Skip to: Content Skip to: Site Navigation Skip to: Search  `Good
pie and a full life'  By David Holmstrom / January 14, 1987  HE
was a farmer, a broad-shouldered, meaty old guy with a strip of
white across his forehead from wearing a hat outside all the
days of his life. From the forehead down his face was the color
of Oklahoma clay, although he was in Illinois and about to give
me the title for a book. I had just walked into a little caf'e
in a small town clustered among big trees several miles off the
main highway. It was a Friday morning in July with the day's red
sun just now giving color to the puddles of last night's rain
and making long shadows behind the trees. The town was
surrounded by cornstalks.  Skip to next paragraph  In the
restaurant music played from a radio on a shelf above the pie
rack. Two waitresses in different-colored dresses made trails
back and forth among a dozen tables, and a third waitress, a
teen-age girl with freckles and shy eyes, kept busy at the
counter. A cook slammed and bum