"Have You Ever Heard of Pie Town, New Mexico?"

At first when I read the title of the book, Pie Town Woman, authored by Joan Myers, I could not imagine a town being called Pie Town! However, the town actually exists and is located in New Mexico. Its population is about 55 persons, certainly not a metropolis! You may ask how the town derived its name? Apparently around 1922 a fellow by the name of Clyde Norman came to New Mexico in order to homestead. As he could not find a desirable property he decided to open a mining operation on a forty-acre piece of land that later became known as highway 60. In order to survive he opened a grocery store that sold various items such as food, gasoline, kerosene and other commodities. Norman saw the opportunity to sell doughnuts to his customers and this in turn led him to bake and sell pies. The pies became an immediate success and he soon replaced his original sign to read "Pie Town." Eventually Norman sold his enterprise to someone by the name of Harmon L. Craig who was instrumental in convincing the appropriate authorities to call the town Pie Town.

A photographer by the name of Russell Lee and his wife Jean became acquainted with Pie Town in April of 1940. They were very moved by the fortitude of the homesteaders who farmed in and around the area and how they barely eked out a living. As the author states, "the people were enacting the role of pioneers in the legendary drama of a frontier community. Although the Depression was a desperate time, the days when a family could clear a patch of land, raise a few crops, and be contentedly self-sufficient were over in the rest of the country."

Lee, who was an employee of the Farmers Security Administration and other New Deal Agencies, convinced his boss, Roy Styker, that it would be extremely useful to tell the story of this part of New Mexico with a series of photographs in order to convince the FSA to adopt programs to aid homesteaders. At the time no programs of this nature existed.

During the course of his stay in Pie Town, Lee and his wife, had taken innumerable photographs that served as an historical record of small-town America. These photographs ultimately have found their way into the archives of the Library of Congress. Among the more than six hundred photos taken of Pie Town and vicinity were about one hundred taken of a woman by the name of Doris Caudill, her husband Faro and their daughter Josie.

In 1984 photographer and writer Joan Myers found herself in Pie Town on her way back from visiting her brother in Arizona. She vaguely remembered Russell Lee, the photographer, and his photographs of Pie Town. However, what did in fact leave a lasting impression on Myers was a photograph of a woman looking proudly at one of her jars of canned goods. This woman was Doris Caudill.

Myers decided to track down Doris and she is led to Cascade Locks, Oregon. The book recounts the many conversations the author has with Doris describing her life as a homesteader. The lack of food, medical care, electricity, water accessibility and even the difficulty of burying people are all portrayed by their conversations and some of Doris's photos that are shared with the author. Eventually, spurned on by her curiosity and the stories recounted to her by Doris, Myers returns to Pie Town and the nearby town of Divide where Doris actually lived.

The book is generously illustrated with reproductions of several of Russell Lee's photographs as well as those of the author. It is these photographs that compliment the author's conversations with Doris in depicting the social, economic, and geographic elements that characterized many of these small towns during the Depression.

One criticism I have about the book is that there should have been some background information as to what was the homestead law and what exactly was homesteading. The author apparently presumes that the reader is aware of one of the most important laws ever passed in the United States. Unfortunately, many readers never heard of the law or its objective.

Another shortcoming of the book is the lack of coherent organization of the various chapters. For example, the chapter dealing with Russell Lee should have appeared at the very beginning of the book in order to give the reader an idea as to what were the objectives of the photographs.

Apart from these shortcomings, readers of this book will be captivated by the hardships endured by many homesteaders wherever they may have been living during the terrible Depression years.

Reviewed by Norman Goldman
Posted June 11, 2002

Summary

Pie Town, New Mexico, was immortalized in 1940 in the photographs of Russell Lee, who documented life in the high, dry farming community as part of the Farm Security Administration?s New Deal survey of American life. This book tells the story of one of the women photographed by Lee. Doris Caudill lived on a homestead with her husband and daughter, who was six years old when Lee made his famous photographs, many of which show Doris planting her garden, canning vegetables, and milking cows. Now, more than sixty years later, Joan Myers, herself a distinguished photographer, introduces us to the woman behind the pictures. Raised in West Texas, Doris first came to Pie Town on summer trips as a teenager. Faro Caudill courted her in Pie Town and brought her as a young bride to live in a dugout on a homestead in nearby Divide. Money was as scarce as water in this desert community, and a trip to Albuquerque, 180 miles away, was unimaginable. The Caudills went there only once while they lived in Pie Town, to buy a radio at Montgomery Ward. The nearest doctor was 60 miles from Pie Town, so babies were born at home and mothers had to be vigilant against accidents and snakebites. Although the Caudills and their neighbors lived in poverty that is hard for twenty-first-century Americans to imagine, Doris?s memories of those Great Depression days are the happiest of her life. She was a lively young woman in the 1930s, and her sense of fun and the pleasure that the people in the tiny community took in each other?s company more than made up for the hardships they endured. Joan Myers tells Doris?s story and recounts the experiences of Russell and Jean Lee during their stay in Pie Town. Woven through Myers?s narrative are her musings on the relationships among memory, photographs, and actual events. Included are a selection of Lee?s iconic photographs, Doris?s family snapshots, and photographs taken by Myers herself showing the visual residue of those bygone years.