He started college. To his wife's knowledge, he's one of the only forty-year-old students wandering around campus. But there are probably others like him.

His wife said he was surprised at how the fashions have changed throughout the years. When we were much younger, folks dressed different. Girls, for instance, wore enough to cover their hindparts. Boys tucked in their shirttails. Today, kids have primary-colored hair.

He's interested in teaching agriculture, has been for a long time. I've never understood this. The world is a huge place, with lots of exciting things happening. Why study cattle mating practices, or how to recycle goat pellets?

It's been a long

time coming for him. He's got two daughters, who look alarmingly like his mother did at their ages. And her. He's been with her his whole life. I've never known him with another. So many years have they been together, I can't say his name without saying hers.

Their friendship started way before high school, on a playground. He plucked a handful of tall grass and told me, “I'm gonna ask her to marry me.”

"Nice. What's the grass for?"

"It's a bouquet, stupid."

It seemed like a good idea at the…

I have a thing about railroad crossings. I like them. Once, I sat parked at one for twelve minutes, watching freight car after freight car in the dark.

In my passenger seat: a woman in her thirties, Mexican, ninety-five pounds sopping wet. Her children mixed—looking more black than latino. Her oldest kept asking me, “You gonna stay for cena?”

The other boy chimed in. And pretty soon, they were threatening suicide if the seventeen-year-old with red hair didn't stay for supper.

Hers was a bad neighborhood; the area had gone to pot. It might've been nice once-upon-a-time, but the front porches had bars on the windows.

I sat in her

den while she, her aunt, and her cousin cooked.

Her boys showed me their toys—different-colored blocks of wood. They were building a city. The youngest was King Kong, smashing the metropolis to pieces. A stray block hit his brother on the lip. That did it.

King Kong died, right there.

Supper was Hamburger Helper. Not the good kind, but the cheap, off-brand variety. I've eaten expired hog livers that tasted better. Her sons went back for seconds. King Kong led the charge.

I helped with dishes. It was a manual…

I don't care if you believe in heaven. But I hope you believe in angels. If you don't, you owe it to yourself to visit a school. You'll see plenty.

And I'm not talking about kids, but about folks who know how to swat hindparts, kiss bruises, and are familiar with the conflict at Valley Forge.

I know one such teacher. Long ago, he was a rambunctious kid, with a proclivity toward accidents. We called him, Shinbone—he busted his shin into three pieces sliding into first base.

We signed his cast, “Get well you ornery little shin.”

Nowadays, he goes by another name. One much more coordinated-sounding. And to his students, he's about as cool as Frigidare. He teaches science and history. He used to coach middle-school football, too, but parents didn't think it was fair letting every child with a bellybutton on the team.

Parents.

Anyway, with his first eighth-grade class, he made a promise to students. If everyone got A's, he swore to shave his head, right there in class. If their combined

average was less than A, he would shave their heads.

On the last day of school, they scalped him like a bunch of Comanches.

I have another teacher friend. She tells me during her first year teaching high-school, one boy's mother overdosed.

She attended the funeral. When she arrived, there were only three people in the room attending the service.

“Mine was the only name in the guestbook,” she told me. “Broke my heart.”

She encouraged the boy to go to college, and even helped him get a football scholarship. That child went on to participate in a national playoff.

And if that doesn't make you feel older than shin, here's another:

I know a woman who had a Mexican boy in her second-grade class. The boy showed up unable to speak a word of English.

“Sometimes,” she said. “You just connect with certain kids.…

I'm not supposed to tell you this story. Even so, the man who told it to me doesn't think his mother would mind.

I can't tell you his name, but I can tell you he's a silver-haired Georgia boy, with the vibrant personality of a tailgate party.

“I never knew my real parents,” he said. “I was adopted, I figured that out when I was young.”

He had a nice life—the only child of a poor woman. He grew up quick, became a roofer. He married a good lady, had three kids. He's retired now.

Something's chewed at him his whole life.

“In high school,” he said. “We did family tree

projects. So, I asked Mama about my genealogy. The only information she knowed was my birthmother's name. So, I looked her up, but was too chicken to call her.”

