“Yeah, I got a story for you,” said the old woman in the nursing home.

She had midnight skin, dandelion-fuzz hair, and she smoked Newports. Each day she liked to park her wheelchair in the parking lot where she could face the supermarket, and watch all the happy customers walk in and out of Publix.

At the time, I was a cub reporter, looking to scare up a story for the local paper. Back when Americans still read newspapers.

The old woman faced Publix. She flicked her lighter, drew in a breath, then began to speak.

“You ain’t old enough to remember the flood,” she began.

The Great Flood of 1927 is not often remembered in our selective pop-culture history. Historically, we Americans tend to only remember wars, good-looking movie stars, and crappy pop songs. If you ask a schoolkid about the flood, odds are they’ll look at you as though you’ve got three heads, blink twice, then resume texting.

In 1927, the Mississippi remained at flood levels for 153 days.

Rain kept falling. Waters kept rising. The icepacks of the north kept melting.

The river in Vicksburg broke 40 feet. Nashville and Chattanooga flooded. Creeks and tributaries as far away as Kansas and Iowa were inundated.

Nationwide, 170 counties and parishes were drowned, seven states flooded, and 900,000 were driven from their homes. The flood claimed lives from Virginia to Oklahoma.

“This story happened to my uncle…” she said.

Her uncle was married with kids. When the floodwaters invaded his home, the family moved upstairs to stay dry. When the second story flooded, the family moved to the roof. When waters finally engulfed the rooftop, her uncle swam ashore to find help, tied at the waist by a rope attached to his chimney.

“I don’t know how he made it to shore against those currents. Shoulda killed him.”

The family found safety in a church with about 200 others.…

DEAR SEAN:

I’m pregnant. My husband and I have been going back and forth on name options but have no ideas. So right now I have a baby without a name. I know this is a strange request, but can you give me some name suggestions? I don’t want one of those modern names.

Thanks,

NEW-MOM-IN-GRAND-RAPIDS

DEAR GRAND-RAPIDS:

The night I was born, my mother took me into her arms and decided that she was going to name me Elvis.

My aunt recalls: “Your mama loved Elvis. Plus, you were a Capricorn, you know. Elvis and Jesus were Capricorns.”

Case closed.

In the end, my mother gave me a Scots-Irish name. But over the years I’ve wondered about how differently my life would have played out if my mother had gone with Elvis.

PATROLMAN: License and registration, please, sir?

ME: Here you are, officer.

HIM: Do you know how fast you were driving back there… (looks at license) Elvis?

ME: Uh-huh-uh-huh.

As a writer, when you start working on a novel, the first thing you think about are the names

of your characters. In fact, names are one of the most important parts of any story. Think about it. How many pieces of classic literature do you read where the hero was named Heman Pickles?

You do, however, have to be careful when you give opinions on names you like and dislike because feelings can get hurt very easily. My mother and aunt once got into a knock-down-drag-out argument after my aunt admitted that she never liked my mother’s name.

My mother was fuming. She stood from her chair and informed my aunt that she never liked my aunt’s name, either. Things got ugly. My mother said my aunt’s name reminded her of a barefoot and pregnant hick—my aunt, at the time, was barefoot, also pregnant.

So then my aunt said my mother had a bad singing voice and that…

My wife and I are in training mode. We walk 10 or 12 miles, several times per week, practicing for our second Camino. We will walk across Spain soon, and we need to get in shape.

We get up early. And we start walking. We walk for most of the day. Until we’re covered in sweat and smell like the hindparts of a filthy goat.

And with each Camino training walk, I am remembering what I learned on our first Camino. Something all pilgrims eventually learn. It’s not the magic of the Camino that changes you. It’s the walking.

When I was a kid, walking was life. I walked everywhere. I walked through the woods. I walked miles of neighborhood to see my friends. I walked to the filling station. I walked to school.

But as I got older, I quit walking. Namely, because America is not built for walking. Not even a little. We are a nation of highways and overpasses, with few sidewalks. If you don’t believe me, try

walking to Walmart and see if you survive.

