The Worst Hard Time Part 15

"Now here's a treat," Gerald said. "Hope you saved some room for cobbler."

All morning, they had been cooking peach cobbler in a pit. Fresh peaches, honey, brown sugar, a rich pie dough-all blended into a big vat of cobbler cooked around hot coals set in the ground. I never tasted a better thing at midday, and it was typical of the kind of hospitality I found on the High Plains. It also gave me an inkling as to why people stuck around, even when they faced "the hate of all nature," as John McCarty put it.

That part of the country was like another planet to me. I'm a son of the Pacific Northwest. I grew up with wraparound green, water everywhere, and a horizon always interrupted by mountains. The Gerald Dixons of the flatlands made me feel at home in a brown land. So, for Gerald and his boys out at the burger shack, for the peach cobbler and all the rest, my deepest thanks.

About thirty miles west, in Boise City, I found an invaluable tour guide to the past in Norma Gene b.u.t.terbaugh Young. My thanks to Norma for her help and memory, and for her service to the region's history. Hundreds of family stories would have slipped away without her.

Every town has at least an attic that holds the local secrets, usually a small museum. Among the bigger facilities, the Oklahoma Historical Society was very useful, especially the oral history department. Mildred Becker, curator of Wolf Creek Heritage Museum in tiny Lips...o...b.. Texas, was one of the best of a breed. I would also like to thank the staff of the XIT Museum in Dalhart.

Further thanks are due Charles Shaw, for his generosity of heart in sharing stories about his mother; to the wonderfully effusive Jeanne Clark, who helped to launch this project by bringing together a number of witnesses from her hometown of Lamar, Colorado; to Melt White, maybe the last true cowboy left on the Texas Panhandle; and to Ike Osteen, Baca County's greatest living resource.

For the idea, the direction, the patience, and for keeping his hand on the wheel whenever I wanted to steer the other way, I owe everything to Anton Mueller at Houghton Mifflin. My agent, Carol Mann, saw the match and nudged me into it. And a final bow to Joni, Sophie, and Casey-a family that has never stopped being curious or thrilled by the magic of bookmaking.