It was the dogs. The dogs are what got me.

When you tour the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City, you see a lot. You see twisted steel girders. Baby-faced portraits of the deceased. Mutilated emergency vehicles.

But it was the dogs that wrecked me.

The dog exhibit is pretty small. Located in the far corner of the museum, with photographs of search and rescue dogs.

You see dogs nosing through rubble, wearing safety harnesses. You see them in their prime. They’re all deceased now. But they were spectacular.

There was Riley. Golden retriever. He was trained to find living people. But, he didn’t find any. Instead, he recovered the remains of firefighters. Riley kept searching for a live survivor, but found none. Riley’s morale tanked.

“I tried my best to tell Riley he was doing his job,” said his handler. “He had no way to know that when firefighters and police officers came over to hug him, and for a split second you can see them crack a smile—that Riley was

succeeding at doing an altogether different job. He provided comfort. Or maybe he did know.”

There was Coby and Guiness. Black and yellow Labs. From California. Surfer dogs. They found dozens of human remains.

And Abigail. Golden Lab. Happy. Energetic. Committed. Big fan of bacon.

Sage. A border collie. Cheerful. Endless energy. Her first mission was searching the Pentagon wreckage after the attacks. She recovered the body of the terrorist who piloted American Airlines Flight 77.

Jenner. Black Lab. At age 9, he was one of the oldest dogs on the scene. Jenner’s handler, Ann Wichmann, remembers:

“It was 12 to 15 stories high of rubble and twisted steel. My first thought was, ‘I can't send Jenner into that…’ At one point, [Jenner] disappeared down a hole under the rubble and I was like, ‘Ugggggh!' Such a heart-stopping moment..."

Trakr. German Shepherd. Tireless worker. Worked until he…

Ah, New York City. There is a slight chill. The city is full of Midwesterners, all wearing white Reeboks, all staring straight upward.

My wife and I have just stepped out of our cab, after leaving LaGuardia Third World International Airport. Our cab driver was a nice man who drove upwards of 75 mph with only one finger on the wheel, and that was just on the sidewalks.

Right now, my wife and I are walking to our hotel. Because that’s all you do in New York City, really. You walk. You walk for miles, until the blisters on your feet become the size of U.S. Congresspersons.

Right now, we are stuck walking in a massive clot of people moving like a herd of bison. We are trekking onward, hauling our luggage, dodging cabs.

Even so, my wife is thrilled to be in this town. It is her first time visiting. So she is taking cellphone pictures by the gazillions.

My wife finds important photographic moments wherever she glances. So far, she has taken pictures of our cab’s interior, my half-eaten airport bagel, the

plane’s lavatory, and a middle-aged woman walking down the street dressed like a giant marital aid.

I also have this feeling the locals can tell we’re out-of-towners. We have that look about us. I met a cashier in a coffee shop, for example, when I was trying to order a large iced tea.

My tea arrived. “There’s something wrong with my iced tea, ma’am,” I said.

“What‘s wrong?”

“It’s not sweet.”

“So add some sugar.”

“I can’t add granulated sugar to cold tea.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am not a communist.”

Then the cashier asked if I was from Alabama. I was so impressed this lady guessed where we were from.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “How on earth could you tell where we’re from?”

“Honestly?” she said, leaning in to whisper. “It’s your teeth.”

I’ve never…

We crossed through Delaware into Pennsylvania. We got to our hotel late, and woke up at the crack of noon.

This morning, there were three men sitting on a bench outside my hotel. They were wearing crimson jackets with giant University of Alabama logos on the backs.

Here I was, in a remote community in the Keystone State, not far from the New York line. A rural hamlet with sprawling fields, rolling hillsides, breathtaking single-wides, and lots of Chevy Camaros on blocks in driveways.

In these parts, you do not see many Alabama Crimson Tide sympathizers. What are the odds?

I approached the men.

“Roll Tide,” I said.

“Roll Tide,” they said.

“Roll Tide,” my wife said.

“Roll Tide,” their wives said.

And then we were done.

