There used to be a time when country music was music. It was an era when women named Patsy, Kitty, Loretta, Dolly, or June strummed guitars and broke your heart.

Tassels hung from sleeves, rhinestones adorned three-piece Nudie Cohn suits, boots were shiny, and cowboys didn’t wear latex pants.

Times have changed. Today, on my truck radio I heard a song on the country station entitled “Red SOLO Cup.”

The song goes:

“...a red SOLO cup is the best receptacle,
For barbecues, tailgates, fairs, and festivals,
You sir, do not have a pair of (male body parts),
If you prefer drinking from a GLASS…”

Do what?

This is what passes for country music? At the EXACT moment this song played—and this is the truth, so help me Hank—I was drinking iced tea from a glass jelly jar.

I come from a long line of men who drank almost exclusively from Mason jars. In fact, my uncle Tater would not drink from anything else. He drank tea, water, milk, corn, you name it. Always a glass jar.

Even if

Uncle Tater would’ve dined at a five-star restaurant, he would’ve asked the waiter to pour his Château Margaux in a jelly jar, then he would’ve asked for ice cubes.

My uncle loved country music—the old kind. If he would’ve heard a song like the one I just told you about, he’d be kicking in his grave.

He wore coveralls and liked music with twin-fiddle intros, crooned by men with old-world names like: Merle, Lefty, Buck, Roy, Johnny, Ernest, and Hank.

He would’ve never trusted singers with modern names like: Keith, Jordan, Dustin, or Eric. In fact, he didn’t even like my name.

We were musical people. We sang, yodled, waltzed, clapped, and knew all the words to “I’ll Fly Away,” or “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” And if you ever heard my grandfather sing “I’m so Lonesome I Could…

We arrived in Southeastern Tennessee at dusk. Our cabin was covered in a thin layer of frost. But no snow.

I was hoping for snow.

My good friend, Jim, lives in this area and tells me they have a coyote problem. So I am keeping my eyes peeled for anything that resembles scavenging canines near our cabin.

I have always had a looming feeling that coyotes are going to be what finally kills me.

Anyway, we are in Tennessee for a getaway to celebrate our fifteen-year belated anniversary. After I finished unpacking, my wife insisted that I build a fire.

So, I went outside into the cold to get firewood. I loaded an armful, keeping a lookout for ravenous coyotes. I think I saw one or two on the roof, but I can’t be sure.

On my way back inside, my foot slipped on a piece of ice. I was airborne. The last thing I remember is watching hickory logs fly upward into the night.

When I awoke, I saw my old Little League coach, Mister Whiting, standing over me, smoking a cigarette.

He said: “Get on your feet, and quit whining or the coyotes will eat you!”

“Yessir,” I said.

Then he popped my rear and said, “Can’t never could! There is no ‘I’ in team! Quitters never win and winners never quit! Have you called your mama? I wish I could call mine!”

It was obviously a hallucination, Mister Whiting has been dead for many years. I can’t remember how he passed, it was either old age or coyotes.

I finally got a fire going. A roaring fire does something to the primitive man in me. I love a fireplace, and when I tend logs I do it with the sincerity I would use to guard a bank vault.

I kept looking out the window for snow, but no…

Three old men sit around a propane heater. They are chewing the fat, laughing about the old days.

I walk through their front door. A bell dings.

“Welcome to the coal-mining museum!” hollers one man. He stands, then leans onto a walking stick and adjusts his hearing aid.

The miner’s museum is a tiny building in the sleepy hamlet of Whitwell, Tennessee. Inside are relics dating back to the early days of coal-mining in Marion County.

There are old helmets, blade shovels, iron wagons, carbide head-lanterns, and large stumps of black coal.

“Mining goes way back in my family,” says J.T. “My great-grandfathers come from England to mine coal for the Queen.”

The other two men near the heater are also retired coal miners. Albert and Jimmy.

I get the dime tour from all three men at once.

There is too much to take in. On the walls are a million items J.T. has gathered over the years. I ask why he’s collected so many artifacts.

