There I am, watching him. He sits on the steps of the Shell Station. A backpack beside him. His skin is rawhide. His beard is white.

His name is Buck. He’s from North Carolina. He says he completed two tours in Vietnam.

He’s not here begging, he’s resting his feet.

“My old feet hurt more’n they used to,” says Buck. “Hard getting old, buddy.”

There is a half-smoked cigar next to him. He dug this used cigar from an ashtray. It still has life in it, he says.

He’s sipping coffee.

“First cup’a joe I had in a week. Fella gave me a quarter a few minutes ago. Piled my coins together to buy me a cup.”

A quarter.

When Buck went inside to buy it, there were only cold dregs left in the pot. He asked the cashier if it were possible to brew a fresh pot. She told him to get lost.

“But I’m paying for it,” he insisted.

She escorted him to the door.

So, he’s drinking dregs for which he paid full price—for which he is grateful.

There are holes in his shoes. He

found these sneakers in a sporting-good-store dumpster. Buck estimates he’s put nearly eight hundred miles on them. Who knows if he’s exaggerating or not. Buck has a flare for the dramatic.

Still, his bloody toes poke through the fronts. His middle toenail is missing.

Buck explains, “God says, ‘Don’t worry what you’ll eat, drink, or wear.’ And I believe it. But it’s hard sometimes. ‘Specially when you ain’t eaten and you don’t have [cussword] to wear.”

So I walk inside the gas station on a mission. I ask the aforementioned cashier to brew a fresh pot of coffee—I tell her it’s for me. I am very polite about it.

She smiles and says, “Sure, sweetie.”

Ain’t she sweet.

I buy a hot cup, an armful of snacks, and a pack of Swisher…

I’d say the biggest problem facing this country is typos. Typos are cropping up everywhere. In advertisements, in emails, and even within the very words your reading now.

The main reason for this is your phone, which thinks it’s smarter than you. Your phone will automatically correct your text without your consent.

As a writer, typos deeply affect my life. Whenever an error is found in this column, I usually learn about it in the form of irate emails, direct messages, and ransom notes.

I received one such email this morning, which read, verbatim: “...It’s unprofessional for your article’s title to contain such a glaring typo. Franky, I cannot believe this happened.”

I can only assume that I am “Franky.” Which means this emailer was name-calling. Which, honestly, is something I will not Stan for.

Americans make billions of typos every minute. And that’s not an exaggeration. On average, Americans send 250 million texts per hour. Over 60 percent of our texts contain serious topography eros.

You can also find major-league typos in most printed material that

is around you.

One such typo I will never forget occurred when a public library advertised a summer reading program. The billboard used the library’s catchy slogan, which read: “This summer, it’s time to go pubic.”

Talk about a nightmare for pubic relations.

Another consequential typo happened within a eulogy my cousin wrote. This was published in the printed order-of-service handout. The eulogy began: “Charles will always remain my deadest friend.”

Do you want to know why there are so many typos in written content these days? Do you want to KNOW why typos are occurring in major published works more than ever before in history?

Autocorrect, baby.

See, long ago if you wrote something, say, on a typewriter, whenever you made a mistake you were usually aware of it. You’d just correct the mistake later.

But then, autocorrect came along, instantly altering…

Approximately 5,000 US movie theaters have closed in the last five years. Which is about 1,000 theater closures per year. More theaters are predicted to close.

People just aren’t going to the movies anymore.

“The biggest competitor we have is not Netflix…” says the CEO of AMC Theaters. “It’s the couch. People have simply decided they don’t want to leave their homes as much as they used to.”

I personally mourn the loss of movie theaters. There was a time when the average American teenager attended a few movies per week. I was one such teen.

The movie theater was where your whole life happened. The theater was where you socialized. The theater was where you hung out. The theater was sacred.

In those days, however, the theater wasn’t a temple of silence, but a loud, sticky-floored cathedral where we threw Milk Duds at our friends. And, most importantly, the theater was where you got to first base with Rachel Billings.