He's several decades older now. A few years ago, he decided to try again. It led him to his birthmother's youngest son—his half brother.

“She was still alive," he said. "Took me weeks to decide if I really wanted to see her, I was scared.”

So, he drove to Tennessee to find a ninety-something-year-old woman who could hardly walk.

“Soon…

Some fool called her, "trash." And that's when she made up her mind. She wanted to better herself, and her family. So, that's what she did.

“That GED test,” she said, while she checked my blood pressure. “That ain't no joke, now. It's tough.”

Her accent is so Alabamian it hurts. She's missing a few teeth, but it doesn't look bad on her. She's old, wiry, but strong.

Where she grew up, country folks didn't go past the eighth grade—still don't. And according to her daddy, “Once a young'un can read, it's time to work.”

Saying this made her laugh.

All six of her brothers dropped out, so did

she. She met a man who worked in a lumber mill, they had two children before she was twenty. She's still with him. She calls him Beater. I don't know why.

When she was twenty-four, Beater suggested she apply for a job at the hospital. She thought this was ridiculous. Hospitals didn't hire poor white trash.

Even so, she inquired. They told her, she needed college. So she called a college. They said she needed a high-school diploma. So she called the high-school. They said she needed a GED.

For six…

We sat on my truck hood, watching the sun go down over the Apalachicola Bay.

It was our first date. The exact same day her daddy told me, “Jamie can be as mean as a rattlesnake, but she's good people.”

Then he hollered for her like he was calling hogs for supper. "JAAAAAAMMIIEEEEE!"

She came running down the stairs, her face half made-up, the other half unpainted. “Jeezus, Daddy," she yelled. "I thought something was wrong."

He cackled until he pulled a rib.

That day, we were supposed to do something dating people do. Instead, we ended up driving. We never quit talking long enough to discuss what to do.

So, she chatted about her family, I steered. She hummed a few bars of “Watermelon Crawl." I listened. She knew all the words.

By then, we were a million miles out of town, in the middle of nowhere. I pulled over to buy a tank of gas at a dilapidated station. Of all people, I saw Bobby Donavan—who I used to frame houses with—standing at the gas pump opposite me.

He saw her in the passenger seat, winked at me, and shook his head. “Boy, oh boy,” he said, and…

Dear Lily,

You should know, I come from a long line of uncles who give bad advice. And it's my duty as your new uncle to tell you this, upfront.

When I was eight, my uncle advised me the best way to lose weight was to eat kudzu. My other uncle laughed at this and said, the secret was, in fact, smoking more cigarettes.

So, since we uncles have no good advice, I'm going to tell you what my AUNT told me instead. She cupped her hands around her ears and said, “Learn to listen. It'll make you smart."

I suppose she's right. After all, the wisest folks

listen a lot, which is why you don't see them going around munching on kudzu salads, puffing on Camels.

Anyway, maybe you'll listen better than I do. Because I run my mouth so often it's a wonder I still have a voice. Let's just say, I'm not exactly the fella you want to go see a movie with.

If you do learn to open you ears, good for you. It will change you. You'll start to realize that other people's lives have more importance than you thought.

Like the woman at Dobb's…

I was sixteen the first time I visited his farm. He came riding up the valley hillside like something out of a movie. He looked like John Wayne, only shorter, with white hair.

At the time, I was a lonely kid who wanted to learn to ride. We became friends. I shared my first adulthood beer with him. There's a difference between childhood beer and adulthood beer. You guzzle one, sip the other.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

We sat on the back of his truck. He popped the bottle-cap using his belt buckle. It was marvelous. I've attempted this trick at least a million times.

Once, I even cut my hand trying. Ten stitches later, I still can't do it.

"You know," he said, one day while overlooking the valley. "I'd rather die than live in the city.”

Me too.

And that's why I spent so much time on his farm. I helped him plant pecan trees. I cleaned stalls, cut grass, roofed his shed, painted his barn. He tried to pay me. I didn't want money. I had no father; his son was a meth-addict.

Yesterday, I drove past a place that reminded me of his.…