The old preacher sipped his thermos of coffee, holding a fishing rod in the other hand. He asked what I wanted most in this life.

I stared at the lake surface and told him I wanted peace. I was young, I came from a broken home. Peace was all I wanted.

“What does peace look like to you?” the clergyman asked, casting his line.

I shrugged. “Someday,” I said. “I’d like to live on Lake Martin.”

He laughed. “You think this lake is peaceful, do you?”

Then he told me a story.

A hundred years ago, the powers that were gathered around a big boardroom table. Executives in three-piece linen suits, smoking great Havannas as long as your thigh, cheerfully commiserating about how hard it was to find good help these days.

A chairman banged a gavel. In a booming voice he said, “Come to order!”

The men sat straight and paid attention.

Then, the chairman explained that the Alabama Power company would construct a

dam. They would flood the Tallapoosa River valley, and use the river to generate power.

“Brilliant idea, old chap!” replied one supporter.

“Dam brilliant, old man!” said another.

Then they all patted each other on the back and went back to talking about their yachts.

The Cherokee Bluffs Dam would be 168 feet high, 2,000 feet long, with three Francis turbines, churning out electricity by the kilowatt hour, transforming the Twenty-Second State forever.

But there was a problem. There were towns in the valley. There was Benson, Irwinton, Kowaliga, Church Hill, and the lovely town of Susannah.

One board member waved his cigar and chuckled. “Don’t worry about the towns, gentlemen! We’ll just buy them out!”

“But these are farmers, sir,” explained another. “Farmers can’t be bought.”

The board members laughed so hard they choked on their smoke. This is America. Everything…

To the woman who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

The woman whose particular cancer, the doctor said, is the “bad kind.” Whatever the hell that means. Is there a “good kind” of breast cancer?

To the woman who had triple negative markers, which meant the chances of her cancer returning were high.

To the woman who had to look the doctors directly in their eyes, maintaining her composure, when they told her she needed a double mastectomy.

The same woman who has been undergoing chemo. Who has quarts of toxins coursing through her veins right now, killing her cells, both good cells and bad cells.

I’m talking about the woman who isn’t used to being The Patient. Who used to be so full of dutiful energy for helping others. Who would do anything for anyone. And did.

This heroic woman once made sacrifices for nearly everybody else. This woman once crawled out of bed each day and hit the floor running, living for the betterment of her people.

This same woman now has a

hard time getting off the sofa. She feels sickly, nauseated, and weak all the time.

I write this to the woman who used to occupy her waking hours doing busywork for others, who always put herself last. Who was happiest when she was functioning as a caregiver. Who was most comfortable serving someone else.

Whose purpose in life, arguably, was others. Who was a mainstay for her family. Who is, who has been, and who will forever be her clan’s touchstone.

The same woman who currently feels as though the universe has turned a blind eye toward her. Who feels—even though she might not admit this to herself—that God is indifferent to her. Who feels like God is being unfair. The same woman who might not even want to read His three-letter name right now.

That woman.

The woman who, over the span of her…

His dad was murdered. Just outside Tulsa. You probably never heard about it.

It was an average winter night out in the country. No snow. Cold as you-know-what.

Harry Aurandt and his buddy, Ike, had been rabbit hunting. They were hiking through thick underbrush, beneath the stars, bundled tightly in jackets. Cradling shotguns in their elbows.

They were cops. Off-duty tonight. In good moods. Cheerful. Cold. Worn out. Likely laughing about something as they walked together.

They were ready to go home and see their families. Harry, 47, had three kids and a wife waiting for him at home. Ike, 40, had two daughters.

When they reached their car, something was wrong.

In the middle distance, a Model 45 Buick sat parked by the side of the road, idling.

Four men stepped out of the car.

“Hello there!” said Harry, using his cop voice.

The four men were armed. It was a robbery.

Ike attempted to fire his

shotgun. But it misfired with a loud click. Then, all perdition broke loose.

The four gunmen opened fire. Ike was shot in the back. The bullet severed his spine. He would be paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Harry was shot at least three times. One bullet punctured his lungs. One pierced his liver. One hit his leg.

The gunmen left them to die.

Wintery frost gathered on the hood of their car. Harry and Ike were left slumped, riddled with gunshot wounds. Ike was out of it. Harry was slipping in and out of consciousness.

But Harry had just enough awareness to know that if he didn’t do something, they would both die out here.

He managed to get behind the wheel and drive one mile until he reached a lone farmhouse. He mustered enough fortitude to stagger onto the porch, beat on the…

My truck cab was filled with three barking dogs and one idiot. The dogs were in the backseat. The idiot was behind the wheel.

“Sit down!” the idiot kept saying.

But my dogs do not sit when I drive. They never sit. They dutifully explore their space when the vehicle is underway.

To the untrained eye my dogs appear to be acting disobediently. But that’s not it. Really, they are just looking for food.

They are always looking for food. They even look for food in places where there has never been any food, such as my bathroom. In a pinch, they will even resort to eating non-food items such as my reading glasses, my sandals, sheetrock, etc.