Pennsylvania looks good today. There is a wide scope of color. Rolling golden farmland is cut with a distant winter-colored Appalachia. Old barns, grain silos, withered cornfields. To say it’s beautiful would be selling it short. This is pure Americana.

Earlier today we got stuck behind an Amish buggy on the highway. That was a treat. A young man and woman

were in the carriage. She was bird-skinny. He had the hint of an Abraham-Lincoln beard. I waved. They scowled at me.

I stopped at an antique store. The place was filled with ancient rural equipment and gramophones. The old woman behind the counter was talkative.

“Cold enough fer ya?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You don’t hafta call me ma’am.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a ma’am.”

She showed me antiques that dated back to the founding of Pennsylvania. Some were from her own family. Several items related to the Quaker tradition.

“My family was all Friends,” she told me.

“Good for you,” I replied. “My family can’t stand each other.”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “A ‘Friend’ it means they’re Quaker.”

I don’t know much about Quakers except that…

My wife and I are on the way to Virginia, driving northward on a bumpy two-lane highway. We have a long way left to drive.

I have spent the morning riding through Tennessee, tailgating a beat up Chevy with a license plate that reads: “Virginia is for lovers.”

I’ve been staring at these four words for nearly two hours. And the slogan has started to aggravate me. What a corny phrase. I wonder what yahoo came up with that one.

Then we cross the state line into Virgina.

All of a sudden I am driving through steep green hillsides that look like they belong in Scotland. Every two minutes I pass a rural scene so arresting that I have to pull over to see if it’s real.

The mountainsides are quilted in uniform grass, dotted with trees, and the cattle are grazing. Every wildwood barn, vacant schoolhouse, dilapidated RV, and abandoned water heater is swallowed in kudzu.

“Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” my wife asks.

No. I have not.

This is my first

visit to the rural parts of Virginia and nobody prepared me for what it would look like. In fact, I feel silly trying to describe to you all that I’m seeing.

The pavement carries us into valleys that slice through the Middle of Nowhere. We take horseshoe curves that shoot us into highlands, grasslands, forestlands, and farmland.

The farther we drive, the more churches we see. We see a new chapel every seven feet. Sometimes closer than that. There are so many churches in the state of Virginia, Bill Gaither could run for governor.

And old homes. I’ve never seen so many American farmhouses. Many of these homesteads sit on gracious cliffs. Other houses have as many as two, three, or four axles.

I pass a cow bathing herself in a craggy mountain stream, she’s looking at me. I pass a man plowing a field…

“Why do so many people visit Mount Airy?” I ask the old man at the antique store.

“Hmm?” he answers.

I’m in North Carolina. Andy Griffith’s hometown. A humble American village that receives approximately three kajillion visitors each year.

“Say again?” the old shopkeeper says.

The man adjusts his hearing aids.

So I re-ask my question. Why do so many people visit Andy Griffith’s hometown? And I ask this question, mainly, because it’s always been a minor mystery to me.

I mean, I love Andy as much as the next Joe Six-Pack. But Andy Griffith wasn’t The Beatles or Mick Jagger. He wasn’t a historic figure, a religious icon, a Renaissance sculptor or a sex symbol. He was a TV star, for crying out loud. Which puts him in the same category as, for example, Regis Philbin.

“People come to Mount Airy,” says the shopkeeper, “because you can’t never have too much Mayberry.”

It’s a trite answer, ultra clichéd and a little too neat and tidy for me. Although it’s a great line that probably woos the tourists.

But it doesn’t explain why later this afternoon,

when visiting the Andy Griffith Museum, I encounter biblical throngs waiting outside the gates. Think: the Children of Israel wearing Reeboks.

Where do they all come from? And why?

It’s 90 degrees outside, but the weather doesn’t stop them. There isn’t a single pair of pants in the crowd without a sweat stain on the butt. And yet everyone is cheerfully waiting in line.

Why? I keep asking myself. Why are we here?

We come from all over. Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, New Mexico, Minnesota and South Dakota. I didn’t even know South Dakota was a real place.

I ask one man how many miles he traveled to see the museum.

“It took us 29 hours by car,” he says.

I ask why he came.

He shrugs. “It’s Mayberry.”

After the museum,…

South Carolina. The distant backroads. I am driving in the deep forest, stuck behind an asthmatic pickup.

The truck is a ‘78 Ford. F-100. Two-tone. Brown and vanilla. Five liter engine. Probably a three-speed manual. I know this because my old man drove the same truck.

The Ford travels 49 mph. The driver is in no hurry. His arm is hanging out the window. And I’m transfixed by his license plate.

The South Carolina license tag has a motto printed on it. The motto is located at the top, in white text. Just beside the $640 registration sticker.

“While I breathe, I hope,” says the adage.

I’ve never known a more beautifully optimistic state motto. Especially when you consider some of the other state mottos.

Such as North Carolina’s motto: “Esse quam videri,” which means, literally, “To be, rather than to seem.” Which sounds like the Walmart version of a Bill Shakespeare quote.

California’s motto is one word: “Eureka!” Idaho’s is, “Let it be perpetual.” Florida’s state motto is: “Ask about our grandkids.”

But I like the Carolina

license plate slogan. Namely, because not long ago, the doctor thought I had cancer.

I went through a long miniseries of misery, only to find out that I’m okay.

Still, the year itself was double, double toil and trouble. Within that year, I lost six friends to the C-word. And one to suicide. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown.

But here I am, 12 months later, driving South Carolinian backroads. My dog is in the passenger seat. The sun is blaring through the windshield. Kris Kristofferson is singing on a staticky AM station.

I am still alive. And the Eighth State couldn’t look any nicer.

It’s funny. I've always heard South Carolina is an arrestingly gorgeous place. But until today, I’ve only visited the touristy destinations. I’m like any other American Joe Six-Pack. I’ve only seen the usual…

Columbus, Georgia. I was eating at a barbecue joint not far from the state line. Zombie Pig, the joint was called.

My cousin, John, insisted that Zombie Pig serves the best barbecue in state of Georgia. He made me promise to try it.

I walked inside. I ordered the ribs.

I ate them without sauce. The true test of ribs is to eat them dry. Barbecue sauce is like a beautiful woman. If she’s too sweet, she’s hiding something. If she’s too spicy, you’re going to be sorry in the morning.

Behind me was a young couple, eating. Early 20s. Maybe late teens. I could hear their conversation.

“Has your mom texted yet?” said the young man quietly. They were eating a massive plate of smoked meat.

“No,” said the young woman. “Not yet.”

“Do you think she’ll text you?”

“Don’t know. She’s definitely mad.”

“Bad mad?”

“Yes.”

“You think she’ll ever forgive us?”

The girl spoke with a mouthful. “I don’t know. She doesn’t like that we snuck off to get married.”

“‘Loping.’ I think that’s what they call it when you run away to get married.”

“She doesn’t like that we loped.”

“I can’t believe we did it.

Can you?”

“No.”

“We’re really married.”

“I know.”

“Do you have any regrets?”

“No.”

“Me, neither.”

“I’d do it all over again.”

“Yes.”

I ate my ribs and listened. I have my mother in me. I can eavesdrop with the best of them.

The boy was chewing as he talked. “I think lots of people’s grandparents loped. My grandparents went to Donaldsonville to get married. You could get married young back then, without your parents permission. If you went to Donaldsonville.”

“Really?”

“That’s what Granddaddy told me.”

“So how can it be so wrong if our grandparents did it? I mean, what’s the difference between us and them?”

“No difference. Except they’re super old. My grandma just turned 60-something.”

They…

The cardboard sign on the highway said “Hot Bulled Pee-Nuts.”

I pulled over out of pure instinct. For there are few things I love more than a pee-nut that has been properly bulled.

I parked. I stepped out of my truck and walked toward the smell of steaming Cajun spices. The man boiling peanuts was older, seated beneath an Auburn University tent.

He was dressed in Levis and square-toes. He wore a belt buckle the size of a hubcap. He used a canoe paddle to stir a kettle seated atop a roaring blue propane flame.

Beside him was a 50-pound bag of Sam’s Club salt. He removed handfuls of salt and tossed them into the boiling water like fairy dust. Then he licked his fingers for show.

