I don’t know if they have radios in heaven. But I hope they do. I hope the angels find one tomorrow night.

I hope they tune this radio to 650 AM WSM, Nashville. I hope they listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Start to finish. I hope my entire ancestry gathers around that little speaker. All my forebears. All my deceased relatives. Even the ones I don’t know.

I hope you’re listening, Granddaddy. After all, you were the family musician. The first musician I ever knew. The multi-instrumentalist who came back from a Second World War with an Italian fiddle in your rucksack.

You were the one who, as a skinny teenager, would sing on the gospel-hour radio shows, back during the Depression, howling into a microphone that looked like a snuff tin. You played piano, guitar, accordion, mandolin. I still have your fiddle.

And, dearest Granddaddy, I hope your mother is gathered around the radio, too. The same great-grandmother I never knew.

The woman with violent red hair, who was a young widow before age 40. Who lived on a desolate tenant farm, with four kids, one of whom had polio. The woman who, at times, worked the land herself until her hands bled.

She struggled to make ends meet by giving piano lessons to every child in that backwater town. She went without eating sometimes, so her children could have supper.

Sometimes I feel her spirit with me. I have felt this presence ever since childhood. I have felt a strong, redheaded musician. And this spirit is feminine. I don’t know how I know this. She’s watching over me. She loves me. I’m never alone.

I also hope my Uncle John is also listening on Saturday night.

Uncle John, the man who wore overalls every day of his adult life. The man who transformed cussing into a sophisticated artform.…

Joe came from a well-off family. They weren’t uber-rich, mind you. But they were comfortable. He grew up going to decent schools. He wore high-end clothes. He may or may not have worn monogrammed underwear.

When he turned 18, he was going to join the military like his dad, the officer, wanted. But there is a well known saying in the military, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken excrement.” We are who we are.

Joe just wasn’t the military type. He was creative, he wrote poetry, for crying out loud. So he went to college instead.

Turns out, the poet was a great student. And he realized something important during college: He liked teaching.

So he got a job as a private tutor. It was a fun gig. He taught the children of a good family, and life was shaping up nicely.

Things got even better when he met a girl. She was lovely. Charming. They became obsessed with each other, constantly annoying all those around them with PDA.

It wasn’t long before

they were engaged. Joe was probably happier than he’d ever been. They started planning the wedding.

Only days before the big event, there was an accident. It all happened so fast. His bride-to-be drowned. The accident happened right in front of Joe. His was the last face she saw.

Joe was catatonic. He had PTSD. Night terrors. He couldn’t stop seeing her face. His friends and family didn’t know whether he would ever get over her.

The worst part of it all, he often said, was the loneliness. Loneliness is the worst sensation in the human experience.

He finally left home for a fresh start. He took a job in a rural town with a tiny population. A town so small they the city-limits signs were nailed to the same post.

He lived in the sticks. He joined a church. Mostly, Joe kept to himself.…

DEAR SEAN:

I had an unexpected medical emergency that took me out of my job as a first responder. The month before, I found out my mother has cancer. Also, my car broke down. So I can't return to work, and my temporary disability pay hasn’t gone through.

I'm useless. It seems like the world just doesn't want me here anymore. What happens if I give up and send myself same-day shipping to God? Would it truly be a loss?

There's no more fight in me.

DEAR FIRST-RESPONDER:

Little Opie Taylor was dressed for school, finishing up a daily breakfast of eggs, bacon, pork sausage, hamsteak, cheese grits, biscuits with pepper gravy, toast with jam, cinnamon buns, oatmeal cookies, pancakes, whole-fat milk, tomato juice, grapefruit juice, fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice, and a subcutaneous injection of insulin.

He asked his aunt Bee for a nickel. Back in those days, you needed a nickel to buy milk at school. No big deal, Aunt Bee thinks. She gives him the nickel.

It turns out, Opie had

already GOTTEN a nickel from his dad, Sheriff Andy Taylor. Come to find out, Opie had been slyly bumming nickels from everyone. Something fishy was definitely up.

Andy tries to ask Ope about it before bed, but Opie pretends to be asleep to avoid the question.

So the next day, Deputy Barney Fife decides to find out what’s going on. Barney is your man when it comes to recon work.

Barney follows Ope and finds out that—gasp!—a schoolyard bully named Sheldon is extorting nickels from him by threatening the subsequent delivery of a grade-A knuckle sandwich to the face.

And so it is, every day, little Ope sorrowfully reaches into his pocket and hands over his milk money.

With me so far?

Homegrown tomatoes. I love them. All kinds. Heirlooms, beefsteaks, superstars, Better Boys, Burmese sours, Cherokee purples, double-Ds, you name it.

A tomato is a magical thing. A love story in nutritional form. A tomato connects you with real life in a way nothing else can.

I want them room temperature. Sliced thick. Salted and peppered. Or placed onto a slab of soft white Bunny Bread, coated with enough Duke’s mayonnaise to suffocate a small woodland creature. Eaten as a sandwich.

Also, chocolate. Love it. We went to Spain recently, and there is chocolate everywhere. They sell it at every tienda, mercado, and café. I even bought chocolate once at the police station.

Since being home, I’ve developed a crippling addiction to cocoa. I’m plowing through a bar of chocolate every day or so. My wife sincerely believes that I would be easy to kidnap because I take chocolate from strangers.

Likewise, I love my dogs. I have three. Thelma Lou (bloodhound), Otis Campbell (alleged Labrador), and Marigold (American coonhound). They are not well-behaved dogs,

mind you.

Whenever company comes over to our house, for example, within seconds our dogs have coerced them into throwing balls and playing tug-of-war with various chew toys that resemble deceased hamsters. After only minutes in our home, many of our visitors suddenly remember urgent dental appointments.

And I love water. Big bodies of water. I love the lake, the Gulf, the rivers, whatever. I need water in my life.

American music. The old stuff. Fiddle tunes. Folk ballads. Old school R&B, when bands still had horn sections. And classic country before grown men wore glitter jeans. Old hymns.

I’m crazy about hymns. They hold a power over me I cannot shake. Why don’t we write spiritual songs like this anymore?

Many of the historic…