Shelby County High School is quiet. It’s summer. Kids are on break. Classrooms are empty, halls are vacant, the school office is a tomb.

Today, the library is the only room with lights on. Inside are people wearing nice clothes.

There are tables with finger food. Chicken salad is the star of this show. There are sugary items galore. Sweet tea. Lemonade.

The occasion: Mister Latham’s retirement party.

Behind the library desk sits the man himself. A bearded fella in a straw hat. He’s got a happy face, and a personality that could light up a Friday-night home game.

“Mister Latham’s been in this school system thirty-two years,” says one woman. “Been here since before some teachers were even born.”

Ask anyone. Mister Latham is the face of this county. Almost everyone in the region knows him.

His job description isn’t even worth mentioning—because this was more than just a job. It was his home. His church. His family. His world.

Nobody here can articulate how much he means. But they

try.

“Describing how we’re gonna miss Mister Latham,” says one man, “is like describing how much you’d miss water or air.”

He’s taught it all: English, academic research, he’s been a shoulder for crying into, a sounding board.

And he writes. Mister Latham is, and always has been, a writer’s writer. He's written since his early days. Not long ago, he started a blog. It began as a way to share meaningful stories.

The blog took off like a souped-up Pontiac, and his words have become the voice of his own people.

One woman tells me, “I always knew he was talented, but he's always just been so humble.”

Humbleness. Another of his afflictions.

Today, his friends…

The happiest day in eleven-year-old Aaron’s life was when he went hunting for the first time.

“All he ever wanted to do was go hunting,” says Aaron’s mother. “His daddy was a big hunter and fisherman.”

Was.

But Aaron’s daddy died in a car accident many years ago. He never got a chance to go.

Enter Joe Seuferer, neighbor and avid hunter, who just moved in next door with his girlfriend.

The first things little Aaron noticed were the Browning stickers on Joseph’s truck. One thing led to another.

Aaron’s first buck was a six-pointer.

The best moment in eighteen-year-old Erica’s natural life was her first guitar recital—which happened last week.

As a girl, Erica lost two fingers in a ski-lift accident. She's been wearing her sleeves long ever since.

A year ago, she she saw a YouTube video of a man with no arms, playing guitar with his feet.

“When I saw that guy,” said Erica. “I was like, ‘I got no excuses.’”

Erica claims that after learning guitar, she feels she can do anything.

Forty-three-year-old Danny just experienced his happiest earthly day acting

in a Hollywood Western.

The lucky dog.

Producers put him on a horse and dressed him in full cowboy regalia.

“I was an extra,” said Danny. “It was like living a childhood dream.”

Danny started riding horses during childhood. He wanted to be in rodeos, but it was not to be. His family went bankrupt when he was a teenager, they sold the farm.

“Losing everything at that young age was traumatic,” he said. “I quit riding altogether.”

Today, Danny makes good money pushing a pencil. He has a wife. Two kids. He pays the bills.

He started riding again last February.

When a friend arranged for Danny to be in a movie, he nearly had a heart attack.

“I got to ride with the outlaws. I know it sounds silly, but I was REALLY…

DEAR SEAN:

I have just graduated high school and I can't go to college right away because I don’t really know what I want to do with my life right now, and my family doesn’t have money either, so what’s the point? I feel like such a loser because I’m not going. And I don't know what I should do.

Anxiously awaiting your response,
I FEEL LIKE A BIG LOSER

DEAR BIG LOSER:

Pleased to meet you, my name is Big Loser Senior.

You shouldn’t be writing me about this. I’m not a counselor, I’m not academic. I’m not even a real writer, truth be told. I accidentally fell into the literary lifestyle on a bet.

A little about me:

I didn’t go to college until I was a grown man. I worked.

A list of my loser jobs: hanging drywall, laying tile, commercial framing, laying sod, landscaping, house painting, scooping ice cream, hanging gutter, manning a deep-fryer, schucking oysters.