And the line grew longer.

Soon, there were six of us standing there, on the side of a rural Alabamian highway at noon. We were sweating in the violent heat until our clothes were translucent and our hair was matted.

“He does good peanuts,” said a guy in line.

The man looked as though he had come directly from work. He wore a necktie. His shoes cost more than my truck.

“They’re worth it,” said another woman balancing a baby on her hip. “My husband says his spicy peanuts are the best he’s ever had.”

So we waited. And waited.

And waited.

Now and then the old man would remove a hot goober pea, crack it open, and sample it. Then he’d spit it out, shake his head, and announce that they weren’t ready yet.

A few kids on BMX bikes showed up. They ditched their cycles and joined the line. And we became 8.

Then a truck with Florida tags stopped. A man and his wife got out and assumed a place in line. And then we were 11.

“First time I ever had a boiled peanut,” said a guy in line,…

There was something about the way he walked. He was a stray. You can just tell.

I called him, clicking my tongue like Roy Rogers calling Trigger.

He had pitbull in him. I could tell by the broad face and the knife-like eyes.

Most US strays are pitbulls. My friend, John, works at animal shelters. John said people buy pitbulls thinking they’ll be cool-looking dogs, but aren’t prepared for the kind of pitbull stubbornness that makes a mule look reasonable.

So the dog usually gets canned. Some take their dog to shelters. Many don’t. Many exemplary citizens just drop dogs off on busy highways.

I know about pitts. I have a pitbull-mix named Otis. He was found walking the streets of Defuniak Springs, Florida. He hadn’t eaten in days.

But getting back to the original pitbull I was telling you about.

It took a whole hour to gain his trust. When I was sure he trusted me—really trusted me—I lifted him into my truck.

He rode in my passenger seat the whole way to the shelter. I lifted him out of

my truck because he was limping badly. Plus, I didn’t want him to run. “Come here, boy.”

came trotting toward me. He was beautiful. Muscular torso. Amber eyes. His coat was smoky gray. He was sweeter than a Chilton County peach.

There was blood all over him. Someone had tried to crop his ears, but they had butchered him. It looked like they’d cut him with box cutters. His ears were almost completely removed, open wounds. Ear holes were exposed. Blood caked on his face.

I removed my own belt, and used it as a leash. I walked into the animal shelter holding my pants up with half of my backside showing.

The older ladies behind the counter gave me funny looks.

“I can see your butt,” one said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, grasping my pants.

“It’s okay, I’ve…

“Dear Sean, how can we save this country?” the email began.

The writer lives in Hartford, Connecticut. His name is Michael. I have no idea why Michael thinks a hayseed like me is qualified to answer this loaded question. I’m not a smart guy. Blondes tell jokes about me.

Still, I have an idea.

The way to save this country is to eat together. We don’t eat together anymore. We don’t eat supper at the same table. When did that stop?

A recent study found that only 29 percent of Americans sit to eat supper with family each day. Fifty years ago, the statistic was nearly 99 percent.

On average about 50 percent of millennials admit to cooking their own suppers. Whereas the number was around 80 percent with baby boomers.

Something else. We need to put the Wurlitzer organ back in Major League Baseball.

I don’t know if you’re aware, but baseball has undergone many changes since we were kids. Even the rules have changed. There is a pitch clock. No more cigar

smoke.

But the biggest disappointment was losing the organ. I attended a game recently and all I heard was Lady Gaga blasting overhead.

This is an affront.

In 1941, organist Ray Nelson debuted at Wrigley Field. It was the first time organ music was heard in baseball. He played before 18,678 Cubs fans. He played “When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for T-U-L-S-A.”

A half century ago, each American ballpark had an organist. Today, there are only seven.

Another way to save this country is to bring back piano lessons. Five decades ago, 81 percent of American kids took piano lessons. Do you know what the percentage is now? Eight percent.

That’s not enough Americans to form a Rotary Club.

I took piano lessons. My teacher was Miss Betty, who smelled like bath powder and Icy Hot. She said if I played “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead…