Flying Saucer’s Pies are “Out of This World”

Intro

I know it says on the box that Legos aren’t for ages three and under, but I’ve been playing with Legos since I was two, starting with my brother’s Space Legos.  My mom said I could play with them as long as I didn’t put them in my mouth, and I made sure that I never did because I loved playing with Space Legos.  I remember trying to build the best spaceship or one that my big brother would approve of. He kept telling me that I needed more weapons, until one day he said my ship had too many weapons.  I never could please him, but I still enjoyed it, and so my love for space grew.

When I was three or four years old, my dad who is an accountant took my brother and me to one of his clients called Flying Saucer Pie Company, and I’ll never forget seeing the mural painted on the wall inside.  There was an alien suspended in outer space and a pie flying though space like a flying saucer.  I thought the painting was so imaginative and cool.  It gave me something to daydream about and something to imagine; it was something to do and it was fun. I don’t remember anything else about that day other than that I had sat in the car for a long time, was bored before I went inside Flying Saucer, and wanted to go home.  Afterward I still wanted to go home, but I wasn’t bored anymore.  To think that a pie could be a spaceship was just the coolest thing in the world.  That mural on the wall inside Flying Saucer Pie Company had made my day.  It was rare for me to appreciate a work of art that didn’t have anything to do with cartoons, but I loved that painting, and so my love for Flying Saucer Pie Company began.

Sometime after that visit, I got to eat one of their pies and I’ve eaten quite a few of them since.  I don’t remember a pie that I didn’t like.  Since then there have been a few newspaper articles about Flying Saucer and it’s been on the television news a few times too.  Many people like Flying Saucer Pie Company and it’s an interesting business.

Years Later

My dad took me back years later and I saw the painting again.  There was a place to sit and eat next to it, and I vaguely remember sitting and eating a pie there with my dad and my brother.  I looked at the mural practically half the time.  For some reason it wasn’t as miraculous, but I still liked it.  I guess the surprise of “wow” that someone came up with the idea wasn’t there the second time, since I’m sure I thought about that painting all the way home after my first visit.

Televised on the News

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Later on Flying Saucer made it to the news on television and I still have the 1999 Thanksgiving Eve news on tape.  According to it Flying Saucer Pie Company doesn’t open until 7:00am but a lady customer came at 3:30am to get in line for pies before Thanksgiving.  The Pie Company wound up opening twenty minutes ahead of time because there was such a long line of people waiting at the door.  Flying Saucer was supposed to give out fourteen thousand pies in the two days before Thanksgiving.  Lloyd Gite, the anchorman, said that he hoped they wouldn’t run out of pies, since they ran out of pies the year before.  A pregnant woman who had stood in line for almost an hour was going to buy eight pies while another person said six.  The pregnant lady said she was buying for Christmas and Thanksgiving.  Another lady said she was only going to buy three pies and explained that the rest of her family could go stand in line themselves.  The line to order pies was so long that they even had police out there guiding traffic (Fox).  There is no ordering online at any time of year; all they have is a menu, so if anyone wants a Flying Saucer Pie they have to go out and get it.  Some people even bring lawn chairs just to wait in line.

Everyone interviewed agreed that the pies were good which is obviously true if all those people are going to stand and wait in a long line for pies (Fox).  I’ve eaten some Flying Saucer Pies myself, of course.  They are the best pies you can buy as far as I’m concerned, and some people standing in line said, "They're wonderful; they've been here forever" and "I've been buying them for years" (Fox).  I love the whip cream that comes on top of some of them.  A co-owner said that the reason they were so good was that they were fresh homemade pies with no preservatives.  They try to use the freshest products they can buy, and I think they succeed.  They used 105,000 strawberries, 20,000 pounds of sugar, 19,800 eggs, and 900 pounds of milk to make pies for those two days.  They made a giant vat of pumpkin pie filling and had many piecrusts really to go. Then they took a ladle that when filled held just the right volume for filling a pie shell and they poured the filling in each pie crust, one by one, by hand.  Then they had to bake each of the pies for almost an hour (Fox).

In the Newspaper

That wasn’t the only time they were on the news and it probably won’t be the last. They have also made it to the Houston Chronicle at least twice and I have found one of the articles.  According to it, Flying Saucer is run most of the time by just five people, but my dad says there is about eight people now.  When the holidays come they get other family members to fly in and help work for Christmas cash.  The company began in 1967 by Turner, his daughter, and Leeson who they met “while working at a Piccadilly Cafeteria” at Northline Shopping Center(Sallee).  Turner came up with the name Flying Saucer because apparently people were talking about flying saucer’s at the time.  Turner had started selling pies when he was a kid. His dream was to have his own pie company and with Smith and Leeson his dream came true (Sallee).  My dad found out from Leeson that they have five ovens that can each hold forty pies and make two hundred pies per hour.  They use a machine to make their crusts, and they were planning to make 16000 pies in the two days before Thanksgiving 2002 (Sallee).

Back Again

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Recently, I traveled to Flying Saucer Pie Company on my way home from school. I took the Sheperd/ Durham exit on 610 north loop and traveled north on Sheperd.  Then I took  a right on Crosstimbers until I passed the Flying Saucer Pie company sign.  I made a u-turn, passing the building again and turned right into the parking lot.  It had been years since I had been there and now a few things had changed.  For instance, there is a different painting inside than there used to be.  Boxes stacked on top of each other took up the place where I had once eaten; they were in front of the new mural, so part of it I couldn’t see.  From what I could tell, the new mural had a pie spaceship that had landed on the ground on the left.  There were about eight identical assumed aliens lined up side by side to the right of the pie ship.  All of them were facing the viewer and all of them looked like humans in space suits with a clear plastic bubble over their head.  Their faces were weird with the color green, and I couldn’t see their eyes, mouth, or nose.  They only differed in height and the background was space with stars and a few planets.

The Outside Mural

There always has been a mural on the outside too.  I believe back then, the painting consisted of only a few planets in a black space background with tiny stars.  I’m remembering back to when I was three or four years old, so my memory might be a little rusty.  Now, the outside mural is definitely a different painting, and my parents have confirmed that.  Part of it is a big four fingered alien on the far right, making the peace sign with his fingers in the shape of a ‘V.’ He is inside a small saucer-like ship with a clear plastic bubble covering him.  The trail that the green alien’s ship makes leads me to believe that it had just traveled from the sun.  The yellow sun is shining in space, above and to the left of the alien, but still on the right side.  The words “The Flying Saucer” are centered in space at the top of the painting.  Beneath those words is a small flying saucer that looks like a disk with a circular simple head rising out of it.  The head has two dots for eyes and a ‘u’ for a nose.  Below that flying sauce lies the word ‘pie’ resting on a desert planet.  It’s almost as if the word ‘pie’ is part of the planet, sticking out of the planet with the same brownish color.  The desert planet takes up the whole bottom of the picture in the shape of an elipse.  Craters with rims like the pipes in Super Mario World pop out all over the brownish desert planet.  There’s a whitish satalite-looking thing to the far left.  A small purple planet, a planet with rings like Saturn, and a planet that is blue and green like Earth are all suspended in space to the right of the flying saucer.  “CO” is written in white letters to the right of the ‘e’ in ‘pie’ and a small red planet is to the right of that.

Prices and Products

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I bought a chocolate pie there too which was seven dollars even, so I guess there is no tax on pies.  It was covered with whip cream and the chocolate underneath was bitter dark chocolate if eaten by itself, but if eaten together with the whip cream it tastes delicious.

Flying Saucer’s other pies range in price from seven dollars to $9.25.  Some of their cream pies are more expensive than their regular pies, but oddly enough, some of the cream pies are the cheapest.  In fact the cheapest pies they have are Fresh Banana Cream, Fresh Lemon Cream, Coconut Cream, Pumpkin pie without cream, and the pie that I bought, Chocolate Cream, all for seven dollars.  The most expensive cream pies they sell are Key Lime Pie, Strawberry Cheesecake Pie, and Cherry Cheesecake Pie.  Mincemeat is the same price, but it is not a cream pie (Flying).  I’ve never had Mincemeat; it has a curious name and I wonder what it is like.  There are only two cream pies that are in between those prices; those are Fresh Strawberry Cream for nine dollars even and Pumpkin pie with cream for $7.35.  Apple, Peach, and Cherry Pie are $7.25 each, while Pecan pie is unique with its price of $8.25.  Those are all the pies you can buy, but there sure are a lot of them.  You can also buy individual slices of pie for two dollars each which is probably what we got when we ate there that one time (Flying).

Other Info

They accept cash or checks, and are open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:00am to 7:00pm.  They are closed on Mondays and Sundays.  However, in December and November they open an hour earlier at 7:00am and close the same time at 8:00pm (Flying).  I guess they do that because they have more business in November and December than the rest of the year due to Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I like their slogan too.  “Our Pies Are Out Of This World” seems to fit perfectly with their theme of space and flying saucers (Flying).

Conclusion

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In conclusion, Flying Saucer Pie Company is definitely a unique interesting company that many people like, including me.  It’s become popular enough to make to the newspaper and the news on TV. It’s been years since I’ve seen the old painting on the wall, and after all these years I still remember it.  It’s amazing that I remember what I do because there are just a few things that I remember when I was three or four and my first trip to Flying Saucer was one of them.  The original murals may be gone, but their theme hasn’t changed.  Flying Saucer Pie Company has turned out to be my favorite business in Houston and it has lasted all this time.  I’m nineteen and still love space, that mural, Space Legos, and Flying Saucer Pie Company.  Sadly they don’t make Space Legos anymore, but they still make delicious Flying Saucer Pies!