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She told me many times that nothing sounds as loud as the dinner bell and nothing smells as good as fresh fried pies. She had a bell that she rang seconds after the noon siren sounded.

She sold the pies hot at the cotton gin for five cents. She would wrap any leftovers in a fresh tea towel, and leaving her cooking utensils under the care of a child hired for that purpose, she would run three miles to the lumber mill and offer the tepid pies for three cents. But believing in fair play and being a good businesswoman, the establishment that received lukewarm pies on one day would be her first stop the next noon. Her customers appreciated her cooking, her promptness, and her sense of fairness.

After a few years of serving the pies in both unbreathable summer heat and bone-shaking winter cold, Momma built a little hut equidistant between the two hives of commercial activity. Then at noontime the hungry workers would run to her to get their steaming chicken and cured ham pies.

Momma told me, “Sister, the world might try to put you on a road that you don’t like. First stop and look behind you. If nothing back there makes you want to return, then look ahead. If nothing ahead beckons you enough to keep you going, then you have to step off that road and cut yourself a brand-new path.”

The hut became a store in which I grew up. It remained in use for over sixty years.

Fríed Meat Píes

SERVES 8

1 recipe Buttermilk Biscuits dough (P-41)

2 cups cooked shredded pork or chicken

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste Pinch of cinnamon

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 cup caramelized onions (about 3 medium onions)

5 tablespoons vegetable oil

Roll out dough to ¼ inch thickness. Cut out circles, using salad plate. Season meat with salt and pepper, and add cinnamon and red pepper flakes. Place 2 tablespoons of meat off-center on dough circle. Put ½ teaspoon caramelized onions on meat. Fold dough to make a half-moon. Seal pie by pressing edges with fork tines. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Fry in 3 tablespoons oil on both sides on medium heat until golden brown.

To caramelize onions: Put 2 tablespoons of oil in frying pan, and add thinly sliced onions. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. When onions begin to brown, turn heat down. Continue to stir. Onions will become dark golden brown. Remove from heat.

MY MOTHER, VIVIAN BAXTER, was a great believer in self-reliance. Each tub should sit on its own bottom and each shoulder should be pressed to its own wheel.

My six-year-old son, Guy, and I were between addresses. That was how we described our condition when we lost one apartment and before we found another. In the meantime, of course, we went across town to my mother’s house.

When I was seventeen and Guy was two months old, we lived with my mother in her fourteen-room house on Post Street in San Francisco. Then one morning I announced my plans to move. I told her that I had found a job and two rentals with cooking privileges and that the landlady would babysit my child. She controlled her surprise and said, “All right, but when you cross over my doorsill, remember you have been raised. Throughout life you will have to make many adjustments and even some compromises, but don’t let anybody raise you. You know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. You’ve been raised.

“And remember this,” she added. “You can always come home.”

Whenever the world was too much with me late and soon, I returned to Vivian Baxter’s house. I didn’t savor not sitting on my own bottom and not putting my own shoulder to my own wheel, but I was never made uncomfortable returning to her.

She treated each return as a welcome opportunity to teach me something she had overlooked or that I had not understood. She relished one incident, which she said could only have taken place in her kitchen.

Guy sat at the kitchen table, watching her cook. He kept up a running chatter about school, his playmates, and his teachers, and he filled his conversation