God bless the Great Smoky Mountains, so majestic their beauty could kill you. God bless the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevadas at sundown.

The same goes for the Tetons, the Blue Ridge, the Bighorns, the Elks, the Adirondacks, and the Appalachians, which were carved by the pocketknife of God.

And the Missouri River, seen from 34,000 feet above, moving like liquid silver across a green patchwork. The Mississippi, the Rio Grande, the meandering Columbia, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, the Colorado.

God bless the Gulf of Mexico at dusk. The Chesapeake Bay. God bless the geese overhead, on any Great Lake. Or any body of water for that matter.

And Ellis Island. If you visit Ellis, you begin to visualize the hundreds of thousands of congregated souls, dressed in drab rags, holding tight to their entire lives, crammed into duffle bags.

And it all makes sense, why your old man was such a tightwad when it came to buying your Little League uniform.

And Savannah. On Oglethorpe Avenue, where

the home of Juliette Gordon Low stands. Low, a girl who was deaf in both ears, who founded a humble youth organization for girls in 1915. And although they were laughed at by high-society, these Girl Scouts would predate the American woman’s right to vote.

Mount Vernon, Virginia, overlooking the whitewater. And Moab, Utah, within the mysterious Arches National Park, where ancient remnants of time stand like archaic ruins.

God bless each Waffle House, where many of the waitresses just seem to know how to make you smile.

Bless the south rim of the Grand Canyon, staring at an itty-bitty, mercury-like river, miles beneath you, just before a 12-year-old tourist almost knocks you over the edge because he is playing tag with his sister.

And the serenity of the Great Plains of Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The remains of North…

The cardboard sign on the highway said “Hot Bulled Pee-Nuts.”

I pulled over out of pure instinct. For there are few things I love more than a pee-nut that has been properly bulled.

I parked. I stepped out of my truck and walked toward the smell of steaming Cajun spices. The man boiling peanuts was older, seated beneath an Auburn University tent.

He was dressed in Levis and square-toes. He wore a belt buckle the size of a hubcap. He used a canoe paddle to stir a kettle seated atop a roaring blue propane flame.

Beside him was a 50-pound bag of Sam’s Club salt. He removed handfuls of salt and tossed them into the boiling water like fairy dust. Then he licked his fingers for show.

And the line grew longer.

Soon, there were six of us standing there, on the side of a rural Alabamian highway at noon. We were sweating in the violent heat until our clothes were translucent and our hair was matted.

“He does good peanuts,” said a guy in line.

The man looked as though he had come directly from work. He wore a necktie. His shoes cost more than my truck.

“They’re worth it,” said another woman balancing a baby on her hip. “My husband says his spicy peanuts are the best he’s ever had.”

So we waited. And waited.

And waited.

Now and then the old man would remove a hot goober pea, crack it open, and sample it. Then he’d spit it out, shake his head, and announce that they weren’t ready yet.

A few kids on BMX bikes showed up. They ditched their cycles and joined the line. And we became 8.

Then a truck with Florida tags stopped. A man and his wife got out and assumed a place in line. And then we were 11.

“First time I ever had a boiled peanut,” said a guy in line,…

Four guys. Four ordinary guys. Our band arrived at the Oxford Performing Arts Center theater early for soundcheck.

The theater production crew was waiting for us. The soundmen were huddled onstage for a pre-show briefing. The ushers were looking over seating charts. The ladies in the ticket booth were smiling. The beverage vendors were icing down the Mick Ultra.

The first band members to arrive were me and Aaron. We arrived in a 20-year-old Ford. Our instruments, in the bed of the truck.

We must have looked like quite a pair. I wore flip flops, carried a banjo, and a plastic tumbler of iced tea. Aaron carried a fiddle and a spit cup.

We knocked on the backstage door. The stage manager gave us an appraising look and said, “You sure you two are in the right place?”

“Yessir,” I replied.

Aaron spit.

The rest of our little band arrived. We had a guitar (GEE-tarr), an upright bass (doghouse fiddle), a violin (fiddle), and a five-string banjo (birth control).

