MISQUAH — The Misquah Area Historical Society held its annual pie social Saturday afternoon in the old Carnegie building, an event the society’s notices describe as a fundraiser and its members describe, more accurately, as “the one day a year anyone comes downstairs to see what we’ve got.”

Pie was accepted by noon and opinions, as advertised, continuously. Some two dozen pies lined the long table beneath the society’s permanent exhibits — the threshing photographs, the creamery ledger, the cracked bell from the second schoolhouse — and were sold by the slice to benefit the society’s ongoing and patient effort to keep the building’s roof between its collection and the weather. “A pie social is how a small museum survives,” said one longtime member. “People won’t pay to look at a creamery ledger. They’ll pay for pie, and then, while they’re eating it, they’ll look at the ledger. That’s the whole strategy, and it’s worked for fifty years.”

The afternoon’s program included a short talk on the history of the town’s seven-lake chain and the origins of its names, a subject on which the society holds firm positions and the occasional feud. The talk drew a respectful crowd, most of whom, members conceded, “were mainly there for the pie and stayed out of politeness, which we’ll take.”

Proceeds were not announced but were described as “better than last year, because the Aakres brought two pies and the Bjornstads, hearing that, brought three,” a quiet competition the society does nothing to discourage and quietly relies upon. The collection, the member added, remains “dry, for now, which is the most a historical society in a building this old ever lets itself say.”