Athens, Alabama, 6:08 A.M.—there is a complimentary breakfast in the hotel lobby. At a table near me are men in neon reflective vests, work boots, and dusty jeans.

The menu: rubber eggs, plastic cheese, and sausage patties which taste like used Dr. Scholl’s orthotics.

A large television is tuned to sports news. The TV rolls footage of NFL football players, kneeling on sidelines during the national anthem.

The suits on TV are speaking in loud voices, waving hands at each other.

“THIS IS THE GREATEST CIVIL DISPUTE OF OUR TIME!” says one reporter.

The youngest workman—fortyish—isn't watching TV. His black arm is wrapped in white bandages. The side of his face is scraped purple, and scabbed. He stares at his cellphone.

“Yesterday was my son’s birthday,” the young man announces to the table.

He holds up his cellphone.

“He’s eight,” the young man goes on. “My wife took him out for pizza, my boy loves pizza.”

A man with a long white beard and tattooed forearms removes his reading glasses. He stares at the phone.

“Cute kid,” Long Beard says. “I’ve missed ALL my kid’s

birthdays working this job.”

“Me too,” says another. “I’s in Pennsylvania on an interstate overpass when my son graduated high school.”

The television is blaring. A commentator in a silk suit shouts at a pinstripe.

An older Mexican woman approaches the table. She is wearing a hotel uniform. She tops off coffees.

And the workmen fantasize of home. One man tells the table that he’s going to take his son fishing when he gets back home. Another says he’s going to put in a swimming pool for his kids. Another will treat his wife to a Carnival cruise.

The young man says, “What do I buy an eight-year-old for a birthday?”

Nobody answers.

The television is rolling footage of NFL players, politicians, insurance commercials, and pharmaceutical ads.

The young man says, “Man, missing my boy’s…

La Vergne, Tennessee—the inside of 87-year-old Stuart’s home is covered in faded photographs and country music albums.

Black-and-white images of a young man line the walls. The photogenic young man is strong, a guitarist, a mechanic, a soldier, a laborer, a father of seven.

His best girl is a living saint.

“When we met,” his wife says, tapping a picture frame. “I’s seventeen, Stuart was nineteen. We were babies.”

Stuart Woods is my good friend. I wasn’t far past twenty when I met him.

He was a silver-haired man living in a double-wide trailer off Musset Bayou Road—only steps from my house. I was a skinny young fool.

He used to smack my shoulders and say, “This here's my BOY.”

I never got tired of hearing that.

His wife would serve us beer on coasters. Stuart would tell war stories. Then, he’d flatpick a red Gretsch guitar for my entertainment.

I would watch his quick fingers play “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” or “San Antonio Rose,” or “Peanut Vendor.”

I wanted to be Stuart.

Sometimes, I’d stay for supper. After a meal, we’d walk to Stuart’s garage. He’d light a cigarette,

we’d talk about cars. The oil cans on his shelves were older than I was.

We’d sit on swivel stools—the kind in body shops—and make easy conversation.

And that’s what we’re doing now. Stuart is in his recliner, telling stories about a bygone era.

The Alzheimer's makes him forgetful, the diabetes makes his feet numb. He just lost his driver’s license.

That hurt.

But nothing has changed his sunny disposition. He’s still Mister Happy. He still piddles on his Cadillac.

He hasn’t tasted beer in months, but he wants one today. So do I.

We sit together, holding longneck bottles. He retells his top-40 greatest memories. I could listen to him talk until the second coming of Roger Miller.

The more he speaks, the younger I get, and the younger…

Hendersonville, Tennessee—I'm on stage playing music within spitting distance from Nashville.

Nashville.

Before today, I’ve only been here once in my entire life. I was a redheaded seven-year-old at the time. My father worked a few years in Spring Hill, welding column splices that would one day become a General Motors plant. 

I visited the GM plant today. A non-descript iron continent. My father called it his greatest achievement.

My father once took me to the Grand Ole Opry. There, I saw Mel Tillis perform “Coca-Cola Cowboy” and I can still remember it.

The stage lights, the barn-themed set, men with white hair and cowboy hats, playing two-step rhythms.

Afterward, we bought ice cream. We sat on a bench looking at neon lights.

