We played music for a nursing home. It was a sterile room with fluorescent lights and a funny smell. People kept asking our guitar player to turn up the volume.

That was a first.

It bears mentioning: we have taken the stage in some ugly places.

We’ve played for motorcyclists with names like, “Bruiser,” “Snake Eyes,” and “Ernie.”

We’ve played clogging dances, barroom weddings, family reunions, sixtieth birthday parties, crawfish boils, car dealership sales, shoe stores, one bar mitzvah.

This was our first nursing home.

So, we chose songs the radios quit broadcasting around the time of Harry Truman. Our crowd of white-hairs gave an enthusiastic applause that was as loud as an oscillating fan.

One woman asked if we knew “Keep on the Sunny Side.” Another asked for “Dixie.” We had three requests for “O When the Saints Go Marching.” One for “Viva Las Vegas.”

A man named Benny—suspenders and hearing-aids—asked for “I Saw the Light.”

We played it quiet and slow; he sang all four verses with his eyes shut. Blessings of higher value, I have not received.

There was a

lady who called me Danny and kept asking, “Did you find my Curly?”

I answered, “No ma'am, I didn't."

"Well, did you even go LOOK?"

High and low, ma'am.

I met a man who played trumpet. He was half black, half white. Skin like caramel. They tell me he’s got some stories.

Midway through our medley, one of the nurses asked us to play “America the Beautiful.”

“They like American songs,” she said.

We started the tune, but never got to sing a word of it. The room beat us to the punch.

A man in back stood. He wore an orange cap with a blue “AU” on it.

The rest stood with him. Their voices weak, but sincere. They sang about Purple Mountains Majesty and Fruited Plains while the band kept steady time.

These people are…

This room is the size of two living rooms and a broom closet. It has a drinking fountain, olive green kitchen appliances, a piano.

And it smells like heaven.

I can think of no happier square-footage than a rural church hall—complete with card-tables and casserole dishes. And I'm not talking religion. I'm talking fried chicken.

Yesterday, I walked through the food-line in one such church. I held a paper plate and did my best not to get gravy on my necktie.

It was a funeral. I met the mother of the deceased, she was a wreck.

Before the memorial service: food. You should’ve seen the lineup. I won't go through the whole list, but here are a few standards:

Chicken and dumplings, fried gizzards, deer sausage, and deep-fried backstrap. Drop biscuits, butter beans, squash casserole, creamed corn, cheese grits.

An elderly man sat beside me. Grandfather to the deceased. He grew up in this church. He estimates he’s attended nearly ten thousand socials in this room.

An old woman wearing a houndstooth skirt-suit, sits on my other side. She's on

the funeral committee. She made this potato salad.

It is a majestic concoction. More white than yellow. If I had to rate her dish on a scale of one to ten, I’d give it two hundred fifty-seven.

“It’s just Duke’s and potatoes,” she says. “Ain't hard.”

Maybe not, but this woman has a gift.

When my father died, we ate potato salad. It was in a fellowship hall—water spots on the ceiling, linoleum floors. The food went down like flu medicine.

A girl my age, named Caroline, had made a layer cake with white icing especially for me. I’ll never forget her. She'd lost her mother earlier that year. We were members of the same club.

There was a note on the cake. It read: “If you ever want to talk…”

Here, funeral's are administered by feeders, not the clergy.…

Augusta, Georgia—the VA Medical Center. Her father smoked like a freight train, even though his doctors told him not to. But, he was dying of colon cancer. If he wanted to burn a couple packs, by God, that was his right.

He was Special Forces. Army. He swore like a commercial fisherman. He chastised any who misused the name of the Good Lord.

He'd seen a lot in his time. He'd been a prisoner of war during Vietnam.

Chemotherapy was some kind of hell, even for a POW. After his last round of treatment, he sat in the courtyard of the Charlie Norwood VA for a celebratory smoke. His daughter beside him.

A fellow vet approached. The man was dirty, bearded, tattered clothes. He smelled like the wrong side of a manure shovel. He asked to bum a smoke.

His name was John.

He stayed. They talked. When her mother arrived with the car, her father introduced the new friend.

She gave the man a once-over and said, “You look hungry, John, come on.”

