"Is there anything finer than driving toward shimmering Shiprock on a late summer's day with $3 in your pocket and your choice of kneel-down bread vendors stretching out along the roadside?

That's a trick question, of course. The only thing finer is having $6 to spend on kneel-down bread.

I'm sure the seasonal Navajo delicacy is sold in many places, but it seems like the stretch of U.S. 64 between Hogback and Shiprock is the world capital of kneel-down bread sales.

Starting in August or early September, as young corn begins to ripen on the stalk, signs come out along the highway, tables are set up, coolers sit in the back of pickups and kneel-down bread begins its short retail season. By this weekend and the end of the Shiprock fair, the season will reach its peak and begin to wind down.

Come November, unless you were wise enough to buy extra kneel-down bread and stock it in your freezer, you'll be out of luck when the craving strikes.

If you've never tasted kneel-down bread or even heard of it, you don't know what you're missing. Imagine that a slice of Southern cornbread married a Mexican tamale. The result of that happy union would be kneel-down bread."

Get the Story:
Leslie Linthicum: The Taste of Autumn in Navajo Country (The Albuquerque Journal 9/30)