The Feud That Melted On Christmas Eve

For twenty years I would not sell Gideon Strayhorn a slice of pie.

Coffee, sure. A man can’t be refused coffee in Gopher Flats, Missouri, not even a man who once had my car hauled off my own parking lot on the single worst morning of my life. But pie was where I drew the line, and everybody in town knew it. If Gid Strayhorn wanted dessert he could drive the eleven miles to the Casey’s in Dexfield and eat a gas station donut in his tow truck like the menace he was.

That was the arrangement. It held for two decades, through three different diner ovens, two mayors, and one very embarrassing incident involving the Fourth of July parade that neither of us likes to talk about, though I will say it involved his tow truck, my float, and a banner that read Corner Griddle: Home Cooking Since 1962 ending up wrapped around a fire hydrant in front of God and the whole town. It held right up until the night the sky over Route KK turned the color of a dirty dishrag and dumped fourteen inches of snow on top of every soul fool enough to be driving through our corner of Missouri on Christmas Eve, and Gid Strayhorn and I got snowed into the same building together for eleven straight hours.

I run the Corner Griddle, which used to be my mother’s diner, back when it was called Dot’s. I renamed it the year I took it over, the year I turned twenty-six, the year of the Parking Lot Incident. I still say it like that, capital letters, because that’s how it’s lived in my head since it happened.