We all played around a single microphone,

like they did in the old days. Four guys. Four painfully average middle-aged males.

Four guys, having a good time. Four guys who—hard as this is to believe—played at the Grand Ole Opry together.

Four regular guys who once congregated in an Opry dressing room, a few doors down from Ricky Skaggs and the boys, and kept saying things to each other like, “Are you nervous? Because I’m not.”

Four guys with families from wide-spot-in-the-road townships. Towns with names like Chelsea, Slocomb, and Freeport. Four normal guys, four dads and uncles, four guys with mortgages, guys who never quite figured out how to operate the revolving door in their Nashville hotel lobby.

Showtime.

We took the stage in Oxford. Aaron and I played twin fiddles. Each man took a solo by stepping toward the old-fashioned microphone.

When any man played particularly well, we all…

Fourteen-year-old Hayden from Maryland, sent me a letter asking what my favorite food is. Hayden says that her personal favorite food is apple pie with melted cheese on top.

All I can say is: Hayden, you can enjoy that pie all by yourself. Because I’d rather lick a mule between the ears than put cheese on apple pie. But then, who am I to judge? Someone wise once said: “Just because we can’t agree doesn’t mean that you’re not a complete wacko.”

Anyway, to answer your question, Hayden, my all-time favorite foods have changed over the years. When I was a baby, my mother said that I would eat entire blocks of cheddar while in my high chair. My mother, who thought it was adorable to see a child gnawing on a brick of cheese, would take photographs of me, thereby documenting the origins of my longtime childhood weight problem. But I eventually grew out of the cheese fascination and I moved onto:

Mashed potatoes.

The women in my family make

delicious mashed potatoes using an ancient family recipe:

—1 potato.
—80 sticks of butter.
—Accidental bits of cigarette ash.

Also, my mother did not whip her potatoes with electric mixers like the pagans. She had an actual hand masher, covered in rust so that it looked like a tiny tetanus-covered farm implement. I would always lick the masher when she finished. This explains a lot of my developmental problems.

Also, I love collards. And the only way to cook greens is with the ugliest, most deformed ham hock knuckle you can find.

And, bacon. I do not believe that all bacon is created equal. The bacon I like is the hand-cut kind your granddaddy would spend his hard earned money on.

Let the record show that I also love fried chicken. Throughout certain periods of my life, this food was the only reason why I remained a…

“Hi, Sean…” the letter began—people are always calling me that. “...I just read your article in the newspaper about angels!

“No offense, but I laughed the whole way through. I wasn’t laughing with you, I was laughing AT you! I cannot believe in the 21st Century, humans still believe in angels. It’s stupid. I’ll take my answer off the air.”

I love it when people say “no offense.” It’s a lot like when the doctor flicks his syringe and says, “You won’t feel a thing.”

The truth is, friend, I used to doubt the existence of angels, too. But then I realized I was in the minority.

Did you know that nearly eight out of every 10 Americans believe in angels? For the math challenged, that’s a whole dang lot of people. When it comes to global figures, seven out of 10 humans believe in angels.

This is remarkable when you figure that only 33 percent of humans classify themselves as Christian; 10 percent are Protestant, and only 3 percent call themselves SEC

fans.

What I’m getting at is that more humans agree on the existence of angels than they do on any other topic, with the exception of their mutual hatred of Miracle Whip.

I know this is true from first hand experience. When I started writing this column, about a decade ago, I was much more handsome, and my metabolism was like a hummingbird’s.

But also, back then I was on the fence about angels. This all changed when I wrote my first column about the supernatural, based on stories sent in by readers.

After the column ran in our local paper, my inbox was flooded with angel stories. The stories have kept coming in from all over the U.S. Just this week, I have received nearly 40 stories on angels. They have come from people all over. Including Canada.

For example, I received a story from Francis,…

It’s the last day of vacation. You can tell a little girl has been here. All you have to do is look around, the little lake cabin is covered in kid stuff.

There are tiny wet swimsuits, draped over chairs. Wet beach towels, over each bannister, each sofa, and hanging from the chandelier.

Enough floaty pool noodles to span the equator.

Dead Gatorade bottles. An army of crushed water bottles, half empty—or half full, as it were.

Popsicle sticks, stained blue and orange, fallen in the line of duty, adhered to the countertop.

An empty pimento cheese container, with houseflies socializing on the rim. A jar of pickles with no pickles in it.

An abandoned smartphone, in a girlie purple case, sitting in the middle of the den. Random toys, scattered.

Board games, stored beneath the coffee table, apparently put away in haste, with Monopoly money poking from the box lids. A lonesome pair of dice on the floor, just waiting to break someone’s C4 and C5.

And oh, the shoes. We’ve got shoes. Tiny

girl-sandals beside the doorway, with slightly elevated heels. Water shoes, with bits of lake moss clinging to the soles. Tennis shoes with sweaty socks stuffed inside. And a host of other specialty shoes for females. There is probably a pair of shoes specifically designed for checking the mail.

A sunhat, soaking wet, hanging by its chinstrap over a barstool. Six different kinds of sunscreen on the kitchen counter. Count them. Six.

The labels say the sunscreens are “100% vegan.” I shudder to think of how many innocent vegans had to die to make this sunscreen.

Hair brushes galore. Heaven only knows why anyone would need more than one.

Tiny bottles of smell-good stuff, littering the bathroom vanity. Lotions, moisturizers, sunburn creams, ointments, and at least four products featuring aloe.

A conditioner bottle in the shower, which claims to smell like strawberry milkshake. Special lotions, scented…

“There’s a bug on my leg!” said Becca.

“There’s no bug on your leg,” I said confidently.

“Are you SURE?”

“Absotively,” I said.

My 12-year-old goddaughter, Becca, and I were on the shores of Lake Martin. I was unloading groceries into an old cabin.

Becca had used her white cane to navigate into the yard while I unloaded. She was wearing her swimsuit, standing in the grass, listening to nature.

I was certain there were no bugs on her because there are NEVER bugs on Becca, although she is always insisting there are.

Becca does not like bugs. She is more afraid of bugs than, say, the threat of nuclear war.

She is constantly searching for invisible bug life on her person; perpetually feeling herself with both hands; occasionally freaking out whenever she happens to detect, for example, a raised freckle.

“There is DEFINITELY a bug on my leg.”

The stupidity of Becca’s godfather is staggering. Because when I inspected Becca’s legs, there was a bug.

Actually, there was more than just “a bug.” There were maybe millions of ants swarming

her legs. She was standing atop an anthill.

Becca’s calves were covered in tiny black dots. The ants were crawling up her thighs, burrowing into her shoes. There were ants all the way up to her waist.

And so it was, the middle-aged man, who has never had a child of his own, who has no earthly clue what it means to be parental, who still watches “SpongeBob SquarePants” and eats red-white-and-blue popsicles, started swatting the child’s legs with a towel.

I removed her shoes and socks and brushed the ants away. Soon, Becca was free of bugs, but a million ants had found their way onto the middle-aged fool.

Throngs of ants were crawling on my arms and hands and neck and armpits and even—seriously—into my underwear. And they were the biting kind.

Becca sprang into full-blown rescue…

I picked her up at the meeting spot. She was waiting for me on the curb. White cane in her hand. Cute shirt. Tennis shoes. All her luggage.

She bid her mother goodbye. I helped my 12-year-old goddaughter, Becca, into the backseat. And we were on our way to get sunburns.

As I drove toward the lake, Becca had to sit in the backseat because I forgot to bring her car seat. And this particular 12-year-old is too short to legally sit in the front seat without one.

She is four-foot six. Although Becca is insistent to remind me that, with her shoes on, she is four-six and a quarter.

And anyway, it’s not called a “car seat.” The 12-year-old would be piqued if she heard me call it that.

Car seats are for babies. This is not a car seat. It is a “height adjustment apparatus,” which allows Becca to sit in the front seat, directly beside the motorist. Except that, in this case, she would probably not want to sit next to the

“motorist” because the driver happens to be a complete “schnoz-whistle” inasmuch as he forgot the “height adjustment apparatus.”

