A Town we'll have to visit for Grandpa Snyder

Paul Snyder once said (well, he actually said it hundreds of times) , "I like two kinds of pie. Hot and cold." I'll bet you know someone who has said that with as much heartfelt feeling as Paul, my father-in-law. He and Grandma Snyder, Vera, were the love of hundreds of grand kid's lives. Hundreds? They fostered over 68 babies during several decades till Vera was too frail to pick them up, and before that had three children of their own. But what's up with the town in the title? Well, it's all about PIE.

Pie Town, new Mexico, that is. Found by a famous depression era photographer, Russel Lee, the town became an iconic image of Southwest America in the hardest of times.  The dust bowl is what most of us remember of the west of that time,but this isn't the Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas prairie. This place was on the way west for many of the 'bowlers'. Some of them stopped here on their way west to start over again, and OK, OK.  It's a small town called Pie. But why is it called Pie Town? Because it's all about PIE.

So the story goes a certain Mr. Norman opened a general store in this tiny town in the 1920's and one of the things he did best was bake pies.  Fresh fruit wasn't hard to grow or buy so assorted fruit pies became the specialty. The crossroads town attracted lots of through travelers and everyone just began to call it Pie Town. When the government wanted to create a more attractive name the homesteaders would have none of it.  Pie Town stuck.  And today, while Mr. Norman's general store is gone, pies of all kinds reign supreme!

There's the Daily Pie Cafe, the Pie-O-Neer Restaurant, and Good Pie Cafe. And every one of them has 5 stars on TRIPADVISOR.com.

Today hikers and bikers on the Continental Divide Trail make this PIE HEAVEN their temporary home as they make their way through.  RV'ers and truckers and drivers of cars and cycles do to.

So in honor of Grandpa Snyder, Mr. Norman, and in the memory of all those dust bowlers long gone we shall have to make a stop, maybe more than one, in Pie Town, New Mexico. Just another place to dream of till we hit the road runnin'.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/pietown.html

-Ken