The pie came with our ancestors from Europe. But it has learned a lot from the Indians and the climate from being so long over here.

Mama had relatives in St. Louis. Family rumor was they had moved there with the invention of beer.

That year 1919, when Gramp and Mania and myself were crossing America the hard way, via a Model T, was a year of sun and dust in the Middle West.

GRAMP used to say he'd done everything in life twice. But even he wasn't a cordon bleu. He didn't come right out and say it, but if you cornered him and asked, he'd have to admit it....

If there had been no pig under the barn, there would have been no Emerson on the sofa in the parlor.

Gramp held the steering wheel like death's other brother and pulled the gas lever down until we hit a neck-breaking thirty miles an hour.