“‘Cause,” he

says. “I don’t want the world to forget about us miners.”

In the center of the room is a large display of photographs. In the pictures are his friends. Most of them deceased.

J.T. can point to any picture of any miner and tell you a story.

“This here was my buddy,” he says, tapping one photo. “Called him ‘Bugus,’ we all had nicknames.”

He taps another photograph. In the frame are two blonde women with blackened faces.

“These two ladies were coal miners. Bet you ain’t never seen women miners. Hardest dadgum workers you ever saw.”

These Appalachian men have enough tales to fill a box car. Sadly, they don’t have many around to listen. J.T.’s little museum doesn’t get many visitors.

Most days, he sits in this room, piecing jigsaw puzzles together on a card table, prepared…

Reeltown, Alabama—the high school parking lot is slam-packed with cars. People are parking on the grass, trucks park over at the fire department. I find an open space on the school lawn.

My wife and I enter the gymnasium. It’s loud inside. There are four hundred people seated at cafeteria tables. There is enough fried chicken in this room to short-circuit the U.S. government.

Local ladies tend to the crowd, dressed in aprons. High-school girls with pitchers refill sweet tea, young men with football jerseys gather empty paper plates.

This is a fundraiser for Wallace Mann.

You’d like Wallace. He is a country preacher in this community. And in this world, there are two different kinds of preachers. Country preachers, and everyone else.

“Brother Wallace always made the rounds,” said one man with white hair. “Do you ‘member when country preachers used to make the rounds? No, you might not, you’re too young.”

As it happens I once I worked as an assistant to a

preacher who made “the rounds.” He spent four days each week driving to hospitals, standing at bedsides, visiting nursing homes, holding hands, or taking out trash for an elderly man who couldn’t get out of his recliner.

“That’s what Brother Wallace would do,” the old man goes on. “He did it every week without fail before he got sick, he made the rounds.”

Mister Wallace is positioned near the stage in a motorized wheelchair. ALS has taken its toll on him. He is not able to move like he used to. Sometimes, just talking wears him out.

Miss Ann feeds him with a plastic fork. His family is seated around his table. He is wearing his high-school colors.

“Oh, he loves Reeltown football,” says his wife. “He used to play here, you know. He tells everyone he was was defensive guard. He used to guard the the…

“It only takes a little faith, man,” says Mark. “You don’t need much. Just a little.”

There is a feeling you get when you sit in Mark’s back row pew. It’s a special pew.

Mark—which isn’t his real name—leads me through the church aisles, guides me to a pew in the rear of the chapel, and he helps me understand what I’m sitting upon.

“This is where it happened,” he tells me.

“Where what happened?” I ask.

“Where something I done asked for ended up happening.”

He crosses his legs, then places his hands in his lap. Long ago, he used to sit on this pew when he came to church as a little boy.

“I didn’t grow up to be a church guy,” he says. “I mean, I believed in God and everything, but I sure ain’t never seen no real miracles before.”

Until one summer. He was not in a good place at the time.

He snuck into the church on a Thursday, after work. There were no

people in the building. The preacher was gone for the day, so was the secretary. In fact, it was a fluke the church was unlocked.

The maintenance man was in the shed, finishing up projects. He hadn’t locked the sanctuary yet.

Mark turned the knob of the doors and let himself into the chapel. The sun was setting. He sat in the back pew.

He did some crying—for his wife. Only one week before, she was diagnosed with a fatal form of breast cancer. He bowed his head and he whispered a few words on her behalf. He was in this pew for fifteen minutes.

“I ain’t got no faith, man, ain’t gonna lie to you, I ain’t even a good guy all the time, you know? I’m human.”

But when Mark went home that day, he saw his…

Yeah, I know the internet rules the world. I’m no dummy.

But there are some things the internet will never replace. Things like: biscuits, the love of a good dog, hugs from your mother, and приклад.

Let me explain:

Right now, I am writing you from a typewriter. It is a Lettera 32. It is old, ugly, and Staph-Infection Green. The thing once sat atop my childhood desk. My mother gave it to me.