My father said, “All my life, I've only heard the Opry on a radio. I think I like it better on a radio.”

I hardly remember the rest of that night. But I do remember fiddles, pedal steels, corny jokes. And I remember feeling happy.

So, I'm here. I'm thinking about life, and how short it is. For Joe Six-Pack

like me, this is as close to heaven as I’ll ever get.

My father died when I was twelve. I hung drywall and laid tile at seventeen. I cut lawns, threw sod, and planted shrubs at eighteen.

At twenty, I played guitar in a small Baptist church. At twenty-one: I played in beer joints and all-you-can-eat catfish buffets.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’m happy. I mean really happy.

Today, I’m on a stage with my friends, playing guitar not far from my father’s greatest monument.

In the audience, I see a little redheaded girl with pigtails.

She looks so happy.

I'm singing with my friends. The same friends I’ve played music with for many years. They’ve seen me grow up. They’ve helped me become me.

Fred, on the drums. He knew me when…

Cracker Barrel—I’m eating bacon and eggs. In the background: Ernest Tubb is singing about waltzing across Texas. I've been on an interstate all morning.

There is an old woman at a table near ours. She was here before my wife and I arrived. Her white hair is fixed up. She is wiry, wearing a nice zebra-striped Sunday blouse.

She smiles at me.

She is alone, sipping coffee. It doesn't take long to strike up chit-chat.

She has lines on her face, and a husky voice. She is from the old world. She calls me “sweetheart” twice in the same sentence.

And even though I don’t know her, I know her type. I'll bet she prepares chicken and dumplings that would make clergymen use the Lord’s name in vain.

She tells me that for most of her life, she’s been a mother and a wife.

Her husband died many years ago. She has two kids. A son, a daughter. She hardly sees either.

“My daughter and I are supposed to be having lunch today,” she tells me, looking at her watch.

“My grandbabies should be here any second. I can't WAIT to kiss them all.”

Those lucky grandbabies.

From what I learn, the aforementioned daughter and grandchildren lead busy lives. The grandkids stay occupied with soccer, baseball, ballet, mission trips, and various special activities that require special T-shirts.

The old girl tries to get together with them as often as she can. But schedules get in the way.

Last week, she decided to drive a few hours to attend her grandson’s soccer game. She packed her folding chair, her snacks, and arrived early.

She waited for one hour on the sidelines of an empty field. A maintenance man told her the game had been cancelled.

Nobody had told Granny.

The old woman’s purse starts ringing. She digs through it. Soon, she is talking on a flip phone. She’s using a voice…

The picture of her son was a wallet-sized, high-school portrait from the late sixties. The boy’s hair was painfully dated. His smile was easy.

He was a good kid. That’s what they say.

He and his mother were close. Best friends, even. She was a single mother; he was a mama’s boy.

They were driving home from Atlanta one afternoon. They saw a car stalled on the side of the road.

“Don’t pull over,” she told her teenage son. “We don’t have time. Don’t wanna be late for kickoff.”

In those days, high-school kickoffs ruled the world. Her son was a good fullback. There was even talk about recruitment. Not serious talk, but talk.

Either way, he was a poster child. He had high cheekbones, promise, a sweet girlfriend, good grades.

“I gotta pull over, Mama,” he said.

He veered to the shoulder. He stepped out to help an old man change a tire.

She didn’t actually see it happen. But she heard the old man shout, “Move!”

And out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man jump. Then, a crash. Skidding.

And her boy was gone.

The days that followed were the worst of her life. Not only because he was gone, but because a piece of her had been buried, too.

Someone once heard her say, “I asked God to take me on the day of his funeral. I wanted to give up living.”

But God didn’t take her.

One sunny day, a knock at her door. Her son’s girlfriend. They sat at a table together. They cried big tears. They looked at photos. They held one another.

The girl told her she was pregnant.

And I understand that his mother’s happiness outweighed sadness.

The pregnancy was a normal, joyful one. Still, for each “congratulations" someone offered, an “I’m so sorry" followed.

But babies are immune to sadness. They make people feel warm, no matter…

Hank Williams music is playing on an old radio, sitting on a workbench. I’m nine. Hank’s voice bounces off the garage.

The room smells like gasoline and dirt. The walls are covered—and I mean covered—in posters of jet planes.

