Pie Town promenade

Unlike a piece of pie, Pie Town got better the next day.

It was tempting to sip coffee on the Toaster House deck and enjoy our surroundings, but once the kids woke, we headed over to The Daily Pie, the local breakfast spot (the Pie-O-Neer opens at 11 a.m.). It was bustling, and we enjoyed our eggs, sausages, hash browns and biscuits in sausage gravy. Of course, we each had pie -- cherry, apple and two blackberries. They were delicious, but we give the Pie-O-Neer the nod.

Just as we finished, Nita dropped by, looking for us. She wanted to give us her “25-cent tour” of Pie Town. It turned out more like the $25 version.

Crammed into her Subaru, we saw the tiny post office with the original 1930s mailboxes. Pie Town originally was a stop on the trail, where cowboys knew they could always get good pie and other refreshments. When the U.S. Postal Service wanted to set up an office, it asked what the town wished to be called. Pie Town, the residents said. Choose a more dignified name, the postal service replied. But Pie Town held fast, and the feds caved in.

Today, Pie Town still lies on the Continental Divide, at about 7,900 feet and far from everything. For groceries and supplies, residents drive more than an hour east or west. Nita told us the history of the closed gas stations, including one where she used to work. We drove by a stand of oddball windmills — a local man’s museum — and down a dirt road to something stranger. Pie Town is home to one of the huge, white radio telescopes from the Very Large Array, most of which are down Highway 60 in the Plains of San Augustin. They’re the ones in “Contact.” Pie Town’s is officially the “Pie Town Dish,” proving that scientists have a sense of humor.

Nita also showed us Pie Town’s old main road, shunted aside by Highway 60 in the 1950s. As we crept along, she gave a running history. A general store and motel used to be in that shambling house. That church was put on rollers and moved down the road. That empty lot once held so-and-so’s home. The state just closed the town dump. By the time we returned to our car at The Daily Pie, we felt like we could give the next tour.

We hugged Nita goodbye, thanked her for her hospitality and got an “Aloha” in return. But we weren’t ready to leave Pie Town -- not when Kathy at the Pie-O-Neer had a fresh batch of pies waiting.

Before that, we desperately needed clean clothes, even by camping standards. So we drove a few miles west to the Top of the World general store and its small laundromat. A small flea market was hunkered down in the wind whipping around the parking lot. John Michael bought a shower nozzle for a quarter; the easy exchanges with the vendors, John and Ruth Hanrahan, were free.

Transplanted Easterners who used to run a bed and breakfast in Raton before falling in love with Pie Town’s charms, they were the latest local residents to befriend us. The store manager gave popsicles to the boys while the clothes dried. Earlier, another resident, Tony, with a Santa white beard, offered to show us the wolves he raises on his ranch. Was everyone in Pie Town as easy to sit down with as one of Kathy’s slices? It sure seemed so. At the flea market, a woman kidded me that the town had us fooled. Then the next Oscar goes to Pie Town.

Soon, it was on to the Pie-O-Neer for lunch. We were too full for pie — just kidding. We ended up having seven more slices, including New Mexican apple (with green chilles and Pinon nuts). I gave my “Pie Fixes Everything” shirt to Kathy, who promptly had her partner, Stanley, nail it up on the wall in a place of honor. Thea stopped to chat some more. We took group photos in front of the restaurant and the pie racks. I took a picture of Kathy holding the peach crumb pie she baked for us. Kathy filmed John Michael describing what makes good food (if a 9-year-old can read the ingredients), vowing to put it on her Facebook page. We told pie stories, talked about the mystery of pie, shared pie tips — just pie freaks and soulmates bonding.

We loved the fact that Kathy once shipped pies, but no longer. If people want her pie, she said, they have to come to Pie Town.

Eventually, we had to break away or else buy our own desert plot. More hugs, and Kathy gave us her signature “Hasta,” telling us Pie Town would talk about our visit for then next week and always remember the pie family. We promised to return some day, and send people to the Pie-O-Neer with instructions to say the pie family said hello. We left with a Pie-O-Neer shirt, a Pie Town bumper sticker on our car, a Pie Town cookbook, our boxed pie and a lot of fond memories of our new favorite place.

Hasta, Kathy. Aloha, Nita.

Thanks, Pie Town.