If you search the Internet you can find many recipes for pasties, many of which will contain all sorts of additional vegetables. I’ve tasted many meat pies over the years, and I agree with the opinion of my parents that a pasty doesn’t need anything besides just the basics. The following recipe is a transcription of a letter my mother sent me some years ago. In the penultimate paragraph my mother has the chef creating an incision in the top of the pie before it’s baked. My father also made pasties for himself years ago, and suggested that one wait until the pasty is fully baked before cutting into the pie so that the moisture from the interior remains inside.

Frozen prepared pie crust may be purchased from the freezer department of a supermarket, or prepare crust using standard measurements of one cup flour and one-third cup shortening, plus ½ teaspoonful salt per pasty for plate-sized pasties.

Purchase about one or 1&1/2 pound good grade round steak, and trimming off most fat, place in freezer compartment so that it becomes about semi-frozen. It will be much easier to cut into small cubes if first frozen. It should cut up about as easily as chopping celery. Before freezing, seasoning can most easily and accurately be added by sprinkling salt and black pepper quite liberally on both sides of the meat as you would season something like a hamburger patty. Otherwise, it’s difficult to measure just how much salt and pepper you would add to the mixture Considering that you won’t need to season the potato which will be added later, on should be quite generous in applying the salt and pepper. Also consider that you will be adding butter or margarine at the last minute so that will also provide a salty flavor.

After trimming all fat off your frozen piece of round steak, cut into strips and chop meat into cubes about ¼ inch in size. Your meat will bake much faster with small, uniform pieces of meat so that you won’t over cook it, which would make it more tough. Set aside meat in a large bowl.

Peel and cube potatoes in about the same size small pieces as the meat. (A French fry cutter is ideal to form the proper sized strips for uniform chopping). Use about three large baking type potatoes. The proportion of meat to potatoes should be about half and half. Add to mixing bowl containing meat cubes.

Finely chop two large onions of the white Bermuda type and add to mixing bowl. Mix together meat, potatoes and onions. At this point, mixture can if desired be covered and refrigerated overnight to blend flavors, but is not necessary.

On a slightly floured surface, roll out pastry with slightly floured rolling pin to the approximate size of a standard dinner plate, or smaller if desired. Place one cup of meat mixture onto crust just off center to the bottom half so that when crust is placed over meat it will form a half circle. Meat mixture may be somewhat runny from onion juices, but if crust is not rolled too thin, it should hold the mixture without running out. After flopping crust over mixture, cut carefully around outside edge so that you form a neat semicircle. (I use a fluted small pastry cutting wheel). Dip fork tines into cold water and seal edges carefully all around the semicircle so that nothing drips out. Cut a small slit about one inch long in center which will be used as a steam hole escape and an opening into which you will add melted butter and a little hot water when pasties are just taken out of oven. Use about one stick plus about two tablespoonfuls hot water heated together and poured equally divided into steam holes. Oven temperature should be preheated to 375 degrees F. and pasties baked for 45 minutes or until slightly browned. Any left over meat mixture may be refrigerated and used as a single top crust meat pie baked in an oven proof deep dish.

After you have formed and sealed pasty, carefully place it on a large cookie sheet which has been pre-greased, or a parchment paper which requires no greasing. About five pasties can be placed on a standard cookie sheet. Bon Appetite!

Sometime in the summer of 1976 or 1977 I went to the county fair and encountered a Christian booth that was giving away Jack T. Chick tracts. I was immediately taken by what I was seeing. I hadn’t really read comic books as a child, with the exception of MAD magazine, which is not really a comic book anyway. I probably read Archie or Richie Rich a handful of times.

Chick’s version of Christianity was vastly more hardcore than the mild-mannered Lutheran religion that I had been exposed to. Yet it was so much more emotionally compelling than what I was exposed to in Sunday school that I read every Jack T. Chick tract I could get my hands on! At one point I think I mail ordered a huge compilation pack that included most or all of the issues that were in print at the time.

One tract in particular stuck out: Big Daddy. This was a rather infamous creationist manifesto, a direct and ruthless attack on the theory of evolution by natural selection. My religious thinking was beginning to come to a head with me sometime in about my junior year of high school. I remember taking a biology class that included a section on evolution, and the instructor had to spend the first part of the class simply addressing the negative creationist feedback he had received over the years.

But several things were in my favor, as far as the search for the truth goes. One was that the biology class set things out in an orderly progression, where one piece of evidence logically flowed to another piece of evidence. In contrast, Chick’s manifesto was a scattershot hodge-podge of criticisms, not a logically coherent theory.

I remember having a sort of teenage epiphany walking home to lunch one day with my friend John. I was talking about evolution and the biology class. John had known me since early grade school and was rather shocked to hear me express doubts about evolution.

