Pies, that staple of holiday meals, have proved highly adaptable over their long history. The original versions of the pie, which traced back to Egypt, commonly had meat fillings. The crusts were thick and carried more of the heft of the dish. Sometimes the legs of game birds were left hanging over the edge, to be used as handles. Those early-version pies were also long and thin, rather than the circular shape that sets our mouths watering today.

In America pumpkin pies and pecan pies may grace autumn feasts, peach and cherry pies may cap off summer barbecues, and the pie, in its many varieties, pops up in all sorts of places. The 35-pound game pies at the DuPont family reunion of 1950 invoke that early extravagance—American aristocrats dining in the manner of old European royalty. Yet the pie, in fruit form, shows up naturally in more quaint and rural settings. The church social. The town meeting. The boarding house. The roadside restaurant. Places that are as American as, well, apple pie.

Many of the images in this gallery are as homespun as it gets. And some of the pictures are hilarious. The cream pie is the sweet symbol of an era of vaudevillian slapstick.

Most novel deployment of a pie in a LIFE photograph? That distinction goes to Dean Martin and Peggy Lee, in the photo that closes the gallery.

Caterer William Newman brought 35-pound game pies to a DuPont family reunion in 1950. He had also served the DuPont reunion 50 years earlier.

Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In 1938 slices of pie were served after the annual town meeting in Scituate, a coastal community in Massachusetts.

Photo by Hansel Mieth/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A woman prepared pies for a Methodist church dinner in Hartford, Mich., in 1947.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Howard Johnson sampled cherry pies in his office in 1948 before they were added to the menu is his roadside restaurants.

Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A pumpkin festival in Eureka, Ill,. in 1946 included this display.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

When Eureka held this festival, from 1939 to ’61, it was home to the Libby canning operation. Photo by Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

With his distinctive facial features, comedian Bob Hope remained recognizable after taking a direct hit from a cream pie in 1962, with Soupy Sales and Shirley MacLaine alongside him at a benefit performance in Los Angeles.

Photo by Allan Grant/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation.

Cream pies were part of the fun and games at USC in 1953.

Photo by Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Dean Martin and Peggy Lee posed to illustrate a lyric to their duet song You Was: “If you were to ask me who your sweet potato pie was…” in 1949.

Photo by Allan Grant/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In 1972 LIFE magazine went on a road trip with Flip Wilson. Wilson, one of the top TV performers of his day, drove a Rolls Royce with the personalized license plate KILLER, after the never-seen boyfriend of the Geraldine character on his show. On the road trip, a care-free jaunt through the beautiful Southwest, writer P.F. Kluge observed “Flip’s enjoyment of driving is almost palpable. He leans back against the headrest, props a foot on the dashboard, holds his hand in the air, waving at nothing but the breeze.”

Today the piece of personal technology  that people are more likely to be infatuated with is their phones. But for much of the 20^th century, the car occupied an exalted place in the American imagination. With the beginning of mass production in 1927 and the spread of suburban living after World War II, cars became the new place that we spent our time, and the expression of both status and style.

Now people care about fuel efficiency more than fins. The push now is toward cars in which people hand the driving over to a computer. But Flip and the people in these photos took joy in being behind the wheel.

This three-wheeler was an experimental model that appeared in a 1945 LIFE story touting the automotive lifestyle in California.

Photo by Nina Leen/]/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The car-hop was another sign of the automotive lifestyle in 1945 California.

Photo by Nina Leen/]/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The LIFE story on the new automotive lifestyle referred to Herbert’s as a “drive-in restaurant.”

Photo by Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This Messerschmidt from 1953 provides a snug ride.

Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The clothes? Jacques Fath. The tower? Eiffel. The car? A 1947 Delahaye.

TONY LINCK/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This photo of a man and his Cadillac was from a 1951 story on ranchers who were raking in the bucks.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ice cream cones (melting on the outside but not on the inside) demonstrated advances in air conditioning in 1952.

John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Here’s another kind of cool: Steve McQueen and his Jaguar, 1963.

John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A boy admired the Cadillac display at auto show in New York, 1956.

Photo by Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This Lincoln Futura, a concept car, appeared in the Debbie Reynolds movie It Started With a Kiss. A few years later another version of the Futura, with a darker paint job, became the Batmobile in the Batman television show.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Press photographers covered the John Kennedy campaign on the back of a Cadillac, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation