Columbia, South Carolina—I stopped in the Capital City for food. I find a simple, no-frills chain-restaurant that is filled with cars.

I’ve been driving since morning. I’m not picky. A cold beer would be nice. Maybe a burger.

There’s a ten-minute wait. Even the bar is full.

So I wait outside. That’s when I see her. She is on the sidewalk. A small woman with white hair and rough skin. She wears a red T-shirt with the words: “Y’all Hush” on the front. She is smoking.

She tells me she’s waiting for the rest of her dinner party. But there’s a problem.

“My son had a flat tire,” she tells me. “God, I’m so worried. He is coming from Augusta.”

I can tell she’s nervous. She tries him on the phone, but he doesn’t answer.

“Oh,” she says. “I hope he’s okay. I’m worried ‘bout him.”

She lights another worrisome cigarette.

So I keep her company.

She tells me about her son and his two daughters—her beloved grandbabies. This brings a temporary

smile. For a moment, she’s not worried, but a granny.

Our conversation doesn’t go far. I ask basic questions. I’m just trying to keep her talking. Talking fights off worry, my mother always said. I’m not sure if this actually works, but it’s worth a shot.

I learn about her. She’s from Waynesboro, Georgia, originally. She got married when she was eighteen. Her boyfriend did the honorable thing and married her. But his honor only lasted three years.

He left her with one kid and a second on the way. She was a baby herself when he ran. She was young and scared. It was the classic sink-or-swim scenario.

She dog paddled.

“I worked hard all my life,” she says. “Didn’t never ask NOBODY for help. Taught my kids work hard too, and to be respectful…

Mount Airy, North Carolina—blue mountains in the distance. Rolling farmland. Picture-perfect downtown. The home of Andy Griffith is just like it always was. Small. Sweet.

I’m on a park bench, holding a bouquet of roses. I’m waiting for my one-on-one interview with the oldest surviving Andy Griffith Show cast member, Betty Lynn—better known as Barney’s girl, Thelma Lou.

An elderly woman is gardening beside me while I wait. Her hands are covered in soil. Her husband is with her. Shirley and Bob Perkins are in their eighties. They’ve lived here since the earth cooled.

I ask if they ever met Andy Griffith.

“Met him?” Shirley elbows her husband. “Why, Bob’s distant kin to Old Andy.”

I ask what “Old Andy” was like.

“Oh, he was exactly like on TV. Don’t listen to nobody who says otherwise.”

When our conversation ends, Shirley says, “Before you leave town, get a pork chop sandwich from Snappy Lunch, there’s always a long line, but it’s worth the wait.”

I’m escorted into the museum.

Ninety-one-year-old Betty Lynn rolls into the room in a wheelchair. Her hair is red, she sports a yellow blouse and yellow pocketbook. My heart sings.

I hand her the bouquet. She kisses my cheek. Yes. My cheek. My very own cheek. She kisses this. With her lips. I’ve had a crush on Thelma Lou since boyhood. Now that I’m with her, it’s gotten worse.

“Tell me about Andy,” I ask.

“Old Andy?” she says. “Those were the best years of my life. I still watch the show and laugh.”

Her personal story is a good one. She tells it, using a trademarked cheerful voice that is unaffected by age.

“Who woulda ever thought?” she goes on. “Little old me, the new face of Mayberry.”

She lets me ask a million questions until our interview ends. She kisses me again. I…

Spartanburg, South Carolina—morning. A hotel lobby. I am drinking complimentary coffee, eating a complimentary breakfast.

I have spent the past days on two-lane highways. I like small highways. I can’t do interstates because they are filled with amateur NASCAR drivers with deathwishes.

Interstate folks travel at lightning speeds. People like me weren’t built to do anything fast. We move slow.

For example: those last two paragraphs took me approximately nine days to write.

A woman walks into the hotel lobby. She’s wearing a T-shirt that reads: “Clemson University.” Her teenage son is with her. He wears cargo shorts, an orange hat, he has a prosthetic leg.

Soon, he and his mother are eating breakfast beside me. I’m typing on my laptop about interstates.

He initiates contact.

“What’re you writing?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answer. “I’m kinda hoping something will just come to me.”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“Maybe.”

“So you must be a writer and stuff?”

I shrug. The truth is, I’ve never been sure about what I

am. I’ve worn different hats, and called myself different things.

I hung drywall with a Mexican man named Jesús, I ran a deep-fryer in a kitchen, I mopped floors in a food court, I played piano in pathetic barrooms. And once when I was twenty-two, after a wild night in Southaven, I got ordained in Mississippi.

It was never meant to last.

“Well,” the boy says. “I’m a writer, too.”

I ask what he writes.

“Oh, stories about superheroes and stuff. Sometimes I write about hot girls.”

Here is a man who knows what he likes.

“Yeah,” he goes on. “I pretty much write about everything. I also write music. But mostly about superheroes and stuff.”

And stuff.

He started writing months after a horrific car accident. He doesn’t fill me in…

Athens, Georgia—I’m at a dive restaurant. The food isn’t fancy, but the beer is cold. I am starving. I’ve been on the road for two days, bound for North Carolina, I am depleted.

This place is slammed. I head to the bar.

Last night, I stopped to speak to a room full of Baptists. They were a tough crowd. They didn’t laugh, and they wouldn’t even clap when I sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

After the show, I was feeling low. To tell stories to a dead audience is like being buried alive in cat-litter-flavored Jell-O.

After the show, a boy approached me. He handed me a note that was folded like a paper football. He darted away without saying a word. I shoved it into my pocket and forgot all about it.

So, I’m sitting at the bar, twenty-four hours later, and I discover the paper in my pocket.

The kid had a lot to say in his note.

I won’t read you his letter, but

I will tell you that the kid is eleven. His mother is a waitress, a house painter, she runs the sound equipment at church, and cleans the sanctuary. Times are hard.

But he wanted me to know that he enjoyed my show—even though nobody at the First Church of the Frozen Chosen even cracked a smile.

He closed his letter by saying:

“...You did really good tonight, Mister Sean. You are loved.”

I folded the note and choked back alligator tears. It’s not every day a stranger says they love you.

Anyway, my bartender is an older woman. She is rushing to keep up with her workload. The men at the bar are impatient.

“Another, beer, honey,” one man says.

“I need mayo on this burger,” says another.

“Silverware? I need silverware!”

“Sweetie, I ordered an Ultra, not…

Early morning. I’m driving to North Carolina, to meet the oldest surviving cast member of the Andy Griffith Show, Miss Betty Lynn.

I’m so excited, my bladder is trembling.

As a boy, we lived in North Carolina, for a hot minute. The town was Mamers—if you can call it a town—and we lived with my aunt.

I don’t remember much about that period except that I watched so many Andy Griffith episodes I started seeing in black-and-white and using phrases from the show.

My favorite phrase: “You beat everything, Barney, you know that?”

Andy says this whenever he gets upset with Barn. This line is always followed by a mushroom cloud of laughter.

Once, my aunt and mother were sitting on the porch, counting cars, while I watched TV inside.

“Turn that television DOWN!” my aunt shouted.

So I hollered back, “Aw, you beat everything, you know that?”

Bad move.

My aunt has a statewide reputation for ripping the ear lobes off of boys who sass. When she swatted

my hindparts she yelled, “I’ll show you who beats everything, mister!”

I have other North Carolina stories. Once, my mother announced that she would be taking me to Mount Airy—the hometown of Andy Griffith. I was white-hot with excitement. I became so giddy, I started ice skating on my aunt’s linoleum kitchen floor.

Just when I was about to attempt a triple Axel jump, my socks slipped on the floor, and I slid into a gas heater. I ripped my calf muscle on jagged rusty metal.

A mess ensued. I’m talking blood everywhere. Carnage. Gore. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Members of the clergy, fainting.

When I saw my own blood, I screamed loud enough to lift the roof. Twenty stitches later, I never saw Andy Griffith’s hometown.

That’s all about to change this week.

I am plowing through…

Jacob was a foster child. He grew up in the Foster Pinball Machine. Birth to graduation. He was never adopted by a family.

He and I weren’t good friends, but we knew each other. I lost track of him at age fifteen. He moved away to a group home.

We got in touch a few years ago. I expected to learn he had a wife and kids, but that wasn’t the case. Jacob has animals.

Six dogs, three cats.

I don’t think Jacob would mind me saying that he marches to the beat of his own tuba.

He’s had little choice in the matter. His childhood was spent bouncing from family to family, looking after himself, remembering to eat regularly.

Today, he leads a good life. He’s a restaurant cook, he likes to hike, camp, and he’s had the same girlfriend for ten years.

I asked about all his animals.

“I dunno,” he said. “Just love animals.
Growing up, I was never allowed to have any.”

Jacob found his first dog after work one night. It was late. A stray black Lab was

sniffing trash cans behind a restaurant.

The dog bolted when it heard footsteps.

Jacob tried to coax it with food. The dog wasn’t interested. So, Jacob resorted to heavy artillery.

Raw ground beef.

He left an entire package on the pavement. The dog still wouldn’t come. Jacob gave up and crawled into his car to leave. Before he wheeled away, he glanced in his rear mirror.

The dog was eating a pound of sirloin in one bite.

“Started feeding him every day,” Jacob said. “I just wanted him to know somebody cared, that was it.”

For two months, Jacob cared. He fed the dog from a distance seven nights per week—even when he wasn’t working.

And on one fateful night, the old dog walked straight toward Jacob and had a seat.

“You shoulda seen how he…