But they particularly go crazy when in my truck because they know the odds of finding abandoned food here are exponential. Thus, they are constantly on the lookout for expired Corn Nuts, old pistachio shells, or a petrified French fry predating the Reagan administration.

So we finally arrived at the dog park. I turned

them loose. They ran. They chased squirrels. They wrestled. They hunted around for any threatening or suspicious objects so they could sniff them, bark at them, then pee on them.

And then, basically, all the dogs in the dog park just stood around. That’s all the dogs do there. They play for short bursts, then they stand around and look at their owners.

“Why do dogs just stand around at dog parks?” one dog owner asked the group of us dog owners who were also, as it happens, just standing around.

Another dog owner said, “I drove forty-five minutes to get here, just so my dog could stand around.”

One of the other dog owners remarked, “You ever wonder what would happen if dog and human roles were reversed? What if DOGS took US to human parks? Would we go to the bathroom in front of each other?”

The old woman sits on a roller-walker, parked outside the Birmingham supermarket. Her hair is white. Her sweater jacket, pulled tight. Her shoes, Velcro.

Shoppers hurriedly march past her, in and out, like busy soldier ants. Always doing, doing, doing. Rarely stopping to see what we’ve actually done.

“My daughter’s inside shopping,” the old woman tells me. “You’d better not talk to me. Whenever my daughter sees me talking to strangers, she always says ‘Mama, quit bothering the man!’”

She is 94 years old.

“I may be 94,” she says. “But I have the body of a 93-year-old.”

Ninety-four years ago, the world was a different place. Birmingham would have been unrecognizable to modern eyes.

There was a Depression on. One in every four workers was unemployed. There were Hoovervilles all over town, makeshift shanty towns, tents and wooden sheds, perched on the slopes of Red Mountain.

School was a privilege, in 1932. Not a basic American right. Approximately 20,000 schools in America

were closing, due to lack of funds.

The average American income was $1,125 per year. A pound of bacon was a quarter. A dozen eggs cost $0.15. A loaf of bread, a nickel.

You cooked with coal or wood. Local families who couldn’t afford coal sent their children to wander Birmingham’s railroad tracks, searching for lumps of coal that had fallen from passing railcars.

“If you had no coal,” she says, “you ate cold food and you froze.”

The radio was the new American hearth. An escape from reality. Rudy Vallée. Bing Crosby. It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.

In ‘32, the first daytime network serial debuted on NBC: “Clara, Lu, ‘n’ Em.” The serials were melodramatic operas sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive “Super Suds” soap. Jack Benny also made his…

New research reports that, thanks to smartphones, kids are smarter today than their ancestors ever were. “Technology,” the article said, “is expanding the American IQ.”

Psychologist Steven Pinker says, “Progress is a fact... we are smarter, richer, and healthier than our ancestors. This is not a matter of optimism; it is a matter of looking at the data.”

The research went on to say that, by modern standards, an average American born in 1910 would have a modern-day IQ of around 67. Which is below the threshold for intellectual disability.

A hundred years ago, according to research, kids were stupid.

Which is absolutely true. Take my grandmother. Bless her heart. A hundred years ago, as a little girl, she would awake every wintery morning to build the family fire with kindling and newspaper. She did this without help. By herself.

What a low IQ.

Next, she would light a kerosene lantern before going outside to feed and water the animals and collect eggs in the henhouse. Pa gave her this

job when she was 7. She’d never missed a day of work, except when she had scarlet fever and diphtheria. What a dolt.

She was also responsible for gathering laundry on Fridays. During the wintertime, laundry hung on the line, frozen stiff. It froze your clothes into weirdly rigid shapes, but somehow, because of science, the cold air actually freeze-dried them. Then you collected the board-like clothing and hung them near the fire to soften. How stupid.

After a morning of chores, it was time for school. That’s when the real work began.

Firstly, the girl was responsible for her little brother and her sister on the walk. She was the oldest girl, which meant she was practically a second mother.

School was four miles away. So, not that far. Heck, she walked six miles just going to town. Seven miles whenever Mama sent her to the post office for…

In light of all the negative headlines, civil unrest, and the international political upheavals, I know many of you are anxious to know what I did for National Kiss a Ginger Day.

Or maybe you missed this particular holiday.

Truth be told, I had never heard of this specific hair pigmentation festivity until recently. I am a ginger, so when I learned of this special occasion I planned on celebrating by listening to Willie Nelson records and watching Carol Burnett reruns.

National Kiss a Ginger Day, however, turned out to be a disappointment. For starters, hardly anyone knows about this important holiday.

When I asked my wife, for example, if she knew what today was, she smiled and handed me a full trash bag.

“Garbage day,” she said.

I spent the rest of the morning breaking down cardboard boxes.

When the garbage truck arrived, as fate would have it, one of the sanitation workers happened to be a redhead. He was a large guy with a bushy orange beard, riding on the back bumper.

“Do you know

what today is?!” I called out.

He leapt off the truck, then spit. “Monday,” he replied.

“No,” said I.

Then I told him today was National Kiss a Ginger Day. The man grew silent. “Have a nice day, sir,” he said.

