dad remarried and Martha rolled out a pie every few days: flakey, crusty, aromatic, lip-smackingly good. I never asked, but I'll bet in addition to "Love, honor, and obey" there was a clause in their marriage vows that promised, "pies to last you the rest of your days."

It is difficult to say no to a home-baked pie warm from the oven. Dad never even tried to resist as his waistline proved.

When my daughters were small and visited during the summer, their gramps let them have pie and homemade vanilla ice cream for breakfast. "You got your fruit, you got your dairy, perfect breakfast," he'd say.

I wondered at him letting them eat pie every morning. When I was their ages, I had to eat Shredded Wheat, Cheerios or Cornflakes. Sometimes I got a sliced banana.

Last Thanksgiving, our granddaughter Samantha wanted me to show her how to make a pie from scratch. She was a quick learner, and her first pies - apple and pumpkin - were excellent. I'm sorry to say that she's as messy a baker as I am. Her great-grandmas would be horrified to see the mess she made.

But her great-gramps would have loved the results.

- Judy Clarke

Judy Clarke is a wife, mother of two daughters, grandmother to two grown grandchildren, reader, writer and blogger in southwest Virginia. Her two non-fiction books, Mother Tough Wrote the Book and That's all she wrote, can be found on her friends' and family's shelves, and she's working on a novel, But why? (That's the title of the novel, not a question to self).