This place is lousy. The food is awful, the beer comes in plastic cups and tastes like toilet water.

The man beside me at the bar weighs a buck-ten, sopping wet. He has a white handle-bar mustache and old skin that looks like rawhide. If I had to guess his age: one hundred and twelve.

I shouldn't be drinking tonight. I have bronchitis. But I'm a hick, and Alabama's playing Arkansas. I can't do barbecue and football without Budweiser.

“I ain't never seen nothing like it,” Mustache says. “Y'all're the luckiest generation, but the MOST miserable.”

Miserable. That about describes me right now. I can't quit hacking. My wife had to sleep in the spare bedroom with a pillow over her head last night.

The man goes on, “We got hurricanes, diseases, and people dying, but all we do is fight about politics...”

While he's jawing, I realize can't taste my food—or my beer. My tastebuds are collecting unemployment.

Mustache says, "There's so damn much to be grateful for, but folks walk around looking

like they been drinking castor oil. You know. Hateful.”

I push my sandwich away. The mention of castor oil has ruined my evening. Mama gave me spoonfuls of the stuff to treat everything from constipation to C-minuses.

“It breaks my heart,” Mustache says. “Americans love complaining. It's like they're angry. REALLY angry. Don't know what's happening anymore, we're falling apart from the inside out.”

I signal the bartender for my bill, but he's too engrossed with the old man to notice.

The old timer says, “There was a time people were kind. Boys opened doors for girls, folks pulled cars over to help change strangers' tires. If travelers needed shelter, people put them up.”

Well, those are sweet thoughts, sir. But that America disappeared along with manual stick-shifts and argyle. Flip on the news, thumb through the paper. This world hates each other.

"What do you…

I met a boy in the supermarket parking lot. I saw him loading groceries into a rusty car. His young mother sat up front with a baby.

He was a serious kid. Thirteen maybe. His daddy had just died. Brain tumor. It screwed him up.

I helped him load a large bag of dog food. When we finished, he shook my hand like a thirty-year-old.

And for a second, I was thirteen.

In my memory, I'm standing in the gravel parking lot of a rural supermarket. I can hear my kid sister screaming in the truck. Mama soft-talking her.

Behind me: Mister Stew, stepping out of his vehicle. Nosy. He's just learned the news about Daddy. I can see it on his face.

I remember that only a few days earlier, I'd overheard a conversation between two adults—at church. They'd talked about me.

“You hear about his daddy?” one man had remarked.

“No,” said the other. “What happened?”

"Kilt his self."

“Oh my God, that kid's gonna be screwed up.”

It occurred to me then, that this

was my new lot in life. And I would learn this fully when I showed up for ball practice. When all the boys scooted toward the other end of the dugout, avoiding eye-contact.

That day, on the walk home, I tossed my glove into a ditch and never went back.

Even my sleep was cursed. I'd lay awake, unable to shut my eyes for more than a minute. One night, I wandered into our pasture to watch stars. The next morning, Mama found me asleep near the goat pen.

Money got tight. Childhood ended. I learned to do laundry, change lightbulbs, fix sinks. I took thankless jobs. Mama and I pooled our paychecks together for rent. We wore second-hand clothes.

That all seems like a hundred years ago now.

Anyway kid, I don't know what you're feeling. It wouldn't matter if I did.…

I don't fit in at grade schools. Truth told, I never have. There's good reason for this:

1. I'm bad at math.

2. That's enough counting.

So here I am, in Mrs. Sylvia's second-grade classroom. I have forty-five minutes with her students. I'm supposed to talk about writing. And Mrs. Sylvia hopes I'll be able to teach them something.

I doubt it.

I don't teach. Once, I trained a Labrador to fetch newspapers. It was a mistake. He spent the rest of his natural life making steaming headlines in our backyard. I told Mrs. Sylvia as much.

Her response: “Look, I don't care WHAT you talk about, just don't let the kids set the building on fire while I'm down the hall.”

Thus, we begin class with a simple writing exercise. I give them a fill-in-the-blank sentence, such as: "My mother says I..."

“Stink!” one kid hollers.

