Betty met her husband when she was eighteen. He was playing the guitar at a party. It was the kind of shindig your grandparents went to. Girls in cotton dresses, rough-handed boys, and sawdust floors.

“He was scrawny as you please,” she said. "Could sing like a bird."

She had to have him.

When he put the instrument down, she made a beeline for him. He was nervous. He avoided her. It boiled her blood. Betty wasn't about to let Bean-Pole get away.

During their first conversation, she found that he stammered. Badly.

It was his lifelong affliction. He'd tried joining the military, they rejected him. School was even worse. He could hardly spell his own name. Uttering a sentence was like delivering puppies.

But when he sang, words came easy.

They dated. He sang to her. She helped him learn to read. They studied late nights in his mother's kitchen, burning cigarettes, reading grade-school textbooks.

He wanted to lose his impediment. For her.

"He went to the preacher for prayer," she said. "But it didn't

work. He finally gave up. I just told him, it doesn't matter, John. I'd love you even if you were deaf and dumb."

Love him she did.

At nineteen, they got married at the Justice of the Peace's house. It was Christmas Eve night. He had a few days off from the pulp mill. They did what they could.

"He borrowed his brother's dress suit," she went on. "It was too big, he was so handsome."

She wore her nicest dress—white with yellow flowers. Their knees shook when they said their vows. For a gift, he bought her chocolate. As it turned out, she bought him the same thing.

Theirs was an ordinary love. The kind easily missed by the restless. Some folks are so busy looking for nuclear explosions, they miss out on a good campfire.

She says he kissed her often. He…

Her husband died of prostate cancer. She grieved long and hard. People worried she'd never get over it. She told my aunt she didn't want to get over it.

So she didn't.

Not until the fateful day she went grocery shopping and noticed the homeless folks begging at a busy Atlanta intersection—a popular corner among people looking for handouts.

She'd ignored them in times past, like most do. But something touched her. It was an ordinary-looking man and his son.

He held a cardboard sign, reading: “Son is hungry.”

She drove by. Then, regret overwhelmed her. She turned around and put twenty bucks in his hand. If she would've had more, she would've given it.

“I couldn't bear to think that boy was going hungry,” she said.

She saw him a few days later. She gave more. And that's when the Mama Bear in her awakened. They were feelings she hadn't felt since her husband died.

“I'm a feeder,” she told me. “And I knew they weren't eating real, hot food.”

This would never do.

She went home and rediscovered

her apron. She cooked things like casseroles in foil dishes—and cornbread. It was the first time she'd used her kitchen since her husband.

The next day, she went to the intersection but didn't see the man nor his son. Instead, it was a young woman asking for cash.

"The food was still hot," she said. "So I gave it to her. You should'a seen her face. Was like I gave her gold.”

Gold.

She returned to her kitchen. Twice as many foil dishes. Twice the cornbread.

Again she visited. No man. No son. This time, it was an older gentleman with girlfriend and a Labrador. She gave them paper bags. They God-blessed her.

She God-blessed back.

It wasn't long before her church friends got in on the action. A handful of ladies cooked every Wednesday.

Soon, they were opening the…

I am on my porch, sitting. The sun is setting. Linus, former feral cat and rodent security patrol, is toying with a mouse. He's holding it by the tail.

Poor rat.

Two neighbor kids ride bikes down my gravel road. They see me. And since childhood knows no privacy, they march up my steps, uninvited. Heavy breathing.

The conversation drifts toward Thanksgiving. Their teacher has assigned writing homework. They're supposed to list things they're thankful for. They're stuck.

"You're over thinking it," I suggest. "Try starting with little things. Like GI Joe dolls."

“What's GI Joe?” one asks.

God help us.

“What are YOU thankful for, Mister Sean?”

Well, it bears mentioning, I am thankful for lots. Namely: biscuits. The kind cooked in skillets. Sometimes, I think I write too much about biscuits.

I'm also grateful for baskets of pine cones. The cones on our cofee table smell like cinnamon. My wife bought them at Walmart for a buck.

A buck.

I'm grateful for the fish I caught. After an unsuccessful day, I tried one last cast. I

snagged a trout the size of a baby cucumber. Not large enough to eat. Big enough to lie about.

Feather pillows, I'm grateful for those. Synthetic foam is a joke.

I like sunny days so bright they make you tired. Black and white movies. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne.

"Who're they?" the kids ask.

Somebody, please save America's youth.

I'm grateful for Baptist hymnals. I have one dated, 1928. Sometimes I thumb through it. And for Daddy's old guitar. The finish has worn off, it looks like hell, but old hymns sound nice on it.

For the mountains in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and North Alabama. God lives up there. For our soggy marshes in North Florida—his summer cottage is here.

For the creek behind my house. For the fort I found while walking through the woods—it was made…

Pensacola, Florida—a sports bar. I'm eating a burger that tastes like five-day-old meatloaf. My fries are cold. On a gigantic television over the bar: Alabama dominates the football field.

This place is a nut house.

The bartender is chatty. He's a husky man, thick hands, early forties. He asks what I'm doing for Thanksgiving. It's only polite conversation. He can't hear me over the noise.

Alabama scores. The bar goes wild.

He asks how I like my burger. I tell him it's magnificent.

He winks and says, "You're a liar. Our burgers are awful."

Clever fella.

I ask him what he's doing Thanksgiving.

He says, “My kids and I are driving to Texas. My girlfriend has a huge family, it's gonna be our first time meeting them."

