Isabel Gilmore, Salt Flat Cafe, Salt Flat, Texas, 1988

Story and photograph by Bruce Berman

There were people who grew up along two lane highways who had, at most, radios to connect them to the outer world. They lived in quietude. A car would occasionally pass on U.S. 62/180. Some would stop.
I stopped.
She put down her local paper (from Van Horn, I think it was). She made eggs, fried some hash browns and made toast. Everything she was and did was from a past time. These were moments of grace.
She was far from being a receding type, had lots of questions, and I think her main form of being informed was interviewing anyone who stopped at her cafe. She had been doing this for a long time and I think her parents did it before her.