“Matt, you’re a scientific kind of guy, what are you doing believing in all this creationist nonsense?’

Indeed, one of the saving graces of this period was that I had discovered the non-fiction books of Isaac Asimov. I don’t know what essay it was, but I had a genuine epiphany when I discovered Asimov’s treatment of the second law of thermodynamics. Asimov pointed out the great flaw in the creationist’s argument regarding the second law; the earth is not a closed system, and the second law only applies to closed systems. At this point I knew that Chick was full of shit, but the implications were deeper still, and this is why this episode rose to the level of epiphany for me.

The family I grew up in never “joshed” each other, or “told stories” or even “pulled your leg.” If this sounds rather emotionally rigid, you would be right. Obviously my friends didn’t adhere to this same kind of standard, and I believe the development of my “bullshit detector” was rather stunted. Even as an adult, I look back with sadness at how many times people have lied to me and gotten away with it, at least for a time. Again, I’m talking about the intuitive level, not the above board critical thinking level. I believe that critical thinking is like typing, it’s not a skill that one is naturally born with, it’s something you have to work at and develop.

So believe it or not, having a huge emotional infatuation with the tracts of Jack T. Chick then realizing that he was totally full of shit about evolution, made a huge impact on me. How could there be people in this world who spent their entire lives spouting nonsense and lies? How could there be people in this world who wouldn’t change their beliefs when exposed to strong evidence or logical argument?

Obviously the older I got, the more I realized that the world is absolutely chock full of liars, con men, frauds, and bullshiters of every kind!

I became a complete atheist by reading a rather odd pair of books. The first was the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce’s book was an anthology of biting aphorisms, often quite blasphemous. But one theme that was constant in his book was that there are, and have been, many religions in the history of humankind, each of them believing itself to be the One True Religion. Simple logic dictates that they can’t all be right, and in fact most of them must be wrong because they all contradict each other. This is a simple concept, but it made a big impact on me.

Eventually I read Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. This was the first time I learned that various logical arguments had been proposed for the existence of God. The argument from first cause, the argument from design, etc. Russell systematically demonstrated that all of these arguments are fallacious. Russell’s book was also a valuable exposure to the nature of logic expressed in a linguistic fashion as opposed to the mathematical proofs of geometry that I was familiar with.

So by the time I started college in 1980, Jack T. Chick was an embarrassing episode in my mental development, kind of like admitting you liked some really bad music for a certain time period…

Only recently did I even start thinking about Chick again as a result of becoming interested in “underground” comics in general. I became a fan quite late in the game, largely as a result of Denny Eichhorn giving me a whole set of his Real Stuff comics, and seeing the documentary Crumb. Just a few years ago, Fantagraphics opened a retail store in Georgetown, which is literally just over the hill from where I live. Through Fantagraphics I was reacquainted with Jim Blanchard, an amazing cartoonist and graphic artist in his own right. I had actually met Blanchard in the late 1980’s when I came into a Kinko’s that he was working at. I allowed him to keep some copies of some photographic portraits I brought in. He eventually re-drew and incorporated some of them into his graphic compilations.

During Super Bowl Sunday, 2010, Jim was kind enough to loan me a rare parody-documentary tract called “The Imp” which was a rather scathing criticism of Chick. Unknown to me, during the 1980’s Chick had become associated with other individuals with beliefs just as far-out as his, and he integrated their stories into his own tracts. Blanchard also gave me a copy of a fantastic video documentary on Chick that included interviews with at least two people I was familiar with.

Chick is an enigma; obviously he’s not in the same aesthetic niche as Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Peter Bagge, or any other “underground” comic artist. You won’t find his tracts for sale at Fantagraphics, nor even many Christian bookstores. According to the documentary, Canada considers Chick’s comics “Hate Literature!”

I’m sure I’m not alone in being one of those people who was affected in some weird and possibly profound way by Jack T. Chick. I think I’ll start asking people for their own stories…

So I was told that the gift of the Hudson Bay blanket was a Very Valuable Thing, a thing of such value that one must be given to my brother AND me so as not to demonstrate overt favoritism. At least that was my interpretation of why my mother made such a big deal of giving one to each of us…

My mother told me that my brother had once written an essay for school on the venerable history of the Hudson Bay blanket, and may have even delivered it as an oral presentation. Clearly there was some serious mojo going on with this blanket.

But deep down, I never quite “got it”. The thing looked cool, all white with the boldly colored stripes, but it was made of wool, and as such was all scratchy. It didn’t seem substantially warmer than other blankets, especially the down comforter I had, encased though it was in an ugly brown satin. I also had a blanket my mother called a “thermal” blanket. There was something odd about this blanket, in that it was crocheted or woven in a manner that produced a myriad of holes. Even as a child, my nascent skepticism was aroused; weren’t all blankets “thermal” blankets? Wasn’t holding heat the idea in the first place? And why should a blanket be full of holes?