“TALK TOO LOUD!” another child adds.

“Hey," says a boy. "I really gotta poop!”

Creative juices are churning, we try another. My next class directive: “Tell me what's most important in your life.”

The class runs quiet. Twenty-six towheads reflecting on life-importance, chewing on pencils.

“My most important thing,” one kid explains. “Is my brother. He makes me mad, but I love him, he's my BFF.”

A girl adds, "People are important."

A redheaded boy chimes in, “I think being happy is most important.”

Okay. Happiness. Now you're talking about the Holy Grail of adulthood, kid. Misery is in our drinking water, staying cheery is about as easy as licking a hot skillet.

The truth is, this is a mean world. Every day, mankind thinks up new ways of killing itself. And if it can't succeed, it just taxes people to death. I don't even watch the news without popping Alka-Seltzer.

Opie goes on, “Yeah, but everyone CAN be happy if they love.”

"LOVE!" another girl shouts.

Then: a violent bodily noise originating…

I took a long drive yesterday. It was accidental. I was only supposed to visit Geneva, Alabama on business. But I got distracted.

Sunshine does that to me.

I practically grew up in a truck bench-seat, taking drives. Daddy and I would pile in and run the roads for no reason. He'd say, "God, calling this weather perfect would be a grave understatement."

Then we'd head for nowhere. We'd chew black licorice, he'd sip a beer can.

Anyway, since I didn't have anything pressing to do, I pointed my truck in whichever direction felt easiest. Ellie Mae laid in the seat beside me—sawing logs.

The scenery: fields, corn rows, pine forests. Bass ponds with cattails on the edges. Pastures green enough to kill.

I stopped at a gas station where I found black licorice. I bought three packs.

One for me, two for Daddy.

More driving. I went for a few hours. It's funny, sometimes the older I get, the more like a child I feel. If you were to call me a responsible adult, you'd be

making a grave overstatement.

I passed places like Bellwood, and Clayhatchee. I'll bet they don't get too worked up in Bellwood.

I ran over the gentle Choctaw. I cruised by an old woman reclining on her porch-sofa, spitting. She waved.

You haven't lived until you've sat on a porch-sofa, swatting the back of your neck.

I drove past junky areas. Clapboard houses, moldy—prettier than new siding could ever be. And overgrown lawns.

Manicured yards make me nervous. Boys can't chase lizards in short grass. And even if they could, why would they?

I zipped past trees as big around as wagon wheels. Rusted trailers. Dilapidated satellite dishes. A broke-down service garage that went belly-up fifty years ago. A church missing its front door.

I came to a four-way stop in the middle of pasture. It looked like God had hand-drawn a dirt cross…

I can't tell you her name. She swore me to secrecy. So, I'm going to call her Patricia. She's an Alabama-born girl, with more brains than a dog has ticks.

Patricia is twenty-three, works full time, goes to college, and she has a seven-year-old son.

“When I got pregnant,” Patricia says. “I thought my life was over, you know? Like, I couldn't believe I was having baby at sixteen. And what was I gonna do with my life?”

It was an adolescent mistake. She tried to hide her growing belly from her mother, but it didn't work. Her mother was no fool. Finally, she sat Patricia down and gave her the third-degree. Patricia hung her head in shame.

“I expected my mom to be disappointed in me, but she wasn't. She was all excited. I was like, 'But Mom, I'm only sixteen.' She just told me, 'Everything's gonna be okay, Patricia. A baby is always a blessing.'"

A blessing.

But as it happened, life's blessings were beginning to run thin. Before Patricia's son was

born, her mother died in a head-on collision on the interstate.

“I was messed up,” says Patricia. "And it was really scary being by myself at night, thinking I'm gonna have a baby like—alone. I didn't know who to ask for help, so I called my teacher.”

Enter Mrs. Murphy: a churchgoing teacher who is as active in her youth group as she is in her classroom. A woman who's as determined as she is smart.

Murphy's first move was to take Patricia to church. The small assembly welcomed the girl with wide-open casserole dishes.

They threw baby showers, took Patricia shopping for new clothes, and if that wasn't enough, Mrs. Murphy scheduled a rotation of women to stay with her at home—nightshift, and dayshift.