Come on. The

most gracious two words you will ever hear a Georgian say.

They took him home. Not only did John eat supper, he sat with her father and talked. Their conversation lasted into the night.

John stayed for two months.

They made him a member of the family. In return, John treated them like the only blood kin he’d ever had.

“He held Dad’s hand,” she goes on. “He prayed with him when the pain got bad, he wiped Dad’s mouth when he was sick. John even helped Mom and me move him...”

Her father’s last twenty-four hours were bad, but John was there. She remembers him waiting by the door with a washcloth, or a basin. He never hesitated to do what needed doing, no matter the chore.

Just before her father passed, they gathered around his bed with the clogged faces. They…

Yesterday, 10:05 A.M., Gulf Shores, Alabama—the worst thing you can imagine. Twelve kids injured. Four in critical condition. Screaming parents. A shut-down highway. Helicopters. Flashing lights.

This is a beach town. Here public schools still observe Mardi Gras—a holiday when anyone owning a trumpet plays Dixieland.

And of all places, it happened at the annual Fat Tuesday parade.

I’ve attended a handful of times. Once, when I was a high-schooler, watching my friend play tuba. Once with my cousin—who was so drunk I had to hold him upright.

This isn't like the big shindigs they do in Mobile or New Orleans. It's a small event. A family day. Kids sit on shoulders. Homemade floats get towed by Silverados. Parents cheer.

This year, it was hell on earth.

The Gulf Shores High School band looked good. The sax-section bobbed its horns in rhythm. The drumline tapped out a steady cadence. Lots of smiling. Students waved to parents.

Without warning, an SUV screamed forward. Kids got mowed down. Instruments twisted. Twelve-year-olds. Seventeen-year-olds. Babies.

Like I said. The worst.

“They looked like rag-dolls,”

one person remarked. “It was so freaking scary, it didn’t seem real.”

Someone else saw the driver leap out of the vehicle. It was a seventy-three-year-old man. The look on his face was one of shock.

One woman said, “I was thinking, 'Oh my gosh this is some terrorism act…' But then I saw the old guy and his expression…”

It was an accident that put our section of the world on last night's national news. It attracted cameras, lights, nice-looking reporters.

But, if you’re looking for an ugly ending to this god-awful story, you’re looking in the wrong place. Because this a heart-strong community with salt-of-the-earth folks.

I'm talking teachers, charter-fishermen, boat mechanics, pastors, nurses, landscapers, and Walmart employees.

An entire town huddled together. Parents wearing Mardi Gras beads knelt over teenagers on the pavement. Adults pressed foreheads against…

I'm on a screen porch with a radio. I’m listening to the Braves play Detroit in a spring-training baseball game. There’s a ghost with me. One I haven't seen in a long time.

The ghost makes remarks at the radio.

“If they had a good bullpen, they might have a chance this season…” he says.

Today, the ghost is chatty, I can't hear the game over his talking.

“Hey," the ghost goes on. "Remember the time we played ball after your grandaddy's wake?”

Of course I do.

"I was REALLY something, wasn't I?" says the ghost. I can’t see his face, but I know he’s grinning.

And he's right. He was impressive. That afternoon, the men in the family got up a ball game. They played in an alfalfa field. My cousin played catcher. My daddy stood on a dirt mound, pitching. A longneck bottle beside his feet.

The game wasn't serious—it was a disorganized free-for-all. Kids alongside men. A second-grade girl playing shortstop.

That is, until one cousin stepped to the plate.

He was the same age as Daddy.

And I'll bet there's one like him in every American clan. A fella everyone praises. He’s nice-looking, played college ball, drives a nice car. Perfect teeth.

Gag me.

My father paled in comparison. He was a steelworker with long legs that didn’t fit his body. His clothes hung off his tall frame. He sweat for a living. The closest he ever got to college ball was watching the Sugar Bowl.

But, by damn, did he have an arm.

It was one of the gifts the Good Lord gave him to make up for his heron legs. In high school, he’d pitched so fast that catchers used to tuck sponges into their mitts.

Perfect Teeth stood at homeplate. And that's when the air got cold. The two middle-aged men stared each other down. If this game would've taken place a hundred…