Two Harbors, MN

January 13, 2004

Old Pie Stop Becomes Slice of History

Taken from the Star Tribune, 4/25/2002, Section B & B5, Author: Larry Oakes

TWO HARBORS, MINN. -"Bye, bye, Miss American Pie," said the little handwritten sign in the window, just before a sort -of backhoe with a claw smashed the glass and rolled over the old Betty's Pies building like a Sherman tank.

David Brewster

Employees of Betty's Pies performed a "21-can whipped-cream salute"

The shack where Betty Lessard made hundreds of thousands of pies between 1956 and 1984 was pummeled to splinters and shingles in about20 minutes Wednesday, while wicked wind gusts threw up sheep-sized whitecaps on Lake Superior and buffeted 150 onlookers who came to watch an era end. (...continued from History page...) Betty, 77, snapped pictures, moving about for better angles. She appeared neither happy nor sad to see the destruction of a place where she logged thousands of 18-hour days, earning both a living and unexpected status as a North Shore treasure. "I have mixed feelings," she said. "It was time for the old building to go, but there are a lot of good memories in there. They can't take those away."

Carl Ehlenz, one of the new co-owners operating a more recent incarnation of Betty's Pies with the same recipes but from a bigger building just uphill, suddenly came through the crowd at a run, faking and dodging like Cris Carter, with assistant manager Roma Clarin close on his heels.

Her arm was cocked, and at the end of it was a pie tin full of whipped cream. Just as she let fly, Ehlenz ducked and the pie whizzed by him and cartwheeled harmlessly onto the driveway. Everybody laughed.

That's kind of the way it was Wednesday -"The Way We Were" meets "The Marx Brothers"; a wake for a building, and a celebration of the fun fact that Betty's Pies did not die.

So, like Robert Redford, you ask: 'What kind of pie?'

Betty says Fresh Strawberry has always been the most popular among the wave-watching, cliff-crawling and leaf-looking set, followed by Five-Layer Chocolate, Lemon Angel and Banana Cream. Betty's Pies gave away about 200 slices of those and others Wednesday. But just for the day pie flavors were renamed. For example, there were Backhoe Blackberry Peach, Bulldozer Blueberry and Razin' Sour Cream. If you asked for it with a wrecking ball, you got a big scoop of ice cream.

Actually, the Minnesota Department of Transportation paid for the pie, helped with the celebration and knocked down the building.

It was MnDOT's Duluth district that first said the old Betty's Pies building had to be moved or knocked down so that the highway could be widened and moved away from the eroding shoreline.

Knowing that Betty's was an institution, MnDOT delayed razing the shack until af- ter Ehlenz and Martha Sieber bought the business and moved it higher on the hilly shore, turning Betty's from a seasonal operation to a year-round restaurant.

" This will be the new icon during the next hundred years on the shore," MnDOT district engineer Michael Robinson said as he presented plaques featuring pictures of the old building to Lessard, Ehlenz and others involved in keeping Betty's going.

Born to a North Shore fishing family, Betty Lessard explained that it started when she and her husband, Lloyd, took over her dad's 8-foot-by-8-foot smoked-fish shack in 1956.

" I got bored just selling fish," she said in an interview a few years ago. "Every year we added something, it seemed. Then baking just kind of took over." She's estimated that she baked 50 or 60 pies per weekday -more on weekends- plus a couple dozen loaves of rye bread daily.

She still lives near her old business and bakes for friends and family, and said she hasn't lost her touch or her speed; she can still get a pie in the oven in about 10 minutes.

Her cookbook, "Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes," has sold 7,000 copies since it was published a year ago and is in its third printing, said its publisher, Paul Hayden of Lake Superior Port Cities Inc.

Ehlenz said that though he and co-owner Sieber now have space for more than 125 guests and a full menu, Betty's original pie recipes will remain the core of their business. Their popularity is reflected in a guestbook that has been filled out by visitors from all 50 states and more than 50 countries.

"Betty is the one who made this place world-famous," he said. "Her pies were always made from scratch. They were big, and she cared about how they looked. We're continuing that."