Long ago, I used to write tales of the high seas, spy stories, and Westerns. I wanted to become a writer back then. But time moves you forward and you end up becoming things you never thought you would.

I don’t know what I became.

Anyway, in our digital world, it’s not easy writing on a typewriter. For one thing, there’s the problem of getting all these inky words into a computer. It's a real pain

First you have to scan each page of paper—unless you want to retype all your words.

Then, you have to wait fifteen minutes for your

computer to translate typeface into digital text. The software, which was manufactured in a third-world sweatshop, is crummy.

Civilized man can put a fella on the moon, but we are stuck with software that translates the simplest icon within the history of human language, “I,” into “приклад.”

Thusly, wherever the word “I” has appeared in this column, it is because I have physically removed “приклад” and replaced it with “I.”

In spite of the aforementioned, this is a small price to pay for recapturing childhood.

Pressing these keys makes me feel light years younger. Furthermore, there is no internet to distract me, no bright screen, no email alerts involving the prince of Nigeria, no pop-up ads advertising reverse mortgages, no updates on the best-dressed at the Oscars.

This Seafoam Green, non-electric machine takes me back in time.

When I was a boy, I remember writing…

Dear Superman,

I awoke way too early this morning. It was still dark. This morning, I was missing my late bloodhound.

Last year around this time, she was still alive, and she would sit beside me while I fiddled with the coffee pot. But she’s not here. Pancreatitis took her.

I’ll never forget it, last year we checked her into the pet hospital, they put her in one of those cones. They locked her in a cage. They shoved needles in her.

I was able to wedge my hand through the kennel door to pet her nose. It was the last time I ever saw her.

My mother always told me, “Don’t just tell someone you love them, write it down for them, then they can remember it always.”

Too bad dogs can’t read.

But then, Mama was full of country wisdom. I think she was a little like your Mama, Clark.

She’s the one who told me: “A bumblebee is faster than a John Deere.”

And: “Never judge a family tree by the nuts falling off it.”

And: “If you ever start to think you’re somebody, try telling a house cat what to do.”

Anyway, the reason I am writing you is because yesterday afternoon I opened the mailbox to find several bills, junk mail, real estate advertisements, and one manila envelope with no return address. Inside was an Action Comics comic book.

“Great Ceasar’s Ghost!” I thought to myself.

It took me back in time. I used to subscribe to Action Comics when I was a boy. I kept my subscription until I was 27 years old.

You were my childhood obsession. This began in earnest the week after my father’s funeral. My friend brought me a stack of your comics he’d gotten at a flea market for a few bucks.

There must’ve been a hundred…

This story isn’t mine, but I’m going to tell it like I heard it. I first heard it from an old man who drove a Ford. And I have a soft spot for old Ford men.

So there he is. The old man is driving. He sees a car on the side of the highway. A kid stands beside it. Hood open.

The man pulls over.

He’s America’s quintessential old man. He drives a half-ton Ford that he’s been babying since the seventies. He changes the oil regularly, waxes it on weekends. The candy-apple red paint still looks nice.

He looks under the kid’s hood. He can see the problem right away, (a) the transmission is shot, and (b) it’s not a Ford.

Fixing it would cost more than the vehicle.

The kid is in a hurry, and asks, “Can you give me a ride to work? I can’t afford to lose my job.”

So, the old man drives the kid across town. They do some talking.

The man learns that the boy has four children, a young wife, and a disabled mother living with him. The boy works hard for a living. Bills keep piling up.

It rips the man's heart out.

They arrive at a construction site. There are commercial framers in tool belts, operating nail guns. The kid pumps the old man’s hand and thanks him for the ride.

“Take care of yourself,” the man tells the kid.

The kid takes his place among workmen, climbing on pine-framed walls, swinging a hammer.

The old man decides to help the kid. He doesn’t know how. Or why. But it’s a decision that seems to make itself.

That same day, he’s at a stop light. He sees something. An ugly truck, sitting in a supermarket parking lot. A Ford.

A for-sale sign in the window.…