What the air does out here
Once a year the Basin eats at one table, and the table is Mile 99. It takes eleven actual tables, every folding chair in the county, and the crew from the wedding at Mile 30 setting up, who evidently have range. Pumpkin dishes hold the middle with clove, nutmeg, and warm cinnamon running the length of the room, and the pie count is posted where anyone can audit it. Grace is short. The passing of dishes is not.
Who rides with it
Casserole strategists who arrive early to claim the middle seats. The keeper of the pie count. Teenagers assigned to the kids' table one year too many. The kids' table keeps a waiting list to leave it and a quietly longer one to get back on.
Pair it at the next stop
The fairground cooked the runners-up into pie at Pumpkin Spice, Mile 52; this table sets a place for everybody. Dessert is one mile up at the cocoa kitchen, Hot Cocoa and Cream, Mile 100.
A gravel road leaves the highway at this marker: The Pie Safe Lane, a shaded quarter mile, walked slower on the way back, ends at a candle.