An English pie shop is over 100 years old
In the 4 a.m. darkness, Dan Doire leaves his home in Cumberland and drives to Lincoln. He parks his truck outside the tiny triangular brick building and unlocks the door.
Inside, Doire turns on the lights, then the oven. It will be three hours before he unlocks the door for customers, but Doire has much to do.
He grinds the meat that will become the filling for his pies. He mixes the pastry and forms it into shells that go into the three-inch, deep-dish baking tins he and his wife inherited when they bought Hartley's Pork Pies four years ago. A pastry press cuts the circular lids and imprints them with a letter H, for Hartley.
Doire crimps the lids. Once the oven is hot, he bakes the fresh pies, as well as extras frozen from the day before.
At 7 a.m., Doire unlocks the front door and customers start to trickle in.
Doire doesn't have any employees, but family "helpers" volunteer during busy times. His wife, Colene, helps on her days off from her job as a bank teller. Husband and wife, both clad in white aprons, brush past each other, taking pies from the ovens, boxing them, and handing them to eager customers waiting out front.
In this space -- maybe 800 square feet, including the front cash-register area -- the Doires bake "hundreds of pies a day." They won't get more specific about numbers; they don't want to give away any business secrets.
Hartley's Pork Pies has been operating at 871 Smithfield Ave., serving Anglophiles from locales near and far, since 1954. Its diminutive building, with the door set distinctively into the corner, is a Lincoln landmark, and it hasn't changed much. Dan Doire isn't sure how old the Manitowoc freezer is, or the Penn scale for weighing pastry ingredients, or the Toledo meat grinder, or the Vulcan gas oven. But they're old. The warming oven and freezer are more modern. The shop is equipped with air conditioning for the summer, but Doire wouldn't want to live in the apartment overhead.
The pie shop attracts modern converts, as well as devotees from the days when the Fairlawn neighborhood -- one of Lincoln's oldest -- was primarily British.
The Doires don't even advertise. Business just keeps getting better.
The pies come in four varieties: pork, beef, meat and potato, chicken. The store has salmon pies on Fridays.
"The pies go all over the place," Colene says. "People take them out of the country. They take them to people who used to live here."
The Doires don't know how many customers they serve each day. "We have no idea," Colene exclaims. "We always said we were going to keep track of it."
But they will divulge that they go through an average of 200 pounds of meat a week.
Dan Doire wouldn't agree to an interview during the rush of the holidays. He didn't want an article in the paper at that time of year, anyway. His store wouldn't have been able to handle the added business.
On Christmas Eve, Hartley's handled advance orders only -- no walk-ins. They were too busy. The store was featured on the Town of Lincoln's commemorative Christmas ornament this year, and the extra publicity brought extra customers.
"This year was easier because I controlled it better," Doire says. "We could have made a ton more money, but it would have been harder on everybody."
With business ever increasing, the Doires could expand -- get a bigger store, hire some workers. But they don't really want to they explain with characteristically simple words and forthright manner.
"It's just a small, quaint space," Dan says.
"We make a good living," Colene adds. "We only work four days a week here."
The business leaves time to take care of their children, a daughter and son ages 8 and 13. It beats Dan's old job, selling automobile paint. It's cleaner work, and he's his own boss.
Oddly enough, the Doires fell into the pie business through a banking empire. Thomas Hartley, an English immigrant not connected to the Hartleys now living in Lincoln, established the first Hartley's Pork Pies store in 1902 in Fall River. The Fall River and Somerset stores still exist, but are no longer linked to the Lincoln location. The Lincoln store's founders were Everett Hartley, son of Thomas, and Everett's wife, Aurelia. They retired in 1982, and sold the business to Bill Marsland, who retired from his job as an executive at Pawtucket Savings & Trust Bank. Around 1990, Marsland sold the business to Greg Scown, another bank executive. In 1996, the business passed to Dan Doire's parents -- also Pawtucket Savings & Trust employees -- and Dan and Colene bought it in 2000.
When Everett Hartley owned the business, the pies cost 15 cents apiece. Today, they're still reasonable at $1.40 for pork, beef, meat and vegetable, or chicken. (A salmon pie costs an extra 10 cents.)
The "wounded" pies -- those with cracked shells -- only cost $1.25. Many customers request them.
"What's the difference?" Colene asks.
"The difference," Dan says, conspiratorially, "is they don't hold the gravy."
The gravy is one secret. It's added twice, when the pies come out of the oven and again just before they're sold.
The pies, small pieces of heaven, are sturdy enough to eat by hand. The crisp crust, infused with gravy, gives way to steaming, spiced meat inside. The recipe has been the same for 101 years.
In the front of the store, near the cash register, black-and-white photos of Thomas and Everett Hartley hang beside a hand-drawn map of England and a photo print of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey.
In the front window, a figurine of a pig in a chef's hat stands over a sign that on most days says, "Yes, we have pies." On less fortuitous days, it's replaced by one that reads, "Sorry, sold out today."
The store is open Wednesday through Saturday, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. To avoid disappointment, Colene Doire recommends that customers place orders ahead. When the pies sell out, the Doires turn people away.
Customers can call a day ahead, or anytime in the morning. While the ovens are still on, until about 11, Dan can throw in more pies.
By 1 p.m. last Saturday, the store had run out of all varieties but pork. The bell on the front door jingled. It was a customer, arrived to pick up an order.
Colene grabbed a cardboard box from a shelf behind the counter and lined it with wax paper. She added three warm pies from the oven, pierced each pie with a poker, and poured gravy into the holes. Ready for delivery.
At 1:35, Colene took the last of the pies from the warming oven. She carried the perforated baking rack to the dishwashing sink and turned on the water.
"It says 7 to 2," she said, "but ... while supplies last."
Dan closed the register. He switched the sign in the window to "closed" and removed the "open" flag from its holder outside. He swept the front steps, then went back inside and locked the door.
A customer pulled up outside. He tried the door, but he was too late. The time was 1:55 p.m.