My father once wanted to be Navy pilot. He failed the physical exam into flight school. He was deaf on his left side. He’d spent a childhood wanting to see the world from the top, but he had to settle for posters.

“Toss me that wrench,” says Daddy.

He slides from beneath the Ford. There is a longneck bottle in his hand. Daddy sings along with the radio. He sounds like a dog with a chest infection.

“Daddy, will you ever fly a plane?”

“Nah, too deaf and stupid. Pilots ain’t deaf or stupid.”

“YOU’RE stupid?”

“Compared to a pilot. They got big IQ’s, they can practically move inanimate objects with their minds.”

“What’s inanimate?”

“It means UN-animate-like.”

My father walks to a white Philco refrigerator. He removes a bottle. He pops the cap with a box-wrench.

“You know,” he says. “I didn’t WANNA be a steelworker. I was kinda

backed into it. Always WANTED to be a pilot. Wanted to see the world from up top.”

I look at him. He's bone skinny. He has grease on his face and hands. There are scrapes on his veiny forearms. My father always had cuts and scrapes. It was the price of blue-collar workaholism.

“But Daddy,” I suggest. “You can STILL be a pilot. Billy’s daddy knows a man who gives flying lessons.”

My father takes a pull on the bottle. He smiles. He is all stubble and crow’s feet.

“Gotta be rich to take flying lessons,” he says.

“We could save up.”

“Take a lotta saving.”

“I’ll save ALL my money.”

He rubs his chin. It makes a sandpaper sound. “Guess I could take up flying during retirement,” he says.

“What’s…

A dinner rush. There’s a line of young, fashionably dressed people in this fancy restaurant, waiting for tables. Actually, it's more like an angry mob with skinny jeans and low blood sugar.

I’d rather go to a Waffle House, if you ask me, but my wife is hellbent on eating here.

There’s a child ahead of me. He's with his parents. He’s an animated kid. I notice him because he is wearing a leather football helmet—the kind college lineman wore in the ‘20’s.

I ask the kid about the piece of nostalgia on his noggin.

The child seems uncomfortable. He doesn’t look me in the eye. He looks at the wall and says in a loud voice, “My linebacker hat.”

I ask if he’s a linebacker for the Tigers.

"No,” he says. “I just like hats.”

Well, as it happens I am a hat man myself. For my first day of school I wore a ten-gallon hat, chaps, and holster.

My teacher stopped me at the classroom door, reminding me that gentlemen never wear hats inside. Then, she told

me to check my iron at the door.

It was to be the last day I ever wielded dual peacemakers.

“We have TONS of hats,” says the boy’s mother. “My husband was online last night ordering a hundred more.”

She explains that her son has autism. He also has a major stockpile of headwear. Sailor hats, baseball hats, flight gear, astronaut caps, stocking caps, even a genuine Auburn football helmet.

“At first,” she said. “We couldn’t get him to wear ANYTHING on his head. It would make him freak out. But then, something changed.”

It started with a knit cap she bought from Target. Her son liked the color of it. He wore it until the thing started to fall apart.

One day, her husband found a leather gridiron helmet in an antique store. He bought it to decorate his home…

Greenville, Alabama—welcome to Country Place Senior Living. I’m playing guitar for a room of people who have more life-experience than a sackful of white hair.

My guitar is beat-up and old. It once belonged to my father. It’s been with me a long time.

It’s traveled to a lot of places. Beer joints, all-you-can-eat-catfish joints, weddings, crab boils, Baptist chapels. And nursing homes.

I’m not a good guitar player per se, but here I am just the same. I’m standing before a ninety-nine-year-old colonel who sits in a wheelchair. He is watching me sing.

Life is funny sometimes.

I'm taking requests from the Southern Baptist hymnal.

The Colonel calls out, “Play ‘When the Roll is Called up Yonder.’”

“Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” suggests one woman.

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

“Precious Memories.”

Another woman claps in rhythm to “I'll Fly Away.” She barely has enough stamina to clap two full verses.

A lady says, “Can you sing ‘Blessed Assurance?’”

I give it a shot. It’s been a long time since I last sang the great Fannie Crosby anthem. I get through verse one.

Then, I

forget the words to the second verse.