In the last 10 years, pedestrian death rates have risen by 25 percent. The average American sits for 8.5 hours per day; 50 percent of all car trips in America are under three miles.

It’s a shame. Because the act of moving your legs does something to you. And I don’t mean it makes your butt smaller, although this happens, too.

As you walk, you feel your mind getting quieter. There’s less chatter up there. You become reflective. Relaxed. Your body and legs go on autopilot. Your soul begins to emerge. Although you THINK you’re walking, what you’re actually doing is praying.

We don’t know this, of course. We never knew what real prayer was. Growing up, we were taught to think that “prayer” meant clasping our hands, kneeling, and using a physical voice to ask the Celestial Santa Claus for…

The year is 250 A.D. It’s Good Friday. Although, technically, there is no “Good Friday.” Not for another hundred years.

Tonight, all people who follow “The Way” meet underground. They have to.

Followers of The Way are being martyred left and right. They can’t afford to expose themselves and get beheaded. They have families.

Tonight, they meet in a barn. They all gather among farm implements and bleating sheep. No candles.

The children sit in the center of the barn. The adults, on the periphery. They sing a few songs. The lambs and ewes join in.

Theirs has always been a singing tradition.

They sing to honor the fallen. They have many loved ones who were captured and killed for following The Way.

Everyone in this barn knows that it’s probably just a matter of time before they themselves are arrested. They have prepped their kids for this.

“If Mommy and Daddy go missing, run to Aunt So-And-So’s house. She’ll know what to do.”

They are all fasting tonight. Not just from food, but water, too. They

will fast for 40 hours to remember the death of the Nazarene. It’s just what they do on this particular Friday.

Someone gets up in front of the group. Brother Andrew. He explains why they are meeting in darkness tonight.

Because they are remembering the Jewish Carpenter’s sacrifice. Also, they remember the lives of martyred brothers. Last week, two teenage girls were beheaded in the square for refusing to light incense to Caesar.

Romans have all sorts of interesting ways of killing these followers of The Way. They dress their prisoners in fresh animal carcasses, then turn wild dogs loose. They place them in barrels with spikes then roll them down hills. They dip them in tar, light them on fire, and suspend them as torches.

Ironically, Romans call them “atheists.” Or worse, “Little Christs,” or “Little Messiahs.” This is because they have…

Hello. I am a sea turtle. We turtles don’t actually have names. But you can call me Squirt. Pleased to meet you.

Maybe you’ve never met a talking sea turtle before. Well, I’d like to change that.

The first thing you should know about me is that I’m very old. Much older than you. I was born before automobiles. Before lightbulbs. If I wore underpants, I’d have underpants older than you.

The reason I am writing is because I have something to share with you. I’d like to talk about water. Water is my favoritest thing on earth.

You probably like water, too. But probably not as much as me.

See, water doesn’t just fill the ocean. For sea turtles, water fills the entirety of all I know. To me, water isn’t just a thing. To me, water is all-powerful.

Water contains the most power in my universe. I have seen water swallow islands whole. Filling every coral forest, immersing every sandbar. Water engulfs. Water overtakes.

Imagine water behind a dam. All its weight. All its raw

power. All its energy. Just begging for someone to poke a tiny hole in the dam so that tiny stress fractures can soon rupture the steel and concrete which try so feebly to restrain it.

That’s the power of water.

But water is more than just power. Water is my life. You see, water is always around me. I drink by filtering saltwater through glands in my eyes. I eat by allowing the water to bring me bits of food.

Water bathes every fiber of my being, flowing inside me, and outside. Water is in my organs. Inside my muscles. In every patch of flesh. In my bones, and cartilage.

Water fills in my heart. Water is inside my skull. My brain is mostly water. So is yours, actually.

There is nowhere in my kingdom where water is not. Water is even what…

I had a toy rocket when I was a kid. It was made of plastic. The word NASA was printed on it. It was a Saturn V rocket, king daddy of all rockets. The same one that took men to the moon. My GI Joe doll could ride it like a horsey.

My friend Bradley had a shuttle-stack rocket, with winged orbiter and two solid rocket boosters. You want to talk power.

All the boys wanted to play with that thing. We would fight over who got to play with it.

“It’s my turn, Randy. Give it here, you big hog. You’ve had it forever, it’s not even yours.”

“I’m telling Mom. What did you call me? No I’m not. Say that again and you’ll have a fat lip.”

“What did you call me? Nuh, uh. YOU’RE a stupid turd monger. Oh yeah? I know you are but what am I? MOM!”

I recently had a conversation with some young people about space. They were teenagers. They were uninterested.

I asked whether they knew we’d

been to the moon. One of them shrugged and said the moon landing was a hoax. I smiled. Then, I asked whether they knew what the International Space Station was, and how it was designed in 1984, and how it’s been in orbit for 27 years, and how it’s been visited by almost 300 astronauts.

The teen just smiled vacantly and said, “The international what?” Then they went back to texting each other dirty pictures on their phones.

But there was a time in our culture when space exploration was treated very differently. I come from old men who worked on Roadmasters and Impalas beneath shade trees in the backyard. Men who loved machines. Men who thought rockets were the glory of all manmade achievement. Men who used the words “John Glenn” with the same tone they used when speaking of the Gentle Nazarene.

That’s…

Wake up. Start coffeemaker. Turn on TV. A panicky news journalist is saying America is doomed and only minutes away from exploding. And if not America, at least my house.

Turn off TV.

Coffee is ready. Pour said coffee. Check my phone. Look at emails. The first subject line attracts my attention. “YOU ARE NOT A TRUE AMERICAN IF YOU DON’T READ THIS!!!”

I want to be a true American, but for the next few minutes I’ll have to settle for being a fallacious one. Namely, because it’s a little early to be reading anything in all caps.

Sip coffee. Massage eyeballs. Leash up dogs. Take them outside for morning walks. It’s still dark.

One of my dogs doesn’t want to pee. So we walk in tight, concentric circles through the neighborhood as I whisper-shout, “Go pee!” As though these two words have ever helped a canine successfully urinate within the long and noble history of dogdom.

I check my phone. To give

my dog privacy. Hop on social media. My newsfeed is nothing but politics. Whatever happened to cute kitty videos?

The first post I see shows the picture of an American flag covered in mud, or perhaps it's a more organic substance. The first words are: “PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND TOTALLY FREAKING BLOWN, AMERICA!”

The user who shared the brain-blasting patriotic item is my childhood Sunday school teacher. A woman whose wardrobe once consisted entirely of polyester. Her profile picture is a bald eagle wearing a bikini.

Soon, I am walking through a dark neighborhood near my house. My dog is sniffing the millions of locations where other dogs peed. I’m encouraging my dog to leave her mark on this world so we can go back home.

Surrounding me are yard signs galore. There must be hundreds, perched in everyone’s yards. Each sign has some urgent message.…

We crossed the Indiana state line at noon. It was sunny. Cloudless. The springtime air was dry and pleasant, smelling of apples, IndyCar, and Hoosiers.

The GPS took us on backroads. We saw tractors, and cows, and fields of soy and baby corn, and big billboards that said Jesus loves you and doesn’t want to send you to hell so please call the toll-free number to learn more or visit our website whose address was a scripture verse with a dot com at the end.

We pulled over at a country gas station. I saw a guy pumping gasoline on the other side of my pump. He was wearing denim work clothes, filling up an old Ford pickup. His beard was white. His truck bed was full of firewood. Cherry and hickory, from the looks of it.

“Alabama, huh?” he said in a Midwestern accent. “I’ve been to Alabama. Good barbecue. No lottery.”

This was all he said for a while. Then he spit into a small cup.

“Do you have a lottery in Indiana?” I asked.

He laughed.