In the grocery store, I asked the cashier if she knew what today was. The woman shook her head and replied, “Should I?”

I said it was National Kiss a Ginger Day.

We just stood there staring at each other. I was waiting for her to make the first move. She looked me up and down, as though she were buying a horse.

“I have a sore throat,” she finally said.

The lady teller at the bank was also a redhead. I was thrilled. Actually, her hair was more auburn, but this definitely counts. I smiled at this woman and asked if…

When you’re having a bad day, think of her.

She was born in Agawam, Massachusetts. One year after the Civil War. The daughter of Irish immigrants.

They were poor. It’s hard to imagine how poor. Her mother routinely skipped supper to feed her three children. Her little brother was sickly. Her father was an alcoholic, and beat them.

When she was 5, she contracted a bacterial eye disease. She laid awake at night, with painful infections that made her nearly blind. At age 8, her mother died from consumption. At age 10, her father decided to abandon his three children.

The state split up the siblings. She and her younger brother were sent to an overcrowded orphanage-hospital and almshouse in Tewksbury. Her sister was sent to live with an aunt.

Tewksbury was more prison than orphanage. It was the stuff nightmares are made of. A place where inmates were sexually assaulted, where there were reports of cannibalism. The institution was inspected by the

state, time and again, but the powers that be always turned a blind eye.

Only a few months into their stay, her brother’s health deteriorated, and he died of tuberculosis.

And just like that, she was alone.

She slept in flea-infested bunks. She ate bad food. Orphanage workers often shaved little girls’ heads to keep the lice away.

Meantime, her vision kept getting worse. She underwent two eye operations that didn’t work.

Finally, her eyes got so bad they sent her to a hospital for more operations. Those didn’t work either.

While in the hospital, instead of being treated as a patient, she was made a lowly chambermaid.

She helped the nuns empty chamber pots, launder soiled sheets, and bandage open wounds. Orphans occupied the lowest rungs of society in those days. She was little more than a serf.

Her eyes worsened. The hospital…

I see her on the street. She is a hospice nurse. I know this because she is standing directly beside her company SUV, which is covered in vinyl logos, parked outside an older house.

She is mid-40s, wearing scrubs. And crying. Face-in-her-hands crying.

There are other people standing on the porch of the home behind her, they are crying, too. Everyone is sad.

It is a gray day. I am walking my dog. Well, actually, my dog walks me. Marigold (blind coonhound) pulls at the leash like a team of draft oxen. If I were riding a skateboard right now, we would already be in Northern Quebec.

I should leave this young nurse alone. I know this. When people cry, they really just want to be left alone. But I have too much of my mother in me to let anyone cry without sufficiently annoying them.

My dog and I stop walking. I ask if she is all right.

I know what her answer will be, of course. Everyone answers this question in the most politely dishonest

way possible. “Of course I’m alright,” most people would say. “I’m good,” people will say. It’s what society teaches us to say. Put on a brave face, lie through your teeth, and fake it till you shake it.

But she doesn’t do that. I suppose this woman has seen enough bereavement in her career to feel the need to apply proverbial lipstick to the proverbial pig.

She blows her nose loudly and speaks. “No, I’m not okay.” Then she laughs.

I don’t know what else to say, so I just sort of stand there. Feeling stupid. Wondering what kind of cuisine they eat in Kuujjuaq, Quebec.

“Sometimes it just gets to you,” she explains.

Marigold is attracted to the woman’s voice. So Marigold drags me to the woman. Marigold has no manners.

The woman stoops and begins to stroke Marigold’s smooth, black, seal-like…

The annual World Happiness Report recently ranked the happiest countries in the world. The U.S. dropped to number 24, its lowest position in the report’s history.

“That gradual decline is… especially driven by people that are below 30,” says University of Oxford professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, editor of the report.

The report went on to say that, if you assess only Americans below 30, the U.S. wouldn’t even rank in the top 60 happiest countries.

So, what IS happiness? What’s the official American definition? Even our American dictionary is unclear.

The dictionary says happiness is “the state of being happy.” But if you look up “happy” in the same dictionary, it says: “a state of happiness.” The writers of our dictionary are evidently the same people who write the U.S. Tax Code.

So, for this column, I have consulted the happiness experts.

To learn more about happiness, I first travel to the happiest place on earth. Mayberry County, North Carolina.

I interview local sheriff, Justice

of the Peace, and civic-choir member, Andy Taylor. Sheriff Taylor says he believes happiness comes from generosity.

“I firmly believe,” says Taylor, “you can’t give something without feeling good; it’s just like lighting a candle with another candle—you’re spreading light.”

After our interview, I catch a plane bound for Canada’s smallest province. Once I reach the Garden Province, I interview local author and schoolteacher Anne Shirley.

Shirley knows about the struggle for happiness, she was raised in an orphanage in Hopetown, Nova Scotia, before moving to The Island as a girl.

That said, Anne is not currently "happy with my tardiness. Her infuriated face is even redder than her shock of red hair.

Finally, she calms down, and we start the interview.

“Happiness?” Anne begins. “It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly…