One of the sharpest memories you have is of your daddy.

You’re maybe 9. In his truck. Saturday night. The “Grand Ole Opry” is on the radio. Daddy’s driving past the ugly side of town.

It pains him to see this place. He’s emotional. Maybe a little drunk. He points out the house he grew up in as Minnie Pearl is on 650 WSM.

Daddy is telling you something. Something you’ve always remembered: “Poverty’s all about isolation,” he says. “Being poor is just another way of saying you’re lonely.”

You’ve thought about this. Over the years, you’ve come to the conclusion that Daddy was right.

When you’re isolated, you’re lonely. When you’re lonely, you have no network. No network; no opportunities. No opportunities equals no job. When you have no job, you have no money. When you have no money, you have a problem.

In the end, it comes down to people. If you have no people, you got nothing.

But then you already know this. Because you grew up poor. After your father took his own life, you had

no support system.

Mama’s family was split. Daddy’s family was even worse. Your boyhood friends quit calling. You quit going to Little League. Quit Boy Scouts. Dropped out of school.

A lot of people in those days didn’t know what to think about suicide, so they tried not to think about it at all.

But none of that matters now. What matters is that you grew up and something changed. Somehow you went to college. Somehow you became a writer and performer.

And much to your surprise, you started meeting new people. Lots of people. Good people.

Suddenly, you were meeting new friends at every event. You were still living in a 28-foot trailer, mind you. But you weren’t isolated anymore.

There was the little girl with spina bifida, who came to your first ever performance. She bought one of…

You might not know this, but a few days ago was a national holiday. A day when our nation traditionally puts aside our differences, stands together in solidarity and brotherhood, from sea to oil-slicked sea, and we celebrate our most cherished national pastime.

Pound cake.

That’s right. It was National Pound Cake Day.

Frankly, I did not know it was National Pound Cake Day until a reader named Phyllis Ratliff, of Oneonta, Alabama, brought this to my attention. Phyllis reminded me that today is a critical day in our native heritage.

“We must ask ourselves,” writes Phyllis, “how many pound cakes sacrificed their lives defending our privilege to celebrate this day?”

Phyllis is absolutely right. Pound cake is an expressly American dish, right up there with Velveeta, and Budweiser. And yet nobody in the news media is even talking about this issue.

One columnist demands to know why.

Contrary to popular notions, apple pie is not our flagship American dish. Forget apple pie.

Apple pie originated in England during the 14th century, shortly

after the birth of Cher. Back then, English peasants were so poor that most historians believe the first apple pies were made with apples harvested from the stalls of nearby horse pens.

Pound cake, on the other hand, is an American cake. It originated right here in the North American colonies. The first mention of pound cake comes to us in a cookbook entitled “American Cookery,” published in 1796 (HarperCollins).

So this morning, I, for one, am choosing to celebrate this holiday by eating a wedge of pound cake that is roughly the same thickness as the unabridged edition of “Gone With the Wind.”

Pound cake is in my DNA. I have been eating pound cake since I was six minutes old, which was all my grandmother’s doing.

In the hospital delivery room, shortly after my birth, my Granny and her church-lady friends showed up with baked…

The supermarket checkout line. She was white-haired and frail. She looked like a church lady to me.

Her buggy was filled to capacity so that it looked like she was pushing a coal barge up the Mississippi. The first item she placed onto the conveyor belt was an extra-large case of Coors.

“That’s a lot of beer,” said I.

She smiled. “On sale.”

“Are you the one who drinks it?”

She nodded. “Two beers a day keeps the doctor away.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”

“Yeah, well, I hate apples.”

Her voice had the same timbre as a tuba. She wore a pink silk jacket draped over her shoulders, buttoned at the top, á la 1952. She wore green polyester slacks such as I haven’t seen since Florence Henderson was on primetime. You could have smelled her floral scent from across the county lines. Ea du old lady.

“Get over here and help me,” she said to me, as she struggled to unload her buggy.

She didn’t say please. She didn’t say, “Young man, would you be so kind…?” She told me to “get

over here.”

So I helped her.

“You’re a nice guy,” said the woman, watching me labor beneath the weight of her 1,439-pound bag of Pedigree dog food.

“Tell that to my wife,” I said.

“So you’re married?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I was married once.”

“Is that right.”

“Yep. I was happily married for ten years. Ten outta fifty-three ain’t bad.”

Then the woman cackled and told the bag boy to fetch her a carton of cigarettes. Marlboros. Menthols.

After which she dug into her purse and removed a stack of coupons roughly the size of a Tolstoy novel and gave it to the cashier.

The cashier girl accepted the coupons hesitantly and flashed me a look indicating that she was not enthusiastic about her career path right now.

“What was his name?”…

Cracker Barrel, 8:17 P.M.—it's busy tonight. There’s a boy in a wheelchair at the table beside me. His father is spoon feeding him cooked apples and fried chicken.

When the boy's sister says something funny, the boy claps and laughs.

His father wipes his face with a rag and says, “You’re my special boy.” Then, he kisses his forehead.

A nearby girl wanders toward the boy. She is four, maybe. Her hair is in locks. She stares at him with her hand in her mouth.

“Is he okay?” she asks.

The boy leans and gives a big “HELLO!”

There are apple bits on his chin.

The girl gives a smile brighter than a Christmas tree. “HI THERE!” she says in return. Then, she skips off.

Three tables from the boy is an old man. He is wearing a ball cap, Velcro shoes. He’s sitting at a two-top. He orders chicken-fried steak and potatoes. He has no cellphone to occupy his attention. No reading material. He sits.

He and I share a waitress. Her name is Blanche—it’s embroidered on her

apron. Whenever he speaks to her, he holds her hand. Something you don't see much.

He has a voice that sounds beautifully genteel. It's a wonder he's all alone.

Behind him is a table of Mexican workers—men, women, and kids. At least I think they’re Mexican. Every word they say is tagged with a diminutive “ito” or “ita.” They sit covered in paint and grit. They speak rapid Spanish. Lots of laughing.

One Mexican boy crawls into his mother's lap. She strokes his silk hair with her paint-spotted hand, saying, “Cariño mio,” over and over.

And though I don't know much Spanish, I imagine this, more or less, means: “You're my special boy.”

To their left: a teenage couple. He weighs a buck ten, she is a foot taller than him. They hold hands when they walk out. They kiss. They…

It was late. I had just finished performing my one-man spasm in Tupelo, Mississippi. We were tired. My wife and I had a long drive ahead.

But there was one stop I had to make.

The GPS was confused. Siri led us on a raccoon chase. We were going in circles. At one point, we realized we had passed the same Dollar Tree four times.

But eventually, we pulled into 306 Elvis Presley Drive.

The narrow house, the place of Elvis Aaron Presley’s birth, was as big as a minute. About the same size as the junk house my daddy grew up in. A shotgun house. White clapboards. Gray porch. Porch swing. Screen door.

I had my guitar in the van. So I sat on the porch swing and tuned it. The balmy Mississippi air will detune a guitar in only seconds.

I sang “Peace in the Valley.” Same tune we sang at my old man’s funeral. I still remember watching my daddy’s ironworker friends cover their weathered faces and sniff their noses.

My father was

an Elvis fanatic. There were only three performers he nearly idolized. Hank Senior, Ray Charles, and Elvis. One of those three was always playing in his garage workshop, over the tweed speakers of a Philco radio.

“If you were a kid in the fifties,” Daddy once said, “you loved Elvis. He was in our drinking water.”

And love Elvis he did. He could sing all the hits. Every lyric. Every inflection.

I have vague memories of driving in Daddy’s F-100, with my bare feet on his dashboard, with Elvis playing. Only, I could hardly hear Elvis over Daddy’s singing.

I don’t have many memories of making Daddy proud. Save, for one.

It was a Fourth of July picnic. I was 9. There was a plywood stage. There was a gospel quartet. There was a band.

The event planners asked me to sing an Elvis…

These aren’t my stories, but I’m going to tell them.

Let’s call her Dana. Dana was going for a walk near her home. It was a dirt road. Her high-school reunion was coming up, she was getting into shape.

A truck pulled beside her. He slowed down. He rolled his window open, he asked if she needed a ride.

Something was wrong. It was the way he looked at her.

Before she knew it, he’d jumped out of the vehicle. She tried to get away. He overpowered her and threw her into a ditch.

She landed a few good hits to his face, but he outweighed her.

He used a pocketknife. He pressed it against her. She screamed something. She doesn’t remember which words she used, but she aimed them toward heaven.

Something happened.

His body froze. Completely. He was like a statue, only meaner. She wanted to run, but she was too scared.

That’s when she saw another man standing above her attacker. He was tall, with a calm face.

“It’s gonna be okay, Dana,” the tall man said. “Go on home, sweetie, everything’s gonna be

okay.”

Here’s another:

Jim was dying. A seventy-something Vietnam veteran with high morals, pancreatic cancer, and a two-packs-a-day habit.

Doctors said his cancer would kill him.

Treatments were hell. Jim met a man in the VA hospital. A homeless man with a duffle bag. A fellow vet.

They shared a few cigarettes. They swapped stories. They understood each other. Jim invited the man home.

The man stayed in Jim’s guest room. He stayed for several months.

He became Jim’s caregiver. He wiped Jim’s mouth after episodes of vomiting, he stayed up late during sleepless nights, he helped Jim bathe. He’d pat Jim’s back when nausea got bad, saying, “It’s gonna be alright.”

And he was there on Jim’s final day, too. He waited in the den while Jim’s family gathered around his bed.…

The preacher got there early. He was wearing his Sunday clothes. Necktie.

His truck came roaring into the driveway of an ugly old house.

The preacher slid out of the cab. He was old and bent. Hair the color of a retired dandelion. He brought to mind Walter Mathau after a long night.

The elderly cleric grabbed his Bible. He knocked on the front door, straightening his collar.

A young mother answered. Little girl on her hip.

“Thank you for doing this,” the mama said.

He followed her through the dingy house. They were poor, but the house was in perfect order. A lot of people think the poor don’t keep clean houses. This is a Hollywood myth. “You don’t have to be rich to own a dustrag,” the author’s grandmother used to say.

The poor are often proud.

The preacher passed through the den. Tonka trucks littered the floor. A few GI Joes, fallen in the line of duty.

He arrived in the backyard, where he met the Tonka truck owner. A little boy, with a shovel in his

hands. The boy smelled like little-kid sweat. His cheeks, flushed from manual labor.

There was a newly dug hole in the earth beside the boy. There was an object beside the hole, wrapped in a bedsheet. A canine tail poking from beneath the sheet.

The preacher removed his jacket. “You lift her from one side, son, I’ll get the other.”

The boy was strong for his size. And there were holes in his little shoes. It took some doing, but together they placed the heavy remains of Boy’s Best Friend into the ground.

“What do we do now?” asked the boy.

“Now it’s my turn.”

The old man put on his jacket.

The pulpiteer opened his leatherbound book. He read some. He read the one about the Lord being a shepherd, and about the Valley of the Shadow of Death,…

My interview was scheduled for noon. It’s not every day you are a keynote speaker for Miss Bernice’s fourth-grade class career day, via video call. I wore a necktie.

Miss Bernice’s class has been interviewing a lot of people lately about their careers by using video calls. She has been introducing the kids to people with different occupations from all over the U.S.

So far, her class has welcomed guests from all fields. The class has interviewed PhDs, celebrated journalists, famous musicians, chefs, well-known songwriters, people who work in finance, pro fishermen, doctors, and anyone else who drives a Range Rover.

I was scheduled to go on after the decorated navy pilot.

While the fighter pilot gave his presentation, I started to feel like a an idiot. I looked at the little camera image of myself on my laptop screen and cringed. My red hair was disheveled, my face looked tired. The bags beneath my eyes could have been used for a Samsonite ad.

