When I teach travel writing, and get to the all-important ending, I always refer students to Sue Hubbell’s New Yorker story, “The Great American Pie Expedition.” After eating pies throughout the eastern United States, the author arrives in Oklahoma, where she is pulled over by a state trooper for speeding. Knowing the profession’s fondness for the quintessentially American dessert, and hoping to make the most of a bad situation, she asks the officer if he can recommend a good place for pie. “Sorry ma’am,” he tells her, in a line that closes out the story, “but you’re in cobbler country now.”
I was happy to see that yesterday’s New York Times honored the writer with an obituary, and delighted that it mentioned cobbler country.
