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…

Poteet, Texas—they don’t get too worked up in this town. There’s not much going on. It’s a place with almost three thousand folks. Lots of dust. Windmills. Rural highways. Rusty tractors.

The city's water tower is painted like a strawberry since the town's claim to fame is being the strawberry capital of Texas. That, and this is George Strait's hometown.

This place is also home to Ike Coolidge.

You’d like Ike. Most people do. He’s got personality, charm, class. He enjoys cowboys, Buzz Lightyear, and using the potty. Ike is two years old.

Two weeks ago, he began having stomach pains. At first, his mother, Stephanie, didn’t think much about it. Tummy aches are as much a part of childhood as cowboys and Indians. Only, the pain didn’t go away.

A few days later, Ike was in a bed at Children’s Methodist in San Antonio. They found a tumor outside his bladder.

It was a shock.

His mother says, “Sunday, I was giving him ibuprofen. Monday, the hospital was giving him morphine...”

A community started praying.

What followed was Hell Week.

Monday and Tuesday were nothing but meds and tests. Wednesday: a biopsy—which wasn’t exactly a Texas waltz. Thursday: an MRI, a CT scan. Specialists said the cancer had probably spread. They believed it to be an aggressive type. Twenty percent survival.

The word nightmare comes to mind. But, it's not a strong enough word.

“He’s been so tough,” Stephanie says. “Nurses refer to him as ‘The Rockstar.’”

Which is an understatement. George Strait has nothing on this cowboy.

Ike's mother made camp inside his hospital room. She fielded calls, texts, emails. She lived on coffee and trays of lukewarm food. People visited, some brought gifts. Everyone said a prayer.

Friday, she left the hospital for the first time in almost a week. After her eyes adjusted to the sunlight, she took time to do the things responsible mothers do.…

A gas station. I buy one sweet tea, two scratch-off lotto tickets. The first ticket is a loser. The second: I win a hundred stinking bucks.

I almost hyperventilate. This has only happened one other time in my life—the hundred bucks, not the hyperventilating.

The cashier hands me a hundred-dollar-bill. I don't usually carry paper money anymore. This represents all the cash I have. And it's enough to buy breakfast.

So, I drive a few miles down the road.

My waitress is a nine-year-old. She’s all smiles, and her yellow apron is too big.

“Two eggs over medium, please,” I tell her.

“Two. Eggs. Oh. Ver. Mee. Dee. Yum,” says Tiny, writing on a notepad.

I order a biscuit, too. She needs help spelling.

Tiny runs to the kitchen. I see her older sister at the grill—twelve, maybe thirteen years old. They’re discussing the confusing nuances of my order.

Tiny's mother brings her to my table. “Sir," says Tiny. "What exactly does ‘over medium’ mean?”

I explain—soft yellow, hard white. She yessirs me and I feel like Methusela's uncle.

But I'm in a good

mood. Just yesterday, I stopped at an antique store near Greenville, Alabama. They had everything from old Jimmy Carter campaign posters, to Depression-era fishing reels.

The lady behind the counter asked me, “You like Indians?" Then she showed me a collection of miniature hand-carved wooden chiefs.

She handed me one. The brave wore Sunday feathers and held a tomahawk.

"My granddaddy carved this," she said. "You can have it.”

"Really?"

"Yeah, I got a million of'em. I give'em away sometimes. It's what he would've wanted."

I had a granddaddy who carved.

A few minutes later: my friend called. He said he's expecting his first child. This is big news. Five years ago, the doc told his wife she was barren. He cried on the phone.

Then, this morning: a hundred-dollar bill for a man who never has…

We weren’t good friends. We were too different to be close. But we worked together, traveled together. There was no getting away from him.

I guess that sort of made us friends.

He drank too much and smoked too much. He did harder stuff nobody knew about. But his personality was inviting. He could make friends with a doorknob.

He’d grown up tough on the outskirts of Atlanta. As a boy, he learned to play guitar, and he picked the hell out of it. It took him places.

He was close with his mother. She came to his gigs. She never missed, she'd sit front-row.

She killed herself before he was full-grown. After her funeral, he spiraled downward.

When we worked together, he was trying to get his life together. He had a new wife, a new daughter. Both were blonde with curls. He wrote songs about them.

