Nashville, Tennessee—The noon sun is shining on Music Row. The world-famous recording studios, radio stations, and record offices sit lined up like dominoes. I’m walking into one such studio right now.

This is weird.

I walk past mic stands, cables, and foam-covered walls.

When I was a teenager, I played music in a band. We were god-awful. What we lacked in musical talent, we made up for in body odor. One night, a Nashville man visited the bar and tipped the band one hundred dollars. My bandmates got so excited they left for Nashville to see if they could “make it.”

I didn’t go with them because I had a job I couldn’t afford to lose—also I couldn’t stand their smell.

In this town, people dream big. You can see them everywhere. Their dreams are too large to keep beneath their hats. They are hopeful, talented, nice-looking, and most of them don’t have a chance in Hades at “making it.”

At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

This morning, I met a sixty-seven-year-old man who

once moved here from Indiana in hopes of becoming a country songwriter. He washes dishes, and also works as a construction worker. His face has some mileage on it.

“I came here after my mom died,” he said. “Thirty years ago. I just wanted to be able to say I gave it my best shot.”

If you listen to him talk, you’ll find out that he believes he’s somewhat of a failure because his name isn’t in neon lights.

“No, I don’t regret moving here,” he said. “But, it’s been real disappointing, I’ve learned how to be hopeful even when nothing’s working out, you know, that’s not easy.”

He laughed. I could see he was missing a few teeth.

There is something remarkably hopeful about this town and its residents. There is a kind of excitement here. It’s…

We bought a Roku for our TV. I’ll admit, until this morning I thought a Roku was a Japanese three-phrase poem that grade-school children were forced to write at gunpoint.

The Roku is actually a small device that plugs into your television and gives you TV service via the internet. A neighborhood kid named Tyler helped me hook it up because I am technologically challenged.

Tyler is not yet twelve, but he is your all-American preteen, which means he knows everything about technology and will likely be rich one day.

In no time, Tyler had it running and we were watching a spring training baseball game.

The Braves and the Rays were tied. Tyler and I watched in silence for a few minutes. Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a home run. People on TV cheered. I cheered.

Tyler looked like he didn’t understand what he was watching.

“How do you keep score in baseball?” Tyler finally asked.

And this broke my heart.

In my

childhood home, there was no clear division between baseball and the red letters in the Bible. We talked baseball on Sunday mornings, and we talked church during Saturday night ball games.

As fate would have it, there were two baseball gloves on my bookshelf. My wife keeps them around as decoration, to lend a masculine feel to our living room. Today, the mitts served another purpose.

The smallest of the two gloves was my old Little Leaguer. My father bought it for me when I was in second grade. I will never forget that day. Daddy took me into a store, we tried on gloves until we found the right one.

That night, my father showed me how to oil it with bacon grease.

“Grease it up good,” he told me. “And it’ll last for the rest of your life.”

To this day, I cannot smell…

I met Ray and his grandmother outside Cracker Barrel. Granny had her hands full. Ray was running in circles. Ray is 11 years old.

It was the breakfast rush, the hungry crowd was growing impatient. People stood in clumps, waiting their turns to eat toast, eggs, and God-willing, applewood smoked bacon. Ray ran between the people, hollering.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeee!” Ray said.

Granny called for him, but he was too busy to hear. People looked annoyed.

A hostess paged a table of ten. A group of ten fortunate people followed the hostess into the Promised Land, while the rest of us Children of Israel licked our lips, starving to death beside the licorice whips and horehounds.

The old woman kept calling for Ray. When Ray finally came near, I could see he had Down syndrome.

He was a happy child, and he apparently loved his grandmother very much because he laid himself on her lap.

Granny and I talked. I learned that Granny was a lot more than just

a grandmother. I won’t tell too much because it’s none of my business, but Ray is of no blood relation to her.

This gets confusing, so try to keep up.

Granny’s daughter-in-law brought Ray to her door when he was 2 years old. The girl was married to Granny’s son at the time. Ray came from the woman’s first marriage.

The very next year, the young mother bolted for parts unknown, she left the boy. So Granny adopted him.

“Believe me,” said Granny. “I never thought I’d have a child in my life, it’s not something I expected, and I can’t keep up with him.”

Her husband died several years ago, her son works offshore, and without Ray, all she would have is her cat.

“It’s funny, I had already accepted that I’d be alone in my old age, without anyone to…

I am eating a cheeseburger, sipping beer, looking at a beachside restaurant full of families and kids.

There’s a band playing. They couldn’t be any worse if they detuned their instruments and started making bodily noises over the microphone.

But the children are loving the music. Some are dancing. Others are screaming, “Look, Daddy! Daddy! Look, Daddy! Daddy!”

I love kids.

I have always wondered how people with children enjoy their lives. I look around at a table of my middle-aged friends and I am thinking of this very thing.

These people seem to have more responsibility than the rest of us civilians. I’m fact, they’re so responsible that they can’t even focus on a conversation—at least not fully.

They are too busy looking from the corners of their eyes, waiting for catastrophe, or a screaming toddler.

My friend Billy, for instance, is trying to tell a story, but his sentences are incoherent because he keeps diverting his eyes toward his kids.

“Hey,” he begins. “You remember when we were fifteen…”

Billy turns his head.

“...And there was that water tower….”

Another head turn.