Power-washing, patting hamburgers, washing dishes, playing guitar in beer-joints, and dressing up like a mascot for a car-wash grand opening—on one occasion.

My late father

was a stick welder. My family is blue-collar. I come from rough stock. We don’t use college words, only four-letter ones—and improper conjunctions.

We use phrases like: "Ain’t," and "y’all," and "hot aw-mighty.” And: “Want in one hand, tee-tee in the other; see which one fills up first.”

So I’m not your advice man.

Here's what I will say: when I was nine, my father discovered I liked writing. One morning, he handed me a scrap of paper. Written on it were extra-large words, in sloppy handwriting.

I can still remember each word.

They were: munificent, obtuse, loquacious, prosaic, ostentatious, soliloquy, and verbose.

“What’s this?” I asked him.

“Writers need good vocabularies,” he said. “And your old man never went to college, he's stupid. I picked the biggest words I could find in the…

It’s a morning wedding. A simple one. There is Spanish moss in the trees. The birds are out. This is John’s first marriage. He's forty-five years young. It’s the biggest day of his entire life.

And I forgot a wedding gift.

This is his cousin’s hunting land, a place John thought would be a perfect spot for a shindig. He was right.

John’s new wife has two kids. Boys. They are pure energy, but well-behaved.

John has no family at the ceremony. No mother, father, uncles, aunts, cousins. There are only two older men standing for him. They are wiry and weathered.

They used to work on oil rigs with John. He calls them the only family he’s ever had. They treat him like a sort of son.

The bride’s family is in attendance. They are salt-of-the-earth folks. Khakis and button-downs, cotton dresses. Simple.

“I look forward to being a dad to her boys,” says John. “I grew up without one, I know how bad kids need a

father.”

John knows a lot more than that. Two years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer. It was bad. He went through surgery, chemo, nausea, hair loss, weight loss. The works. He’s been in remission ever since, but it’s changed him.

“Scared the you-know-what outta me,” says John. “Now I wake up each day and think, ‘Man, is it gonna come back?’ It plays with you mind.”

She is the picture of loveliness. She was married once before. Her husband left her. She and her boys moved in with her mother.

John was working on a concrete crew, laying a driveway for her mother’s rental house. Her kids befriended John right away.

“He was all they could talk about for days,” she says. “I thought, geez,…

His funeral was in the dead of summer. It was graveside. Early morning. Muggy.

His skin looked powder-white, his face wore an artificial smile. Red, white, and blue draped over his casket.

They did him up good.

Seven riflemen fired at the sky. A lone trumpet played “Taps.” If there was a dry eye in the county, it was made of glass.

Once, I went to a ball game with him. I was a boy. The organ played “The Star Spangled Banner.”

He stood, saluted, and sang in a voice that was part tenor, part Andy Griffith.

I asked why he sang so loud.

“‘Cause,” he said. “That’s one hell of a flag flying up there.”

I asked where they shot him during the War.

He lifted his arm and pointed to his armpit. “Already showed you this a hundred times,” he said.

Make that one hundred and one.

He grew up on a dirt farm. He was as tough as the callouses on his

hands. He was a musician.

As a young man, he sang on a Thursday-evening gospel radio hour, flatpicking a guitar in a one-room radioshack.

He fell in love. She came from a poor family. They married before he shipped to Europe.

The night before their wedding, they slept in the same bed—on top the covers, with their clothes on.

“He was nothing if not decent,” was once said of him.

But he was more than decent. He was ten-foot tall. His heart was purple, his Case knife was sharp, his fishing rods were bamboo. He listened to the Opry, and Hit Parade. He believed in solid cars, and pretty music.

I liked to watch him play mandolin.

[READ MORE...]

I think about you sometimes. Especially during summer, when families get together for picnics and fireworks. When fathers wear T-shirts that read: “World’s Greatest Dad.”

I like those.

You’re the son I never had. You never existed, but I still think about you.

Mostly, I wonder what color your hair would have been. I have a feeling it would’ve been red—like your old man’s.

My daddy had red hair, too. And even though he died long ago, sharing his hair color makes me feel less alone.

I would’ve taught you baseball. Chances are, you would’ve been awful at it—just like me.

But I love the game. And I love what goes with it. The hot dogs, the twenty-five-dollar beers, screaming in the stands. Fathers and sons.

I’ve gone to many games alone. I would've made sure you didn’t.

I would’ve told you stories. That way, you could’ve had a million to tell your own redhead one day. I think all World’s Greatest Daddies need stories. Good ones. Tales that make their sons proud.

The few I have of my own father are precious.

Anyway, I’m not

a teacher, but I would’ve taught you. Things like: how to play “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” on a guitar, how to eat ice cream sandwiches, how to gig frogs, and how to speak slow when delivering a punchline.

I would’ve shown you how to bait a hook, clean a bream, and use words like, “I love you,” too much.

You would’ve learned to open doors for girls, and how to apologize to a woman with heart.

I would’ve learned from you. You would've discovered that I made a lot of mistakes.

But I would’ve told you that this world is not all Memorial-Day sunshine and flowers—even though I wish it were. That the problem is that people are selfish. Every last person. Even your old man.

But, there is also something in…

He is young. He is wearing a red shirt. A cap. He drives a Ford pickup that has seen better days. The roof is rusted, the wheel bearings are in bad shape.

The kid is on lunch break, parked in a grocery-store parking lot. He is eating bananas because fruit is cheap and he has a light wallet.

His windows are rolled down. He’s only got ten minutes before he’s expected back at a jobsite, to hang gutter on a three-story house.

It’s god-awful work. He’s not afraid of heights, but he certainly doesn’t love nine-hundred-foot ladders.

The kid finishes eating. He tosses a banana peel into his flatbed. He tries to start his truck. It makes a coughing noise. He tries again. The truck sputters. The kid cusses.

The old Ford has crossed the river.

These are the days before cellphones ruled the world, there’s no way to call the kid’s boss. His boss is already at work, probably glancing at his wristwatch.

The kid sits, wondering what happens after he gets fired.

He could always join the circus and clean up after the elephants.

Across the parking lot: a man. He’s short. Gray hair. He asks if the kid is having engine trouble. The kid hardly understands him beneath his thick Mexican accent.

The man pops the hood. He leans inward. He tells the kid, “Try it now!”

The kid turns the key.

The gray-haired man winks. “I know what is thee problem,” he says. “We can buy part in town. Come. We take my car.”

“I can’t,” the kid says. “I’m supposed to be at work.”

“Work?

The man understands this word.

They pile into the man’s Honda, which looks like it’s rusting apart. The…

I'm at a jewelry store to get my watch repaired. It’s a cheap watch.

The jeweler is a white-haired man with a grandaddy face. He’s staring at my watch, squinting.

“It’s Italian,” I tell him. “El Timexo.”

He says the thing needs a new battery-o.

There is a kid browsing the glass cases behind me. He’s young, skinny built. He’s wearing a neon-orange reflective vest, work boots.

He asks the girl at the counter if he can see a ring. She unlocks the case.

He looks at it, frowns, then hands it back.

He asks, “Should ALL engagement rings have diamonds?”

She tells the kid that there’s no constitutional mandate, but that it’s strongly recommended by the American Jeweler's Association.

He asks about payment plans. She shows him a flyer and tells him about financing options.

The kid asks to see a cheaper ring.

He looks hard at it. “You sure this is the right size? It looks so big.”

“Yep. That’s a six.”

“If it’s too

big, can I bring it back?”

“We can resize it.”

He takes a few heavy breaths. He sighs. He says, “I just hope she says yes. I mean, I think she will. But what if she doesn’t?”

The woman smiles. She holds up her left hand for him, showing him a small ring. Then, she tells the story that goes with it.

She was at a swimming pool. Her boyfriend showed up unannounced. He climbed the high-dive. He screamed his proposal from the top of the world.

She hollered, “Yes!”

So, he attempted a backflip. He slipped. He skinned his backside and hit his head on the springboard. He had to visit the…

A church lawn. The middle of nowhere.

He’s old. He’s wearing high-waisted trousers, a pressed shirt, and a fedora. So help me, a fedora. Seeing him is like seeing nineteen hundred and fifty-two.

My dog, Ellie Mae, follows this man.

There aren't many folks here, maybe fifty. Kids are playing with fidget spinners. Girls wear summer dresses. Young men wear boots. Middle-aged men in khakis.

This is dinner on the church grounds.

Behind the building is a hayfield, recently scalped. A few boys hop the fence.

Tables are lined with casserole dishes. Plastic pitchers of tea. Behind the church is a grill. It’s the sturdy kind made from a two-ton iron pipe.

The smell of pecan smoke makes the world seem happy.

Abe is cooking ribs and chicken. His name isn’t really Abe, he admits. It’s Danny. He was the youngest of eight brothers and sisters. He was an incurable tattle-butt. His mother nicknamed him “Honest Abe” to cure him of his habit.

The name stuck.

“Any hotdogs?” asks a kid.

“You want HOTDOGS?” Abe remarks. “Instead of RIBS? What’s wrong with you, child?”

I’m

next in line. I ask for a little of everything.

Honest Abe tells me greediness is a vice worse than gluttony.

The evening kicks off with a gospel quartet. The high-tenor is outstanding. He sings notes only Gabriel could reach.

On our blanket: two adults and ten empty plates. My coonhound is nowhere in sight. She has made friends with the old man in the fedora. They are across the lawn.

The unfaithful animal.

The quartet sings “Moving Up To Gloryland.” The baritone is singing so low, it looks like he’s about to lose consciousness.

The adults finish eating. The sun is almost gone. Kids are in the hayfield. And it looks like—if my eyes are correct—they’re playing Red Rover.

As I live and breathe.

I haven’t played Red Rover since fourth grade. Greg…

Monroeville, Alabama—the sun is setting. One hundred and nine people wait outside the courthouse to see “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

You can hear crickets downtown.

In line, I meet a millworker from Milton, a mechanic from Montgomery, a Birmingham neurosurgeon, a football coach, a peanut farmer.

Behind me is a literature professor from New Hampshire. He’s a slender man. Polite. He has a big vocabulary. It takes two minutes to discover that “unparalleled” is his favorite word.

He’s driven a long way to see this play. He is a well-known author—I know this because he tells me.

Three times.

“We’re excited about the show,” says the professor. “We hear it’s unparalleled.”

He’s right. This is the quintessential hometown play, in the world’s most famous hometown—second only to Mayberry.

This production has all my favorite stuff. Clapboard porches, antique automobiles, linen suits, ladies in cotton dresses.

The professor sits a few seats from me. He tells me he's memorized parts of the famous novel. He demonstrates this. He's pleased with himself.

“What brings you here tonight?” he asks.

“My cousin, Robert,” I say. “He plays

the farmer.”

The play starts. It's fast paced. The second act is a clencher, taking place inside the old courtroom. It's a majestic building with heart-pine floors made from trees which were once cut from a forest up the road.

The cast’s delivery is heartfelt. Close your eyes. You can hear sniffles from the audience. Most of those are mine.

Afterward, the professor remarks, “I can NOT articulate how this UNPARALLELED story and its cupidity absolutely ingressed me.”

Gazoontite.

Well, my vocabulary might be small, but I’m inclined to agree with him. This play is some kind of special. The soft accents, the down-home morals, the women wearing nylons thick enough to stop bullets.

This classic story is about community—one so small you need a magnifying glass to see it. It’s about small-town living. The good,…