“I was never alone,” Patricia says. “And when I had my baby, I had like, five or six women in the…

This kid is a busy fella. He's pacing the doctor's waiting room, straightening magazines. I can't figure out why, but he's arranging them into neat stacks, adjusting chairs, too.

He and I are the only ones here. I wish he'd quit fidgeting, he's making me nervous.

He walks up to me. “Can you scoot your chair back a few inches?” he asks.

"My chair?" The truth is, I'm not in the mood to be scooting. My head is about to pop, my chest feels like it's been pumped full of industrial-grade hog snot.

“I'm trying to make this row of chairs STRAIGHT,” he says.

"What are you, the janitor?"

No, he's not. His name is Chris. He's skinny, black, and about as tall as a possum standing on its hind legs. I scoot my chair backward and he thanks me.

“I like things to be neat,” he's saying.

This kid would have a field day with my office.

While we're talking, I can't hold a cough in any longer. I take a moment to hack up a lung,

a rib, and one rusted license plate.

“You're sick,” Chris says.

“Yep, bronchitis, here to get a shot and some antibiotics.”

"A shot? I HATE shots."

Wait until you get my age. One day, they quit sticking you in the shoulder and move south.

It turns out, Chris is here with his mother. Her kidneys don't work. She's been withering away the past few years. He says she's lost forty pounds. Treatments aren't helping. And since you can't exactly buy kidneys at Winn Dixie, she's on a long waiting list for a transplant.

According to him, specialists gave her bad news. If they don't get the organ soon, the worst could happen. Chris says people in their church are praying.

“God can do anything,” he adds—because Chris is too young to be cynical. "God can probably even make YOU feel better."

Probably,…

I just saw a television commercial that made me blush. The starved-looking swimsuit model on the screen wasn't wearing enough to floss her teeth with. I don't even know what the ad was selling—nor do I give a flannel.

Look, I'm not complaining. God help me, I'm not.

Yes I am.

What happened to women? I'm talking real figures and Grecian curvature? Once upon a time, girls had meat on their bones and weren't afraid to finish off a fried chicken drumstick? There wasn't a thing wrong with them.

My grandaddy once said, “Boy, the best advice I can give you: marry a woman who wears cotton panties and eats until she's good and full.”

I gave a confused look.

He went on, "The sort of lady who wears expensive, satin britches and eats like a bird, she's trouble.”

Trouble.

I've thought about that my whole life. Subsequently, I also learned Grandaddy's advice isn't something you bring up at your mama's Bible study—unless you want the Jesus slapped out of you with a hairbrush.

Admittedly, I'm

inclined to agree with Grandaddy. But then, I come from a long line of redneck women. Strong and firm ladies, who could clean a chicken carcass, sweep the porch, hang laundry, and kiss your skinned knees during the same afternoon.

We've done modern girls wrong.

My friend's teenage daughter claims she's afraid to eat in front of boys. She's a brunette beauty whose PE teacher told her she was overweight. The entire class calculated body-fat percentages on computers.

This played havoc on the girl's mind. She quit eating suppers, started living at the gym. She even began vomiting after meals. One day, she passed out at school. They sent her to a shrink.

The doc suggested putting her on a diet.

God help us. I'm no psychologist, but we don't need any more carb-counting. We need women unafraid. We need less size-zeroes, less two-pieces,…

It was my worst week ever. I had an apartment located smack-dab on the university campus. It smelled like moldy goat cheese. I felt like the oldest student God ever created. Maybe I was.

College kids would point and say things like, “Hey, Grandpa, the morgue's that way.”

Then skateboard off.

Anyway, I applied to a school program. The professor said my work stunk. So, I applied to another. I failed the interview. I called my wife.

“What am I doing here?” I said. “The professors treat me like a dumb redneck, students act like I belong in a nursing home.”

“You aren't dumb,” she said. “But you are kinda redneck."

I persevered—though I was about as uncomfortable as a cricket in a honey puddle. Then, one day, a campus official approached me.