He started going to church, he even joined a Bible Study.

Once, we worked in North Carolina for a week. Asheville. It was late spring. Jacket weather. We had the daytime to ourselves so we went

for drives—he couldn’t sit still for longer than a cigarette.

We landed on twelve-hundred mountainous acres that belonged to Billy Graham himself. I drove, he took in scenery. It was the first time I’d known his mouth to run quiet.

A chapel sat on a rocky hill. We stopped. The building was unlocked and empty. Wood floors, maple pews. Billy Graham’s picture was on the wall.

“You reckon Billy Boy ACTUALLY preaches here?” he said.

“Maybe.”

The chapel had a postcard view, overlooking God’s country.

“You think people who kill themselves go to heaven?” he finally asked.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“No doubt in my mind.”

He spoke of his mother. He was past the crying stages, and he wasn’t angry, either. In fact, he seemed a little hopeful.

He told me about his ambitions, he had several.…

Somewhere south of Montgomery—a girl sings on a barroom stage. She’s college-age. Brunette. Her family plays backup. Her daddy is on bass. Brother plays guitar.

She doesn’t do the American Idol act—no vocal gymnastics, no hair flinging. This girl sings Patsy Cline with her eyes closed.

A loudmouth in the crowd makes a gross remark. Her daddy stops playing. A man who weighs as much as a Pontiac bounces the would-be rowdy.

I’ve never visited this place before, but I’ve been to hundreds like it. There’s a spot like this on every American rural route. A glowing sign. Trucks parked around a cinderblock building. Broken cigarette machines.

My fellow Baptists hate this kind of den. But it's a good place to find honest lyrics.

The guitarist speaks into the mic, he calls the bartender to the stage. The crowd of mostly men cheer.

The bartender is a bottle-blonde, early-fifties, pink T-shirt. She’s got a dry voice that sounds like Virginia Slims.

She waited on me earlier. She had the bottle-cap off before I finished saying, "Budweiser." She said her name, but I couldn't

hear over the noise.

The two-man band plays something slow. Her voice is older than the brunette's, but she sings with more conviction.

“In the Sweet By and By,” is her first number. Then, “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

By now, men have placed bottles on flat surfaces. We’re at the Meeting House.

She finishes with “Old Rugged Cross.” And if there’s a dry eye in the county, it’s probably made of glass.

She’s behind the bar again, refilling peanuts, dumping ashtrays. I tell her how much her singing moved me.

All she says is: “Thanks, hun.”

I press my luck and ask where she learned to testify like that.

She laughs. “My dad was a traveling minister. My whole family sang. We went from church to church, it’s how we survived.”

They sang four-part harmony…

Hospice nurses work like dogs. But then, this woman has never been a stranger to work.

She's got strong eyes and wrinkles. Before she landed this gig, she was a hotel maid, raising two children. It was a tough life, but her kids ate.

Then her mother got sick.

“I sat with Mama every day at the end,” she said. “Our hospice nurse was off-the-chain awesome. If not for her, I don’t know how I woulda gotten through."

Her mother died in the morning. It was raining. The world turns ugly when people die.

That afternoon, she sifted through her mother's belongings. She found her mother’s framed high-school diploma. The glass was broken.

“That’s when it hit me,” she said. “Mama always wanted me to go to college. You know, have the opportunities she never had. Well hell, I never could. We'd always been so poor."

Well hell.

Anyway, she hadn't always been a hotel maid. At eighteen, she'd fallen into the role of a wife. He was a pipe-fitter. She gave him two kids and hamburger steaks

over rice each night. Things weren't great, but they were okay.

One day, he didn't come home. He sent his girlfriend to collect his things. There was a fight. Cops were involved.

She moved in with her mother, she looked for jobs in the newspaper. After a few years of making hotel beds, they were almost a happy family. Almost.

Then her mother’s diagnosis.

"It felt like my life was over," she said. "I was like, 'God, how much more $%#* can you throw at me?'"

So she threw it right back where it came from.

She enrolled in community college. She applied for student aid. She worked full-time, studied. She managed to keep everyone fed.

Her seventeen-year-old son contributed toward rent, her thirteen-year-old daughter cooked. At night, she helped the kids do homework. And when she opened nursing textbooks, they helped…