Once upon a time there were three little ants. The ants had an unusual home. They lived atop an elephant. 

Long ago the ants’ mother had reasoned that an elephant would be a wise place to lay eggs to keep them from danger. 

“No predators shall ever find my eggs on an elephant!” their mother thought. Their mother was also insane. 

And so it was, the ants grew up on the elephant. The little ants wandered hither and yonder, all over the mammoth body. They found scraps of food within the great animal’s hairs. They drank from droplets pooled on the beast’s immense back. When it was cold, they burrowed in the warm folds of the elephant’s wrinkles. 

One day, a ladybug hitched a ride on the elephant. The traveler was impressed with the ease of the ants’ lives compared to the tiresome lives of regular ants. 

The ladybug asked, “What is this marvelous creature you live upon?”

“Creature?” said the little ants. “What doth thou mean?” For ants always spoke in Middle English.  

“Why,” the

ladybug said, “this host whom thouest inhabit, who feeds thou, who keeps thou safe from spiders and birds who would devour thee?” 

The ants looked at themselves confusedly. They knew nothing of any such creature. 

And so it was, the ants resolved to discover the host upon which they resided. They searched the entire behemoth body for answers. 

Later, they reunited on the elephant’s ear. They conversed freely, unaware that the elephant could hear their voices.  

“The thing we live upon is a rock,” reasoned the first ant. “For it is strong and mighty. Alack, I cannot dig through its skin for it is impenetrable.” 

“Nay,” said the second. “This is no rock. We live within a forest. For I wandered the multitude of hairs and whiskers upon the crown of our host. The hairs must be trees.” 

“Both art wrong,” said the third.…

My sister and I sit cross-legged on the front porch, playing cards. I am losing. Not that this matters.

We are really into the game right now, slapping cards on the porch floor.

The sun is low. Random cars pass our neighborhood. The five o’clock train is singing in the faroff. A robin is building a nest in one of our hanging ferns, talking to herself while she works.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played cards. Not since the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The irony is, I used to play cards all the time.

There for a while, my mother and I would play casino almost every night. Or rummy. After my father died, we were big card players. Sometimes, my mother and I would play for hours without saying more than a few words. And once every 10 or 12 hands, I might even win.

My sister has never played casino before. So I teach her. It takes a few seconds

for her to fully grasp the rules well enough to thoroughly kick my aspirations.

Casino is one of the better card games out there. It’s quick. It’s all about numbers. It’s a card game my dad taught me. I don’t know why that matters.

I look at my sister sitting across from me. She looks like my dad. In fact, she has all my father’s best attributes and she doesn’t even know it.

His long, lean frame, and fast metabolism—she can eat an entire pizza and you will still see the veins in her abs. Whereas all I have to do is look at a single slice of ham and suddenly I look like a church deacon.

She has his laugh. My old man had a unique laugh. I liked to watch him laugh. His head would go back. His teeth would show. It was a full-body…

So, here’s your life.

You’re born into a good family. You’re a Roman citizen, back in the fifth century Britain. You wear a tunic. You’re a nice-looking guy. At least your mom thinks so.

You’re 16. One day, you’re hanging out, shooting the bull with friends, when a horde of thugs comes through your village, setting fire to houses, pillaging, and doing unspeakable things to townswomen.

The bad guys kidnap you. They put you on a boat. You’re below deck, in chains, bleeding, and you're crying. You’re junior-in-high-school age, not old enough to shave, you’ve probably never even been kissed. And, boom, now you’re a slave.

These evil men take you to their country, which the Romans call “Hibernia.” Although the locals call it “Éire Land.” The place is cloudy, very green, and the locals are in serious need of a qualified dental care professional.

You are sold on the auction block, naked, for a low price. Your master makes you a shepherd.

For years, you are homeless.

You sleep with animals. You eat with animals. You are always cold. You cry yourself to sleep each night.

It is here that you find God.

Then, when you’re 22, as your sheep are grazing near the seaside, you see some sailors. They speak a weird language. They seem like good guys so you beg them to take you home. Turns out, they aren’t good guys. THEY make you THEIR slave.

Anyway, somehow you escape. Years later, you finally make it back home. So now it’s time to rest. Relax. Maybe start a family of your own. But you just can’t.

How do you lead a normal life now? You’re scarred, battered, beaten, abused; you just can’t just go home and cut the grass.

Instead, you become a priest. And once you’re a legit priest, where do you beg your bishop…

It was a big storm. The television showed weather updates. The radar looked like red-and-yellow vomit.

“Find shelter!” the weather guy kept saying. “There’s a tornado on the ground in Calera!”

I texted my friend in Calera.

“You okay?” I texted.

“We’re good. But you should hear it outside. Pray.”

Pray, he said.

As I write this, 34 are dead across Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and Mississippi. Maybe more by the time you read my words.

Who knows how many are injured. Who knows how many are missing. Who knows how many are waiting to be found. Who knows how many hundreds of thousands are without power.

Pray.