Together we drove along Highway 280 toward Lake Martin. The backseat was filled with mountains of lake toys. Floaty noodles, boogie boards, rafts, life jackets, blow-up stuff, and other cheap consumerist junkola.

Eventually, water-toy manufacturers will include complimentary waste baskets with their products so you can just throw away your purchase as soon as you unwrap it.

Becca sat nestled in a cubby hole made of groceries and luggage. The lake got closer.

“I’m so excited,” she said.

“Excited to swim in the lake?” I said.

“Well, yes. But I’m more excited because we’re together.”

I looked in the rear view mirror. There are times I wish Becca could see my eyes.

Recently, Becca underwent surgery to remove a portion of her ear, due to cancer. I…

It was a weekend. A lot of people were there. And by “a lot,” I mean folks were standing two or three deep.

It’s one of the most popular sites in D.C. Maybe the hottest spot in the whole town period. The tourist magazines don’t tell you this, but it’s true.

You can keep your trolley tours. Each year, about 5 million people visit 5 Henry Bacon Drive NW to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Otherwise known as The Wall.

They come in throngs. You see all kinds. Average suburban Midwesterners, Northern tourists and people with Florida tags, all doing vicious battle over precious parking spots.

People crawl out of trucks, SUVs, and rust-covered economy cars. Old men in battleship hats. Harley guys with military patches. School buses full of kids.

The first thing you’ll be greeted with are signs telling you to download the Wall tour mobile app. Which you’ll want to do. Because, chances are, if you’re here, you’re looking for a name on this Wall.

Last time I visited was six months ago. I was

in town for work. I toured in relative silence, reading the names of the fallen.

There, I met a guy who was praying at the wall. He was tall. Skin like mocha. Wearing a white clergyman’s collar. He was crossing himself.

Catholic, I was guessing. Maybe Episcopalian?

He was placing little pink flowers against the wall.

“Lot of people forget about the chaplains in the Vietnam War,” he said. “I come here to honor the chaplains. There are 58,000 engraved names on this wall. Sixteen are chaplains.”

He crossed himself then used his phone to locate the next name.

Meir Engel was the name. A Jewish chaplain who died at age 50.

“He must’ve been like a grandpa over there,” said my new friend, searching for the name. “Fifty years old, dealing with teenage soldiers. They were babies.”

The youngest serviceman to…

He was a man-kid. More man than kid. Coming down the escalator in North Carolina. Army uniform. Reverse flag on the shoulder. Peach fuzz haircut. Heavy green backpack slung over his shoulder.

The escalator was loaded with passengers, on our way to the baggage claim area where we would stand around for a few hours, waiting for our bags, which look just like everyone else’s bags, except that each bag is a slightly different shade of black.

We, the people on the escalator all wore the weary looks of airline travelers. You could just tell many of these people had been sitting on planes for the better part of a presidential administration.

Many of us had experienced flight delays. Delays which had begun somewhere during the Punic wars. One old man looked like he’d slept in his clothes since he was 12.

But the kid in U.S. uniform wore a smile. A big one. When the soldier got closer to the halfway point, a woman shouted.

“John!” she yelled.

She was youngish. Her voice reverberated throughout

the airport.

Beside the young woman were two little girls. Pigtails. Colorful T-shirts.

“Daddy!” said the girls.

The people on the escalator all seemed to know who these little girls were shouting at. And we all turned to look at the man in uniform who was pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Welcome home, Daddy!”

The first person to start applauding was a flight attendant. She was mid-forties. Toting a carry-on bag. A few people around her joined in. Airline captains. Businessmen. Columnists.

Applause is a strange thing. It spreads. It doesn’t take much to get people going. A few lone claps picked up some accompaniment. The noise level grew louder.

Soon, it sounded as if the entire baggage claim area were applauding.

When the young soldier reached ground level, he walked toward the young mother. He took the woman into his arms, along…