And even though long ago I won a county-fair talent show singing this EXACT American classic; even though I took the blue ribbon playing this VERY guitar; even though I have bellowed this song a hundred times before in the church; I have to stop singing.

Life is funny sometimes.

Alaina, the activities director, knows the lyrics. She starts singing for me.

“Perfect submission,
All is at rest…”

She has a good voice. And while she sings, I hear more than just her. I hear old folks singing.

The old colonel’s voice is strong and sweet. Hazel—the ninety-four-year-old—sounds like country chapels and chess pies.

And I wish you could hear them. They are your ancestors. And mine. They are soft, but not weak.

“This is…

Big trees hang over Highway 31 South. The sun is out. I am riding behind an eighteen-wheeler whose signage reads: “Eat Alabama Beef.”

I’m passing through Pintlala. It’s a one-horse town—maybe two horses.

I also pass plenty of kudzu, Spanish moss, live oak groves, secluded railroad tracks, and red-dirt road offshoots.

Rusty mobile homes with Lexuses out front. A John Deere 5100 MH parked beside a clapboard general store.

Old churches.

I like antique churches—the kind that struggle to pay electric bills. Buildings with window-unit AC’s, and cemeteries out back.

Somewhere along the way, churches traded small graveyards for slide-projectors and rock and roll instruments.

On the highway shoulder: a girl riding a four-wheeler. She has a mile of traffic behind her. She wears pigtails and camouflage.

I ride past beat-up service stations. They’re a dying breed.

In this part of the world, these convenience stores are more than gasoline pumps. They are milk, eggs, after-work twelve-packs, Red Man Golden Blend, and gossip.

They sell things like live crickets, red wigglers, and green peanuts from coolers.

The Pit Stop Food Store, for instance,

has a lettered sign which reads: “Now we have pistols and rifles.”

I pass cattle. Mudholes. Ancient farmhouses, white-washed before the Battle of Chickamauga.

“Now entering Lowndes County.”

My wife's family has a hunting camp here. I could die happy in Lowndes.

I see a roadside sign which reads: Greenville; 21 miles. Mobile; 165 miles.

In other words, this exact piece of world is approximately 150 miles from any city.

Some people might call this the Middle of Nowhere. But they’d be wrong, I think. The Middle of Nowhere is any place that's empty, with no heart.

I’ve been to New York City. New York City is the Middle of Nowhere.

I see a faded, handwritten sign on a pine tree: “Deer processing and taxidermy for cheap.”

Another sign: “I can fix your i-fone.”

Now entering Butler…

Birmingham, Alabama—Jeremy sits behind a volunteer desk at Children’s South Pediatric, greeting visitors.

You can't miss him, he’s the only black man in a wheelchair who is smiling more than the legal limit.

Jeremy is a soft-spoken, thirty-one-year-old. He has cerebral palsy. His speech is labored. His eyes are strong.

His birth-mother put him up for adoption as a newborn when she discovered he had problems.

“Had fluid on my brain,” says Jeremy. “My mother couldn't deal with it. So, I was on my own, so to speak.”

So to speak.

He's always been on his own. Nobody adopted him. Jeremy became part of the Alabama foster machine. He underwent God-knows-how-many operations in his lifetime. He learned to be tough and tender at the same time.

Our chat is interrupted by a mother with a sick baby. Jeremy rolls into action. He greets her, then tells her which doctor is on which floor.

“Nurses raised me,” he explains to me. “Spent almost my whole life in Children's Hospital, from ten months old until twenty-five. They my real family.”

It was in the wings of Children’s Hospital that nurses, doctors, and therapists took turns loving the sweet-mannered baby with the big eyes.

Women in scrubs became his mothers. Men in lab coats became his brothers. He taught them about the human spirit. They taught him to smile.

And he smiles a lot. Even though life has been a battle.

He doesn't mind battles though. In fact, that's how he earned his degree from Lawson Community College. It's how he survived childhood.

Recently, he moved into his own apartment. It was a major victory. After a lifetime of hospital beds, foster homes, and rough neighborhoods, Jeremy is a first-time bachelor.

“I LOVE it,” he says. “But sometimes at night, it gets creepy. Ain't used to being alone.”

His coworkers threw him a housewarming party. It was a real shindig. They loaded his…