When Tom Spies was a rawboned youngster in the cotton, corn and cattle country of northeast Texas' Red River valley, there was enough food (Tom grew to burly quarterback build), but the average farm diet was deadly monotonous. It consisted of the three Msmeal, meat and molasses, the meal being corn meal and the meat fat back or side meat. A related factthough no one at the time suspected the connectionwas that every year the South had 400,000 new cases of pellagra (Italian for rough skin). The victims' feet and hands (sometimes neck and face) burned with red, scaling patches; their...
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