I remember sitting through a feature film with Rachel Billings beside me.

I pretended to yawn, casually draping my left arm over her shoulder, only to discover that Rachel had always considered us “just friends.”

Sadly, those days are gone. Today there are millions of teenagers who have never even visited a theater. There are even more teens who have never even heard of Rachel Billings.

Today we have streaming services. Today we have trillions of shows being produced every hour by Hollywood.

And yet, here’s the funny thing: Current stats show that most young people are unable to even watch a single movie all the way through.

In a recent study, 60 percent of teens admitted to playing on their phones while watching movies, usually losing interest within the first 10 minutes. The average digital attention span for teens has dropped to roughly 4.2 seconds.

Other things we are losing:

Sedans. This year, Chevrolet will cease production of…

Here is the news that didn’t make the front page this week, but should have:

—Researchers have grown tiny organs from stem cells, then used these cells to test a new form of therapy for regenerating injured spinal cords. The cells were then treated with a new therapy, called “dancing molecules.” Amazingly, it worked. The therapy successfully reversed paralysis in an animal study.

This was a major breakthrough, and perhaps a big step toward healing spinal cord injuries

—In China, scientists discovered a groundbreaking technique for mass-producing cancer-fighting cells.

Researchers figured out how to engineer these powerful cells from cord blood and are now able to generate a massive output of cells specifically designed to hunt and destroy cancer.

—Polar bears in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago are getting fat. This is a good thing. Because being fatter means healthier. At least for polar bears.

Currently, polar bears are fatter than they have been in the last 30 years. In a recent study, 770 polar bears were in better condition and had higher

fat reserves than in the 1990s. In other good news, I also have higher fat reserves than I did in the ‘90s.

—Steven Maa lost his dog, Rocky. This happened in Summit County, Colorado, when Steven went skiing. He dropped his dog off with a pet sitter, but the dog broke out of his harness, escaped, and ran away.

Steven and his girlfriend looked for Rocky for hours before finally giving up. They called Summit Lost Pet Rescue for help.

The nonprofit’s volunteer team jumped into action. The team searched for Rocky using high-tech rescue techniques including wildlife cameras, a scent station, and whistling really loud. Rocky remained lost in subzero temperatures, in the extreme wilderness, for 43 days.

Last week, rescuers found Rocky sleeping in one of their traps. Rocky had gone from 50 pounds to 28 pounds.

“Amazingly he’s going to make a full recovery,” one rescuer…

JOHN—My angel story takes place when my wife was dying, and I watched everything go downhill in a matter of months. And every night, I would hear a voice tell me “You can get through this, John.”

On the night she died, I heard that voice again. And this time it was my wife’s voice saying, “John, I’m okay. Don’t quit believing.”

LYNN—When I was a young woman someone tried to attack me during a home invasion, but the man was never able to touch me. I screamed for help and something prevented the man’s hands from physically touching me, like he was paralyzed. I know it was an angel that saved me.

BARBARA—A few weeks after my husband’s death, in a fitful sleep state, I heard my husband’s words spoken gently: “Honey, remember Psalm 30:11.” Then the voice went away.

The first thing the next morning, I looked up the verse. I found these words:

“Thou has turned for me my mourning into dancing; thou has put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness.”

KATHY—It was 1977 and we had traveled from Alabama to North Dakota for my grandparents’ 50th anniversary. I had twin girls—a daughter, a son, and another son on the way.

On the day we were loading the car, after the reunion, my sister asked one of the twins (Angie) to tell us about a dream she had.

Angie said, “Angels from heaven came down and brought me to heaven and I saw Jesus.”

I worried about it all the way home and for quite a while after that. But the memory of my daughter’s dream eventually faded.

Flash forward to 1978, the girls were almost 7 years old. It was a sunny day, unseasonably warm, and the girls went to play outside with friends.

Suddenly, I had an overwhelming need to look out the window. It was as though the world was standing still.…