“Is a bear Catholic?”

“What about barbecue?” I asked. “I’ve never had Indiana barbecue, what’s that like?”

He pointed to the truck bed full of wood. “Follow me and find out. Me and my sons are barbecuing all weekend.”

I told him I really wished I could but I have to be in Nashville, I can’t make it. He smiled and said, “Next time.”

Then the man explained that Indiana barbecue is not talked about in mainstream culture, but it’s a beautiful thing nonetheless. Even though Indiana’s barbecue doesn’t get any press alongside Barbecue’s Big Four—Memphis, Texas, Kansas City, and Carolina—it’s a work of art, he told me.

“Our sauce is sweeter,” he said. “Sort of similar to Kansas City barbecue sauce, but we don’t just use brown sugar. We use stuff you’d find on a farm. Sometimes we use maple…

I am in the hotel elevator with a guy and his dog. The dog is wearing pajamas. They are white pajamas with polka dots.

“Say hello to Kevin,” says the man with the dog.

Kevin wags his tail, looking at me. Waiting for my salutation.

I press the button for the lobby. “Hello, Kevin,” I say.

Kevin is an American Hairless Terrier. The tiny pair of pajamas he is wearing are actually long underwear. Kevin is all business. He is staring alertly at the doors, as though he is our platoon commander.

“Kevin is always wearing some sort of clothing,” the man explains. “He gets cold since he’s hairless. He prefers pajamas at night because they’re much easier to sleep in.”

I completely understand. If you’re a dog, the last thing you want is to wear your day-to-day clothes to bed.

“We tried a nightgown,” says the man. “But that didn’t work.”

“Is that right?”

“We have silk pajamas for him, too.”

I smile.

“There’s a hole in the butt,” the man adds.

I jingle change in my pockets.

I look at Kevin, who is staring

at the elevator doors with laser-beam focus. He’s no longer wagging his tail, which is poking out from his aforementioned opening. Kevin is just standing vigilantly, staring at the doors, every muscle in his body tense, poised, and ready for combat.

“I’m taking him to Florida tomorrow,” says the man. “It’s a vacation just for him and me.”

“Florida sounds fun,” I say.

“Yeah, Florida is Kevin’s favorite place in the world. Because it’s warm. He likes warm places.”

I ask what sorts of things Kevin likes to do in Florida.

“Oh, lots of stuff. He likes walks on the beach. He loves chasing the seagulls. He likes to go out to eat. He’s a big fan of shrimp.”

Join the club, Kevin.

“Last year I had to put him on a diet when…

I like you. I like everything about you. I like your smile. Your teeth, no matter how crooked. Your physical shape, no matter which shape that is. I don’t care about the size of your butt.

I like your freckles, your moles, your warts, your imperfections, your scars, your thoughts.

I like your laugh, even if you think it sounds weird. I like it.

I like the way your eyes kind of get all squinty when you smile.

I like all of you. I like your face. I like the way you look. Eighty percent of 17-year-old girls are unhappy with their body. Eighty percent of adolescent boys feel deep shame about their bodies. Social media is killing our children’s body image. Our kids continually compare themselves to impossible standards. And so, probably, do you.

But never mind all that. I like you.

I like it when you do nice things. I like the way it makes you feel inside. I like how you are instantly given a warm-squishy feeling.

I like how being nice

to people sort of gives you the sensation that you’ve discovered the meaning of life itself. Which, you kind of have.

In fact, THAT’S the best feeling in the world. Giving stuff to people.

Giving affection. Giving time. Giving food. Giving money. Giving away your art, for free. Not to be famous. Not to be rich. Not to have any recognition at all. Not for any ego boost or validation. But just because you enjoy helping someone. Not helping out of pity, but because you truly like that someone.

Which leads me to my next question:

Who do you like? Which people, I mean? Do you like everyone? Or are you choosy about it?

Do you like only those who like you back? Do you like only pretty people, who dress the right way, talk the right way, act the right way, have the right…