“I don't know how to tell you this," she said. "A computer glitch deleted your name from our system. Sorry, but we have to drop you for several semesters.”

"You're kicking me out?" I asked.

"Well, yes."

In a few hours, I was driving

back home. I cried in the truck. I stopped at a gas station, ate three honey buns, and counted the pennies in my pocket to make myself feel worse. My cellphone vibrated. It was my wife.

“It's Daddy," she said, sobbing. “He's fallen. There's a lot of blood. He's in ICU.”

When I got home, I forgot all about school. While my wife held vigil at the hospital, I loped into rush-hour traffic for coffee. I considered my future career options, which were less-than plentiful. I was leaning toward taxidermy.

Just then, the vehicle ahead slammed its brakes. I rear-ended it hard. The airbag busted my cheekbone, I went unconscious.

When I awoke in an ambulance, the paramedic wore a grave face. He said, “Good thing you didn't pee your pants, lotta folks mess themselves during car wrecks."

Thank God for small blessings.

She drinks beer with me. That might seem like a little thing to you. It's not. During football season, it's everything. I need a beer-sipping partner when watching games. One who doesn't smell bad or put his feet on my coffee table.

She's smart. I once saw her worm her way out of a traffic violation. She turned on her charm, giggling for the deputy. I sat in the passenger seat, innocent as Helen Keller. The officer kept giving me sideways glances, as though he wanted to say, “C'mon honey, let's ditch the stiff.”

She's a Scorpio. Admittedly, I don't know much about zodiacs. But, we get scorpions in our house. And, from what I know about them: (a) you can't kill them, (b) not even with a twelve-gauge.

She's strong. I've seen my wife move a refrigerator by herself. After I had surgery, she muscled the new appliance inside. Then, she cracked open a beer with her teeth, and powdered her nose.

We've traveled the World's Longest Yard Sale

a few times—three thousand miles of Southern rust and garbage. I watched her whittle the price on a pair of red cowgirl boots using nothing but her sugary accent. The boots were twenty bucks; she paid a nickel. The man asked for her number. So, she winked and said, "On a scale of one to ten, I'm an eleven."

She can outfish me, outrun me, out-talk, out-argue, and outsmart me. She's slugged me with a baseball bat once—it was an accident. She landed me in the emergency room twice—also accidental. And she has beaten me so hard at Texas Hold'em that I still owe her nearly eight hundred thousand dollars.

She makes chicken soup when I'm sick. I'm talking the real stuff—fresh poultry, plucked clean. Like Mama's. And she can toss together food fit for company using nothing but hominy, butter, and cheese.

And when the doctors told us they…

I'm a survivor is what I am,” she says. “I want you to write that in your little article about me.”

She's in a chair by the window—a soft recliner. On the table beside her: porcelain figurines of Georgia bulldogs, a few Jesus statues.

“When I's a girl," she says. "I fell off a mule, my hair got caught in the stirrups, thing drug me for half a mile. My daddy said he ain't never seen a tougher girl. Finally ripped my hair clean out.”

She's too old to live on her own now, but she still has independence at her retirement facility. Athena comes to help straighten her room now and then. Athena is large, black, kindhearted, and I wish she would consider adopting me.

Athena says, “She don't like to say it, but we think she older than she knows. That's why I thought you'd like writing about her. Think she almost hundred years old, but ain't nobody really sure.”

Nobody's sure because she doesn't have a birth certificate.

“I's born

in a two-room cabin," the old woman says. "Daddy put me to work plowing the very next day.”

Athena laughs at this. She has a beautiful laugh. I wish Athena would let me sit in her lap for a little while.

“Daddy wanted all boys,” she goes on. “What he GOT was two girls and two boys. And we were all fine-looking, too.”

The girls worked as hard as their brothers, doing chores meant for kids with tough hands and testosterone. By her teenage years, she could plow straight lines and shell peas with her arms tied behind her back. She believes this grit is what helped her survive cancer.

“When I's in my forties,” she says. “Doctors found cancer in my breasts, back then all they knew was to cut'em off. They told me I'd probably die anyway.”

Athena shakes her head and whispers, “Jesus."

“So,…