10 • EATING NEIGHBORLY
Late JuneJust a few hours north of Massachusetts lie the working- class towns of
central Vermont, where a granite statue on Main Street is more likely to
celebrate an anonymous stonecutter than some dignitary in a suit. Just
such a local hero stood over us now, and we admired him as we drove
past: stalwart as the mallet in his hand, this great stone man with his
rolled-up sleeves reminded us of Steven’s Italian grandfather.
We were still on vacation, headed north, now hungry. We pulled in for
lunch at a diner with a row of shiny chrome stools at the long counter, and
booths lining one wall. Heavy white mugs waited to be filled with coffee.
Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette sang their hearts out for quarters. A
handmade sign let us know the jukebox take is collected at the end of ev-
ery month and sent to Farm Aid. The lunch crowd had cleared out, so we
had our pick of booths and our order was up in a minute. The hamburgers
were thick, the fries crispy, the coleslaw cool. The turkey wrap came with
mashed sweet potatoes. Lily seemed so lost in her milkshake, we might
never get her back.
The owners, Tod Murphy and Pam Van Deursen, checked by our
booth to see how we liked everything—and to tell us which of their neigh-
bors produced what. Everything on our plates was grown a stone’s throw
from right here. The beef never comes from Iowa feedlots, nor do the
fries come in giant frozen packages shipped from a factory fed by the