The first day Miss Euayla came into the China Nook, my style just hit her right in the eye. I was dusting off some armadillo baskets when she came in the door and I thought, Lafond T. Cunningham, that’s your life mate. Yes, sir. I dropped those baskets and came skipping around the counter and right up to her.

That morning the Italian air was filled with distant dust, thin, hanging on horizons and blurring far away outlines as it had all that wartime summer. From the heights the valley floors faded into milky flatness: it was difficult to see accurately beyond the nearest villages. 

Certainly he was the vainest man I’ve ever known: if he had lived I’m sure he would have made many people unhappy but somehow, from the very first, I felt he wouldn’t live. Or so it seems now. At the time I probably didn’t think about it one way or the other

After Mr. Fisher lost his job as a brakeman on the Katy he bought a second-hand Chevrolet sedan and drove it as a dime taxi for a while, but there wasn’t enough money in it, so he decided he would make pies.