In honor of this state’s most reverential nut, this past Saturday was a blissfully warm afternoon for the annual tradition of the Okmulgee Pecan Festival to take place; among all the famous treats that were in store for pecan sycophants from all over Oklahoma, the most exciting had to be the legendary cooking down and serving up of the world’s largest pecan pie, something I’d been looking forward to for weeks.
Parking in the shade a few streets over, near the classic movie theater—man, would I love to see a movie there someday—my pal Jodie and I walked to the open-air celebration, which, shockingly, had an eerie quiet to it; instead of the hundreds of inflamed nut-goers I had imagined, there were seemingly only a handful of locals, milling around, conversing with outdoor shop owners and other vendors looking to make a buck...
Walking into the Okmulgee Chamber of Commerce tent to look for any information on some of the day’s events and, more specifically, where this giant pie is hiding, that’s when the crushing news was fatally delivered: they haven’t had a giant pecan pie for a few years now, but, you know, next year they’re going to try to get a replacement oven to bake one in, not that it really helped us then.