This house. I will never forget the first night my wife and I spent in this house. We were still newlyweds. We had just left our apartment. This place was our first real house. Ours. All ours.

We sat on a cold floor, watching a portable TV, we ate take-out Mexican food. We were on top of the world.

We've been gone a long time. I've missed it.

Some background information is in order here. A few years ago, we moved out of our place and started renting it out. We moved into a camper I bought off Craigslist.

I parked the trailer across the road, on our land, in a swamp. It was twenty-eight feet long and smelled like a pot of collards.

We left our house because we were traveling a lot, due to my accidental career as a storyteller—if that’s what you’d call me. We were never in town. Our house often sat vacant while we gallivanted through the Southeast. So we rented it out.

I don't

know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

But anyway, back to the camper. It’s funny how you end up living a life opposite from the the one you always dreamed of. Growing up, one of my main dreams was to not go to prison.

Living in a camper feels like doing hard time in San Quentin.

Our living room was about the size of a gas chamber. And it smelled like one, too. I'm not kidding. Several times, our dog Otis (alleged Labrador) would leap onto our counters looking for food. His paws would flip the gas knobs to the propane stove. Nobody would notice.

One night, the trailer filled with noxious fumes while we slept. Early the next morning, I was dizzy. I awoke to find the ghost of Dale Earnhardt nosing through my refrigerator.

Dale greeted me. “Sean, wake up or…

The flag flies above the hardware store. There isn’t much of a breeze today. It moves with each gust, then becomes slack.

Flags hang from all sorts of places. They adorn bank buildings, supermarkets, schools, Kmarts, gas stations, beauty salons, auto shops, and libraries. There’s one on my front porch, too. I walk past it every day.

At the entrance to the hardware store, just beneath the flagpole, are Boy Scouts. I don’t exactly know what they’re doing. When I pass they look like they’re busy hard-selling a woman who’s buying some hanging ferns.

I walk through the store and get what I need—some screws, a replacement electrical breaker, and a half-inch drill bit. Then I check out.

My cashier wears a lapel pin on her vest that is a miniature American flag. Another pin bears the Army logo. Another is a mini POW/MIA flag.

“I like your pins,” I tell her.

“Thanks.”

“Military?”

“I just got outta the Army. I miss it. I wish I woulda stayed in. It’s hard going

back to this kinda life.”

She spent her formative years in the service, you could say. As a child, she knew she wanted to make it a career, ever since the first time she saw her father wear his dress-blues.

She was born on a military base. She was raised hearing the national anthem once per day over a loudspeaker. Her brother is Army. Her father is a veteran.

I thank her, and I tell her to thank her brother and father for me.

I step outside. The Boy Scouts ask if I need help to my truck. I don’t have anything but the one bag.

Then again, I write a column for a living. I’m always looking for things to write about. I hand them the bag.

One carries it. One follows.

I ask what they…

They are holding hands. I like it when young couples hold hands. I don’t see many kids do this very often anymore.

They are sitting on the same side of the booth. I like it when they do that, too.

This is why I loved the bench seats in old cars and trucks. God bless the bench seat. It’s extinct now. But before automobiles lost these long seats, young men and women would sit close when driving. They would love up against each other.

If ever my mother spotted a truck window in traffic with two heads leaning close, she would remark, “Aw, look. That girl’s holding him up so he can drive. Ain’t that sweet?”

It sure is. For a boy, there is nothing sweeter than the feeling of driving a truck with a pretty head resting on your shoulder.

The couple in the booth is somewhat of a rarity. They are not holding cellphones, they aren't texting. They are saying things in soft voices. And it’s great.

I came here this morning for breakfast, I brought

a newspaper with me. But I can't seem to read it. Not when I am people-watching in a classic American scene.

I flick open the newsprint. I watch the couple from the corner of my vision.

They talk to each other. She is your typical teenager—happy and rosy-cheeked. He is your basic high-school boy. Skinny, a little awkward, a touch of Norman Rockwell to him.

The waitress refills my coffee. I am grateful for hot Joe this morning. I didn’t sleep well last night. The folks in the hotel room above me were having a jump rope competition that ran until the wee hours.

“Anything good in that paper?” the waitress asks, nodding to the front page.

“Not today.”

“Yeah, I can't read the news anymore, it’s too depressing, makes me sad.”

She's right. The newspaper is just one disaster after another…

SunTrust Park holds 41,500 people. There are even more than that here tonight.

The man taking tickets at the gate is all personality. He says, “Man, we sold out tonight, even our standing-room-only tickets went like hotcakes.”

The Atlanta Braves are playing their first home game of the season, and everyone in the South is here to greet them.

There is magic in baseball. I don’t know how, and I don’t care. Our ancestors played this game. Our daddies taught us to swing while we were in diapers. This magic is not make believe.

I meet Amy and Christopher in the mile-long ticket line. They’re from Dalton, Georgia.

"These tickets were his Christmas present," says Amy. "We're so ready for baseball."

"So ready," Christopher says.

That makes three of us.

My wife came to the game with me. She is not a baseball fan. Even so, after years of marriage, she knows how to keep score, and she knows the infield fly rule. I count this as progress. She knows about the magic here.

We find our seats.

In the row ahead of me is a man from Auburn. Early thirties. Father of three. His name is Darren, his kids are with him. His wife is playing on her phone.

His family wears Auburn University T-shirts with Braves caps.

Darren and I end up having a conversation during the game. This is what men do. We cannot wind our watches and chew bubble gum at the same time. But we can have an in-depth discussion during a baseball game and never miss a play.

My father was the same way. I remember when my father used to change the oil in our station wagon. The dull roar of a crowd would come from a Philco Radio. He would be listening.

“What’s the score?” I would always ask.

“Ain’t good,” he’d say. “Turn it off, I can’t bear to hear it.”

Atlanta—It’s late March. Overcast. Chilly. A lot of pollen dust in the air. My windshield looks like the trees have been committing immoral acts upon it.

The Braves have their first home game of the season tomorrow. The town is buzzing.

I owe this city a lot, but I’ve never figured out how to make good on what I owe. Atlanta and I have history.

When we first came here, I was a boy, and I wasn’t sure how I liked it. We stayed in my aunt’s house, in the county seat of Clayton County.

Back then, this place didn’t feel like a monstrosity. Not to me. It was like several small towns quilted together. And I grew to love its patchwork.

I remember going to Fulton County Stadium to see the Braves. In those days, the Braves were experts at losing. But it didn’t matter. A ballgame is its own reward.

I remember once, we were leaving the stadium, I stared through the windshield at a sea of taillights. I'd never seen so many vehicles in

one city before.

“Wow,” I said. “I’ve never seen that many cars.”

My cousin laughed at me and said, “Well, well, well, country come to town.”

I spent some summers in Atlanta, as a young man. It was here that I met a young lady who I thought was sweet on me. Our romance was a flash in the pan, we parted friends. She might read this, so I ought to mention her.

Hi.

As a grown man, I once drove through Atlanta rush-hour traffic with a forty-foot camper attached to my truck. The camper had dual axles and bad wheel bearings. I had white knuckles.

I heard a loud pop. The trailer swerved. I used an ugly word. Cars honked and sped around me. An eighteen wheeler almost ran me off the road.

I pulled over at a liquor store that…