As it happens, the girl comes from a Mexican family. And in preparation for the big day, she's been teaching him and his two boys Spanish. But, he explains, he can't roll his R's.

Perhaps it's because he's from Geneva County. R's don't roll in Geneva.

Another touchdown. Screaming.

He goes on, “My boys're

more excited than I am, we usually just eat Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving.”

He was married once. But a few years ago, she died. It was sudden. She was young. His oldest boy was two. The other boy, a newborn. One morning, he found her body on the sofa.

“Heart defect," he says. "Doctors didn't even know she had it, I thought I'd never make it. Until I met my girlfriend.”

Field goal kick. It's good.

He digs into his pocket and removes his phone. “You wanna see a picture?”

Sure.

He shows me his boys. Then, an image of an engagement ring.

"Just bought this," he says. My boys and I are gonna ask her to marry us all at once, on Thanksgiving morning.

"My boys wanna get down on their knees and surprise her, do the whole…

“I won't have you turning my son into a preacher,” his father once shouted to his mother, during an argument.

To men like his father, there was nothing worse than a soft-handed Bible-man, stuck in an office. He wanted his boy to do what men have done since the dawn of testosterone—spit, cuss, grow callouses.

His mother wanted him to memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

So, the kid tried to do both. He attended Sunday school, learned the Bible, recited long passages from memory. Outside of church, he worked with his father, operating heavy machinery, learning to cuss.

He was a rowdy child. He drank too much, smoked more, and hopped from party to party. Since he discovered long ago he couldn't please both parents, he disappointed them instead.

He was successful at that.

He was in the car with his friends when the cops pulled them over. A routine traffic stop. One of the boys had just robbed a grocery store and had a gun tucked in his jacket. Another boy had meth in

his pocket.

Off to prison.

That's where he met Billy, who runs an educational program, teaching inmates to read and write poetry and literature.

Billy says, “It helps'em work through their emotional stuff. You wouldn't believe some of the things these boys write. Ain't a dry eye in the classroom sometimes.”

For his first project, he wrote nothing. Instead, he recited something he learned long ago.

"I couldn't believe he knew the whole Sermon on the Mount from start to finish," Billy says. "There was something exceptional about him."

Billy took special interest in the kid. It only took a few heart-to-heart conversations for the kid to realize what he wanted to do with his life.

He wanted to make his mother proud.

"See" Billy explains. "Lotta these boys ain't bad, just mixed up.”

With Billy's help, the boy finished a GED. When he…

"My dad raised three girls and a boy," she said. "He deserves an award or something."

She's probably right. She says he was an expert at getting them ready for school, braiding hair, making lunches, and scaring away rowdy love-interests.

She didn't realize how hard he'd worked until she had her first child.

But it was more than that. Her mother left when she was a baby. Her father explained it long ago: “One day, your mother just went nuts."

That was all he said. The family spent their entire lives with nothing but photographs. And over time, even those faded.

He worked long hours, but still managed to win Daddy of the Century. She tells me he never remarried because he was too committed to his family.

“I used to tell my friends,” she goes on, “my mother died. Mostly, I made her sound like a saint. You know, kids wanna remember their mother in a good way, even if it's a lie.”

Now that she's an adult, she's discovered it was as far

from the truth as it got.

Two years ago, they tracked their biological mother down. They found out she'd done time in prison. She was living in a women's rehab.

“We were heartbroken,” she says, “We cried. It opened up a can of worms I didn't know I had. My dad took it hard. All kinds of feelings resurfaced."

They weren't sure about contacting the woman. After all, she was as near to rock-bottom as anyone could get.

Her father tried to put on the brakes.

“Dad wasn't sure," she said. "He didn't want to know about what she'd been doing. I mean, a lotta years had passed.”

But girls are nosy, and it's hard to let sleeping mamas lie. So they arranged a meeting. It was in a public place. They're hearts were in their throats.

They recognized their mother across the room. The…

Waffle House—my waitress is named Laura. I know this because it's on her name-tag. She's worked three shifts, back-to-back. Her eyes are sagging.

Laura has four kids. Three boys, one girl. She shows me photos on her phone.

“That's my oldest,” she says, tapping the screen. “She's got a brain. I hope she makes more outta her life than I ever did. ”

She smiles. Her teeth are a wreck. She's gorgeous.

"What's so bad about your life?" I ask.

"Nothing, but I know I'm a failure, I'm okay with that."

Well, I'll be dog.

I've known some failures in my time. Laura's not one. Her hands might be rough and she might not descend from blue bloodlines, but she's not trash.

If she is, then I'm a club member.

After all, my family isn't exactly showroom material. My father wore denim. My mother lived in a trailer. I've owned four myself. Three leaked. One resides in the county dump.

And, my education is minimal. I went to college on my own dime and did miserably, working grunt labor

in the daytime.

When I passed my final, I walked outside and shouted in the parking lot—it seemed appropriate. A few classmates were outside smoking. A man with tattoo on his neck offered me a cigarette.

“I don't smoke,” I said.

“Neither do I,” he answered. “But we just graduated, that's a big deal for people like you'n me.”

You and me.

He was right. It was a big deal. As a boy, my mother sewed my clothes and shopped at thrift stores. Sometimes she even recycled teabags.

Then there was the time in eighth grade when a girl called me white trash. Her name was Beth. I'll never forget her.

“Your shirt has a hole,” she pointed out, then mumbled the ugly phrase.

It surprised me. Until that day, I'd never considered myself so lowly. I threw the shirt away…