I Found Say McIntosh's Sweet Potato Pie Recipe Online

My Version of Say's Sweet Potato Pie

Getting home with a bag of H.E.B.'s sweet potatoes at .37 per lb., I looked for the recipe written for me on a scrap of paper by Robert "Say" McIntosh, forty years ago.  It used to be tucked into Nena's 1962 Betty Crocker Cookbook, but she'd discarded the book after losing her ability to read after a stroke.

None of the online recipes appealed.  I don't believe in adding vanilla or using an electric mixer on sweet potato pie.

Robert "Say" McIntosh

On a whim, I Googled "Say McIntosh Sweet Potato Pie Recipe." Seconds later, the KATV Little Rock website appeared with Say's recipe; no vanilla, no electric mixer, only sweet potatoes, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, eggs, condensed milk and butter.  

Say's recipe is wonderful.  He is, afterall, the "Sweet Potato Pie King," among other things, in Arkansas.

Say is famous for his barbecue restaurant and pie factory, opened in Little Rock in 1962, but also for his role as "Black Santa," bringing toys and gifts into the city's impoverished neighborhoods for decades.  With a work ethic inherited from his father, who was known in Little Rock as "Mr. Mac," Say has started his workday at 4:00 AM for more than fifty years.

In political circles, McIntosh has been referred to as a "black activist," always stirring the pot on behalf of his people.  In the 80's, both the Republicans and Democrats hired Say to get out the vote in the black neighborhoods, promising a $10,000 fee.  The Republicans paid up, but the Democrats said "the check is in the mail."

Mr. McIntosh, also an artist, drew a picture of Bill Clinton, his alleged black girlfriend and a young boy of apparently mixed ethnicity.  He made a thousand copies and placed them under the windshield wipers of every car at the capital parking lot in Little Rock.

His check was hand delivered the next day.

It was my pleasure to meet "Mr. Mac," Say's dad, who was the first black hire by Kroger in Arkansas in the 1940's.  He was hired as a janitor and retired 50 years later as a janitor, but he taught both his sons how to cook, barbecue and work for a living.