“No forks,” he said. I thought I’d made a reasonable request, but the server at Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas, stared me down like a cook in a junior high cafeteria. “Knives and fingers only,” he said. “We’ve been doing it that way for 96 years, and we’re not about to change now.” I exchanged a $20 bill for the picnic knife he handed over, plus a large pickle and a pound of oak-smoked beef shoulder, and headed off to a Formica table that could have won historic designation, if anyone gave such recognition to old tables. A 9-foot rattlesnake skin hung on the wall of the 1924 brick building, which was built to replace the original metal building that had housed the business since its 1900 opening. Sitting down in a matching chair, I spread wide the mauve butcher paper and started an adventure. That was my introduction to …