But Western Montana is a cold place, and I was grateful to have lots of blankets. I would arrange the layers so the Venerable Hudson Bay Blanket would be somewhere in the middle, so it wouldn’t scratch me.

By the time I got to college, I began to go through a sort of ascetic phase. I gave away many of the things I owned, and at one point I started to eat a lot less. At the time, I think I was trying to impress my first so-called girlfriend with how much will-power or self control I could exert. I call her my “so-called” girlfriend, because she refused to have sex. Yup, her refusal was a gigantic ego-shattering, self-esteem destroying, frustrating mind-fuck.

But eventually I came to my senses, and began running into women who liked to, you know, “get it on”… One night I was by myself at the Top Hat bar in Missoula, probably watching yet another R&B boogie band cover “Mustang Sally”. In walks Christy. Christy worked at the Kinko’s where I did all my photocopying. She was older than me, one of Missoula’s classic old-school radical feminists. I’m not sure exactly how she perceived me; she helped me photocopy a great deal of information I had gathered on autoerotic asphyxia, and even bound it all together for me into one large binder. This was the binder that I later loaned to Rick Linklater. I think she may have perceived me as some sort of “new wave” guy, some sort of unexpected by-product of what the hippies begat.

She walked up to me and hugged me. These days, that’s a benign greeting, and certainly not always one with sexual overtones. But to me, at that time and in that place, it could only mean one thing: She liked me and I must pursue her sexually!

So I did. We walked and talked, and of course I tried to ply her with alcohol. She seemed fearful of beer, on the grounds that it had yeast in it. Yeast was bad, somehow. I tried to explain to her that commercial American beers were both filtered and pasteurized, and so had little or no live yeast remaining. But this was really my introduction to the fact that she had a whole slew of “new age” and pseudoscientific beliefs. She claimed to have “allergies” yet wouldn’t accept that true allergies are a histaminic response, not the sort of generalized malaise she complained of. She was a believer in astrology.

Eventually we had sex. The first time was awkward and not very fun. But this created a History between us, and for her History was political. All the psycho-social ramifications and implications of this political act had to be discussed ad nauseam. But Christy was a smart gal, and in general I liked her company. Many of the women I met who were my own age were vapid and shallow airheads, and I knew deep down I could never relate to them. But I was beginning to see the weird angry-hippie-feminist side of Christy as well. I remember her telling me about how human society began as a Golden Era, run by women, and called the “Matriarchy”. But then evil men took over, and society became a “Patriarchy”.

This was news to me, as I had always assumed men had pretty much oppressed women from the get-go, and that things had gotten better for women rather late in human history, mostly in the industrialized countries. But I had come from a hard science background, so the concepts of “Matriarchy” and “Patriarchy” were completely novel to me. I had no easily accessible resources with which to investigate her claims.

Certain more tangible things began to get on my nerves. She boasted of once having destroyed a man’s Aerosmith LP because it contained the lyrics “You can’t catch me, ‘cause the rabbit done died”. But rabidly horny guys will put up with all kinds of things, and I was a rabidly horny guy. So we had sex a second time. This time things were better planned, and it proved to be the first time I ever saw a diaphragm. It looked pretty cool, actually, and of course I wondered how it might fly if thrown like a Frisbee…

So we start going at it. At this point in my life I think I’d had sex only about 5 times, so I still quite the n00b. I don’t remember how long I lasted before I came. But surprisingly, my erection didn’t go down! This was a bit of a surprise, so I just kept on going. This time around some sort of weird equilibrium was achieved, and as it happened I didn’t stop until the sun came up. I think we had been going at it for 5 or 6 hours. Alas, I was only able to pull off that stunt the one time, but it reminded me of all those old blues songs that included lines about “all night long”. Hmmm, I guess it really was possible…

By the way, for those reading this in 2009, this occurred in the 1980’s, long before phosphodiesterase inhibitor drugs were available. Indeed, no drugs or freaky devices were involved, other than probably just some alcohol.

Being that Christy worked at Kinko’s, she wasn’t a wealthy person. At one point she complained that her house was cold. I offered her a blanket, which she accepted. Since her primary need was simply warmth, I decided to give her my Hudson Bay blanket. This act had a two-fold fallout. My mother was aghast that I had given away what was to her almost a family heirloom. I found this attitude strange, as it seemed to be directly at odds with her Christian religion, which ostensibly placed a high value on charity. I refused to confront my mother with this contradiction, as by this time I took great pains to avoid arguments and confrontations with my mother.