“...With the Hallelujah Chorus and lima beans…”

Then he jerks his head and shouts, “PUT YOUR SISTER DOWN, RIGHT NOW! RIGHT NOW, I SAID! DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE! I SWEAR, I WILL WHIP YOUR SHINY LITTLE…”

My friend Nathan tells me:

“The thing about kids is, they say ‘Daddy’ about fifteen hundred times per day. It’s enough to make you nuts.”

“Yeah,” another friend says. “And I wish my kids would just let me go pee in peace.”

My friends’ wives sit at the other side of the table, rocking babies, talking. My wife is with them.

My wife and I exchange a glance. We are the only childless couple here tonight. We smile at each other.

She rolls her…

Thank you. That is the​ purpose of this column. I want to say “thanks.” I don't know you, but I believe in the good you do.

In public, I see you sometimes and think to myself: "I wish someone would thank them." But I never do because if I did, you’d think I was a complete nut job.

Maybe I am a nut job. But I’m allowed to be that way. After all, I am a columnist—sort of—and that means I am missing some crayons.

Long ago, I used to deliver newspapers with my mother. We used to deliver to a fella who would answer the door in pajamas. He had messy hair and a bushy white beard. He always gave me a five-dollar tip.

He was generous. If he wasn’t home one day, he would pay me ten bucks the next day. He was a columnist, my mother told me. And that’s why he was such a weirdo in weird pajamas. Even his house smelled weird.

I suppose I ought

to thank him while I am at it.

Also, thanks to the man I saw in the gas station who bought a lottery scratch-off ticket. Who won thirty bucks, then turned around and gave the cash to a woman behind him in line. What a guy.

The woman thanked him in a language that sounded like Russian, but he didn't seem to understand, so he answered: “Alright.”

Thank you, Cindy—the woman who translated one of my speeches in American Sign Language for the front row​. She told me I talked very fast and now she has problems with her rotator cuff.

She also taught me how to cuss in sign language.

Thank you to the seventy-year-old man who went back to school to get his GED. And his forty-six-year-old daughter, who tutored him.

And you. You deserve thanks, but you don't always get it. In…

Randy was at a Little League game, watching his nephew play. Only, he was not paying attention to his nephew. He was watching the dugout.

A boy warmed the bench. He was all alone.

Maybe it was the way the kid held his head that made Randy feel so bad. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they hold their head. The kid sort of drooped his chin.

The game was in the eighth inning. The boy wore his uniform, it was spotless, no dirt. He sat beside the water cooler. Head down.

Randy made his way to the dugout and introduced himself. Randy asked why he wasn't playing on the field.

“‘Cause,” the boy said. “I ain't no good at baseball.”

“Don’t say ‘ain’t,’” Randy said. “It ain’t proper.”

This was a course of habit. For Randy’s whole life, his mother had corrected him for using the word “ain’t.”

“Aren’t,” Randy suggested. “Say ‘aren’t‘ instead.”

“Aren’t?” the boy said. “I AREN’T no good at baseball?

That ain’t right.”

Randy had to think long and hard. He couldn’t find the right word to say in place of “ain’t.”

The boy looked at Randy like the man’s wheel was spinning but the hamster was dead.

“Well,” said Randy. “It ain’t a real word, so don’t say ‘ain’t.’”

And so it went.

Randy told the kid his life story. It wasn’t a long tale, but it was a sad one. His father walked out on his mother when he was five. He had to grow up on his own, his mother worked two jobs.

The boy had a similar story. He was alone in this world, warming a bench.

But nobody needs to hear a hard luck story when they have one of their own. So Randy offered to help the kid improve at…

The cookbook I am holding is old. It is every hometown recipe book you’ve ever seen. Spiral bound, thick, stained, and there is a sketch on the cover featuring stately oaks draping over a shaded street.

Inside are the four gospels: church food, wedding food, funeral food, and congealed salads.

You won't find many things holier than these recipes. They are American history, described in standard measurement form.

I once knew an old Sunday school teacher who made buttermilk pie that made grown men loosen their neckties. Once, at a Fourth of July supper, she gave me a slice and told me:

“God wants all his children to be a little soft in the middle.”

And I’ve always believed that.

This particular cookbook I am holding, however, comes from the Brewton Civic League. The recipes within are everything you need to find a happy life.

Cheese grits, Squirrel D’ete, Congealed Cantaloupe Salad, mint juleps, Miss Paula’s pickled shrimp, and Coca-Cola salad—whatever that is.

None of them use the word “margarine,” but “Oleo.” And in this book, you will

also find the secret to perfect fried chicken—peanut oil and Jesus.

You will discover that measurements are open to loose interpretation. A “handful” here, a “passel” there. A “dash,” a “pinch,” a “dusting,” or a “touch.”

Also, there are a dozen variations of chicken-broccoli casserole. Though, the only discernible differences are the varying amounts of cheese.

In this book you will find the exact deviled eggs approved by the Methodist church.

But anyway, I have a long history with homemade cookbooks. In fact, the article you’re reading was typed on a manual typewriter that once typed a similar cookbook.

Many moons ago, I typed 418 recipes using only my index fingers. The recipes were then fed through a Xerox machine which resided in the church office.

After that, the finished recipes were placed into position based on pure favoritism according Mrs. Bellmaker.…