Captain America wowed his audience, and I was trying to remember when

and why I became a writer in the first place.

Truthfully, I don’t know when exactly I first wanted to be a writer. I can’t remember ever NOT wanting to be one.

Still, I think it must have happened officially for me in the fourth grade. That was the year our teacher read “Where the Red Fern Grows.”

She would read aloud to us after lunch period, every weekday for an hour. And she did all the voices.

It takes real talent to do the character voices right.

That beautiful woman with the cat-eye glasses and the coiffed hair possessed such talent. I can never forget that period of my life.

We would file into the classroom after gorging ourselves in the cafeteria. She would turn off the lights, sit by the window, and read to us.

Students would gather around her like disciples…

So here’s something. February 29th is the rarest birthday on the calendar. Did you know that?

There is only a one in a 1,461 chance of being born on February 29th. This means that a leap year baby is more rare than an albino peacock, or purple carrots, or a totoaba fish.

February 29th babies are earthly rarities. And rare things are, by default, noteworthy. I know this to be true because February 29th is Superman’s birthday.

Superman’s real name isn’t Superman, of course. It’s Clark Kent. And, actually, if you’re getting technical, his true name isn’t Clark Kent, either. It’s Kal-El.

Kal-El was born on Planet Krypton. When he was a baby his birth parents sent him to Earth on an infant-sized spaceship shortly before the planet’s natural cataclysm. He was found by a farmer who named him Clark.

I know this because I am a huge Superman fan. And we Superman fans do not call him Superman, if you must know. We call him “Supes.” It is our way.

I am still a

big fan. Currently, Superman comics litter my office. I have Superman statues everywhere. I collect Superman lunchboxes. I grew up wearing Superman underpants.

When I was a kid, every February 29th, I’d sit before our Zenith console TV and watch reruns of the “Adventures of Superman” starring George Reeves, who looked like a regular person, not like a professional wrestler. George Reeves looked like a guy who had put in some time around the queso dip.

The local station broadcasted Superman marathons all day on the 29th. I celebrated his birthday by watching each episode, clutching my figurines, dressed in my little Superman undies.

I had a crummy childhood. My homelife wasn’t the stuff of dreams. Mine was an abusive home. My youth was painted with suicide and gun violence. I failed a grade. I was not a smart child. I had bad teeth. We…

I have here a letter from Randy. “Sean,” the note begins—people are always calling me that. “Do you have any words of wisdom I can give to my son?

“My son, Jason, is getting married on Friday, and I am responsible for his wedding toast. I’d like some wisdom to pass on, the only problem is, I don’t have any.”

Well, Randy, I asked a handful of friends for words of wisdom from elders in their lives.

The rules were simple, the wisdom giver had to (a) be over 75, and (b) they had to be—technically—still alive. The deadline for submission was yesterday. The maxims and folk expressions came in from all over the US.

Here are some:

LINDA, 91—Being frugal doesn’t mean you have to be cheap. Being cheap doesn’t help anyone, and it takes the fun out of life. My late husband was so cheap he wouldn’t have paid a nickel to see Jesus riding a bicycle.

SIMON, 82—A lot of people are into fitness, and that’s great, I guess. But you can’t live longer, you can only

live deeper.

BEVA, 89—Happiness is a town halfway between Too Little and Too Much.

RITA, 83—American girls need to eat real food. Eat until you have to unbutton your pants now and then. Heavensake, there are girls on TV so skinny you can’t even see their shadow.

JERRY, 80—Being rich isn’t the same as being comfortable. My uncle was so rich, he bought a new boat every time the other one got wet. And he was miserable.

ROBYN, 78—Even if someone is ugly to you, don’t be ugly back.

DANNY, 91—This is a generation of workaholics. On the farm, we stopped work every day at three to enjoy our life. But young people today are busier than a cat covering crap on a marble floor. Slow down.

SAM, 88—Being humble don’t mean you ain’t got your pride. But a Rolls-Royce…