I was not entirely surprised that the radical leftist recipient of this gift had even less understanding of its material value than I did. Back in the 80’s I had no easy way of finding out how much such a blanket might really cost. But a quick Google search tells me that buying one today might set me back $300! I’m sure it didn’t cost my mother that much when she bought it, but I don’t disbelieve her claim that it was expensive.

The final straw with Christy and me came while we were eating ice cream. We started talking about the SLA, and Christy began to deliver an impassioned screed about how bank robbery really wasn’t such a heinous crime! This was a mind-blowing assertion, as I had come from such a completely different moral background. My father had been the assistant Attorney General for the state of Montana. He was largely responsible for re-writing Montana’s state constitution in 1972. He taught law at the University of Montana starting in 1965 until his semi-retirement in the early 1990’s. My law-and-order upbringing was directly at odds with Christy’s radical leanings.

After that I’d see Christy around Missoula from time to time, but it was all over between us.

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that damn blanket…

Growing up as I did in the 1970’s, trick-or-treating by children was a tradition as deeply ingrained as celebrating Christmas with gift giving. Back then we didn’t have our parents escorting us from door to door.

Of course by the time we reached about 10 or 11, we became too old to go trick-or-treating. Certain adults would even scold us as when we rang their doorbell: “Aren’t you a little old to be doing this?” A total buzz kill for a child of that age…

Even as children, we would hear stories about “razor blades in apples”, but we were never given apples as treats. The worst “treats” we ever got were Bible tracts… Even in the early 1970’s everything edible was packaged candy anyway.

But by the late 1970’s, and certainly into the early 1980’s, the American cultural tradition of door to door trick-or-treating was on the wane. Over time, the idea that psychopaths were afoot, randomly poisoning or dangerously tampering with candy was taken more seriously. Back then, I had no reason to doubt this, as frankly I had no informational resources to fall back on. There was no World Wide Web, and I didn’t know how to do any kind of sophisticated search in the library.

Perhaps it was through one of Brunvand’s books, or through a newspaper story, that I encountered a rather radical notion; namely that the Halloween Psychopath was a myth! By 1985 I had learned of the Index Medicus, undoubtedly through pharmacy school. I remember using the resources of the Mansfield library, and probably the Index Medicus, to find a citation for a study published in a sociology journal about this topic.

Luckily, the library had the specific journal on the shelves, and I didn’t have to request a photocopy through interlibrary loan. It was just like the Internet, immediate gratification!

The study design was simple and elegant. The researchers assumed that a heinous act like the random poisoning of a child with Halloween candy would become news, at least local news. Surely if the Halloween Psychopath was real, some newspaper would have a story about it! The researchers went into the archives for, I believe, three newspapers; the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a major Chicago newspaper. They carefully examined the issues of November 1, 2, and 3 for a period of something like 30 years prior to the publication of their study.

And what did they find? NOTHING! Zero, zip, nada! The only case on file in these newspaper archives was where a disgruntled adult had singled out a particular child to harm, hoping that the assailant wouldn’t be identified due to the number of people having given the child candy. But the assailant was eventually identified; he was a relative of the child, NOT a Random Psychopath.

I came from a “hard science” background so it was good to see that sound scientific methodology could be applied to the less-rigorous field of sociology. It was fascinating to me that such an esoteric subject would be investigated, and that a widespread belief was rather definitively shown to be bullshit!

I remember coming home for lunch to my parent’s house that day. I remember rather triumphantly announcing what I had just read. I figured my parents would share my enthusiasm at science having triumphed over urban mythology. My father seemed to be unmoved by this finding. He taught law at the University of Montana, and sensational subjects never seemed to interest him, especially those dealing with “fringe” or even popular culture.

My mother on the other hand had a rather different reaction. I had spent several minutes explaining the historical context of the Halloween Psychopath belief, my amazement that there existed genuine science on the subject, the nature of the test design, and the surprising result. After all that she exclaimed; “yes, but that really did happen”.

It was a sad sort of semi-epiphany for me, like learning that someone you know or like is a creationist, or believes in the divinity of the Shroud of Turin. I knew for years that my mother was irrational, but as I grew older and my critical thinking and research skills sharpened, it became all the more painful for me to witness her displays of intellectual nonsense.

No, the real danger for trick-or-treating children is being hit by a car, not receiving poisoned or adulterated candy. When I was a child, we would practically sprint from house to house in a mad dash to get as much candy as we possibly could. An obvious set-up for carelessly running across the street. So I guess that today’s modern tradition of parents escorting their kids is a good thing, if for no other reason than they can make sure their kids cross the street safely.

Note that I’m writing about events from almost 25 years ago strictly from memory. For a more much more updated and fact-checked take on the same subject, read Ben Radford’s excellent essay.