Well, I have been praying. And I really mean that. As in: I have physically folded my hands, closed my eyes, said amen, and everything.

This might not sound like a big deal, saying a simple prayer. But for me, it is a big deal. Namely, because when I was younger I used to

tell people I’d pray for them and never actually do it.

“I’ll pray for you” was just something my people said.

It’s not that I didn’t feel compassion for others, I did. But this phrase was purely verbal reflex. The words popped out before you could call them back. You were just required to say them.

If you DIDN’T tell someone you were praying for them, you were a big fat jerk who was probably a communist and added sugar to your deviled eggs.

I can’t tell you how many people throughout my life I said I’d pray for, and yet I never even uttered a word on their behalf. Heaven only knows why I didn’t.

What was I so busy doing? It takes, what, a minute or two to say a sincere prayer? I’ve spent more time picking belly button lint.…

This is my fourth week with a flip phone. My “unintelligent” cellular phone is manufactured by Nokia, and the phone’s primary selling feature is that it sucks.

Service is spotty. The screen is the size of a Cheez-It. But there is one plus. The phone has an FM radio feature. You can listen to the radio, but only if you hold the phone to your ear like you’re making a call.

Oftentimes, my wife will find me with phone pressed against my ear, wearing an urgent look on my face, and she’ll ask in a whisper, “Who are you talking to?” Whereupon I’ll cover the mouthpiece and say, “I’m listening to talk radio.”

It is technically possible to send texts with this “dumb” phone, but this is such a painfully tedious process that, frankly, you’d be better off using Western Union.

Usually, texting is such a pain in the astronomy that I end up calling the individual. Which sometimes takes people by surprise. Apparently voice calls aren’t common anymore, inasmuch as whenever

I call someone people assume something is wrong.

“Omigod,” the person will answer the phone. “Is everything okay?”

“Sorry, my phone won’t text. Surely you don’t mind me calling.”

“Not at all. And don’t call me Shirley.”

Of course, this is only a sample conversation provided someone actually ANSWERS their phone. Which they usually don’t. Probably because whenever I call they don’t know it’s me. This is due to the fact that my name now shows up on caller ID as “Rene Birdfield.”

I don’t know who Rene Birdfield is. I don’t know if she is a real person. But somehow ever since switching phones my service provider has transitioned to identifying me as Rene.

The following is a verbatim transcript of an actual phone conversation with our plumber:

ME: Hi, I was calling about our appointment to look at…

Anna and her four young daughters were on a trip to England on the SS Ville du Havre. It was a French steamship. All iron. Built like a tank. Except, of course, tanks weren’t around yet. This was 1873. 

The girls were excited to be on a ship. They were running on deck, playing TAG in the companionways, seeing what happened when they spit overboard at high altitude. 

The ship was loaded deep with mostly first-class passengers. It was November, the weather was cold. Everyone was wearing coats and mittens. 

They were bound for Havre de Grâce, Seine-Inférieure, France. Anna and her daughters were Americans, on their way to England to help with church revivals. 

In a few days, the Havre was midway across the icy Atlantic when the ship collided with a Scottish clipper vessel. The collision was so loud, it sounded like an explosion. People were thrown from their beds. Some were injured. 

Within seconds, the ship had taken on major water. Third class was already evacuated from below deck.

People were screaming. Children crying. Some were panicking and jumping overboard. 

The crew was furiously trying to deploy lifeboats, but it was all happening too fast. The ship was tilted upright, you had to fight against gravity just to move around. 

Anna hurriedly brought her four children to the foredeck. She knelt there with her children and prayed that God would spare them, or to help them endure whatever awaited them. The girls were sobbing. “I’m so scared, Mama.” 

Twelve minutes later, while they were still on their knees praying, the Ville du Harve plunged beneath the Atlantic; 226 passengers died. Including all four of Anna’s children.

Just before daybreak, a sailor rowing a small skiff located Anna floating on a piece of the wreckage. She was still alive. But barely. She was almost catatonic. 

Nine days later, Anna was in Wales, where she wired her husband in…

He was a good kid. You could just tell.

He was maybe 11. Twelve at the most. He was in the supermarket. He had his little sister balanced on his hip. You don’t often see boys carrying toddlers out in public.

The kid was filling a shopping buggy. He was reaching for a bag of tortilla chips on the top shelf. I saw one of the older ladies in our aisle reach upward and remove a bag of Tostitos for him.

They were Tostitos Scoops. The greatest invention by the chip industry, and perhaps the finest human achievement of the last century with the possible exception of penicillin.

“Thanks,” the boy said.

His buggy was nearly full. He had lots of adultish items in his basket. Coffee. Vegetables. Diapers.

The older lady asked where the boy’s mother was. She asked this in a concerned, parental tone. Her concern, of course, is understandable in our modern day. You don’t often see kids wandering around by themselves anymore.

During my youth, however, shortly after the close of World War I, kids almost never had parental supervision.

