Bascom Pie’s Covey.
And I could probably die on this hill if it were even really a hill. It’s more of a gravel pile that keeps swallowing up my feet whenever I try climbing it. But, please, hear me out.
His namesake just about has to be Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who was a folklorist who recorded and collected Appalachian music through the 1920s. He, and people like him, are the reason why we even have records of the sort of music the Covey appear to have access to. I’ve got to imagine the records/songbooks/whatever the Covey have their hands on has the man’s name on it someplace.
And Pie is, admittedly, not a color— nor is it color related. But pied is. You’ll hear pied most often referring to bird or horse coloration. It’s a word folks use to describe something multicolored, splotched, or patched with color. Like a motley of colors. And if Haymitch is a bastardization or Hamish, I think Pie’s allowed to be a bastardization of Pied.
“Pie might be Bascom Pie’s last name,” I hear you saying. Then why is he the only person in the book always referred to by his first and last name? “It might be a Greasy Sae type nickname,” you say. And I have to confess you might be on to something. But Greasy Sae is greasy because she’s a cook. Bascom Pie is a moonshiner and pie doesn’t seem to make obvious sense to me. If it was Bascom Mash I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. But it’s not. It’s Pie. Checkmate.
Regardless, his character is a waste of a good name. Just like Blair. Hardly mentioned, near irrelevant, and if they didn’t exist I’d know just what to name my goddamn District 12 OC.