We walked to school. Our mothers sent us to the store on errands. We hung out at the mall without supervision. We rode bikes into the woods, built campfires, constructed deathtrap treehouses, and made serious attempts at discovering new ways to break our own legs. We were feral.

“Where are your parents?” said the older woman.

“My mom’s waiting in the car,” he said.

The woman’s brow furrowed. “She let you come in here by YOURSELF?”

He nodded, then readjusted Little Sister on his hip. Little Sister had a snot bubble the size of a Canadian territory.

“You’re GROCERY shopping?” the woman said.

Nod.

The lady was aghast. She wore the patented look of disapproval. “You shouldn’t be in here without an…

“Dear Sean,” the letter began, “there’s a dog in my neighborhood who was lost and followed me home.

“We think he is an Irish Setter. Mom says I can have him but that I should ask you because its a lot of responsibility for a 10-year-old to have a dog.”

The letter was signed Ellen.

Dear Ellen, first off, your mother is right. Having a dog is a huge responsibility. I should know. I have three huge responsibilities.

My dogs are: Thelma Lou (bloodhound) and Otis Campbell (alleged Labrador). My third dog is Marigold, the blind coonhound who is 60 pounds. They are all curled at my feet right now as I write this column.

A typical day with dogs goes like this: You wake up. You feed your dogs. Then you let them all outside to go pee. Then you let them back inside. Then outside again. Then in. Out. In.

After which you will attempt to go about your day. You will get maybe 3 minutes into

your work routine before there is a violent scratching at your back door, which is the sound of a 90-pound responsibility alerting you that you need to open the door and let your responsibility out to go pee again.

So, even though there is a doggy door installed in this door, a door which took roughly eight hours to install because the instructions were printed in French, Swahili, and Pig Latin, your dog still wants YOU to open the door because, by in large, some dogs have the intelligence of—I am not being negative here—Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

This scratching will not stop until you open the door. The scratching never stops. After they bury you, you will hear scratching on your tombstone.

Dogs can be strange creatures. One of my dogs, for example, loves cattle bones. So we give her lots of cattle femurs which can be purchased from your local…

In a few weeks my wife and I will be walking 500 miles unless we die before we finish.

We will be walking the Camino de Santiago, a medieval religious pathway across Spain. We will be on foot. With backpacks. And we shall not be called “hikers,” but in the ancient Spanish tongue: “Locos Americanos con mochilas.”

The preparations are underway. Jamie and I have been walking A LOT lately.

We must walk. Got to get in shape. Because in Spain, we will be walking 14 miles per day in hopes of finishing the route before my 103rd birthday.

We have been training every day. A lot of people see me trudging along in downtown Birmingham, wearing a large backpack, wearing a general countenance of misery, standing on a street corner, waiting for a red light, and these people usually give me pocket change.

The most common question I am asked is, “Why?” People want to know why two middle-aged taxpayers are

spending their hard earned cash to travel to Spain for the privilege of living like homeless persons for upwards of two months.

The answer is simple. Because my wife said so.

No, I’m only kidding! (Sort of!) The honest answer is—and this is the truth—I can’t put my finger on why.

What I CAN put my finger on is that I am the same age my father was when he died. And this has really affected me this year.

My dad was a good man whose life was half lived. He was a responsible homeowner, a hard worker, and he diligently changed the oil every 11 miles. But I never saw him live. Really live. I never saw him take care of his own human spirit.

And so the main reason I am walking the Camino, and I don’t mean to reach for melodrama here, is to find…

Last night our band played historical music.

We were in a small theater. I played fife. The snare played military cadences. My friend and boyhood idol, Bobby Horton, was beside me. He was dazzling the crowd by playing all the music he recorded for the Ken Burns documentaries.

We selected songs from the American Revolution. “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Irishman’s Epistle.”

The lyrics were antiquated. The melodies, ancient. But the meaning came through.

These were songs colonist soldiers would have played during the heat of battle. The tunes the fife and drummer would have been playing as their brothers were falling.

I told stories between songs. Stories from history. Tales you might have heard in Valley Forge, and Lexington, or Fort Ticonderoga. Then we all sang melodies you would have heard in colonial taverns. In colonist living rooms.

I was having fun on that stage, yes. But meanwhile, deep inside, I was feeling something. Something I have never

felt before.

It was a deep-in-the-bone feeling. A sensation in my gut that swept over me. Like warm water.

The feeling was connectedness. With people I’ve never met. With colonists. With my ancestors. Whose names I don’t know. Whose biographies were never written.

I felt kinship with bygone farmers, coopers, woodrights, cabinetmakers, brickmakers, tailors, bookbinders, joiners, and millers who came before me. Men and women and children, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder against the madness of King George.

Thirteen colonies who should not have had a chance in hell at winning a war waged against the greatest military in the world.

And for a few moments, I was sort of on that battlefield. I was one of the teenagers, marching into a hornet’s nest, alongside my fellow villagers.

I was standing alongside ghosts. Minute men. Common men. And I could see that these people were not fables. They…