“I’ll bet you’ve never written a column about a turtle,” said Mary, sitting across from me at the coffee shop.

No. I can’t say that I have. And I’m not sure I want to break a lucky streak.

Then Mary told me a story.

She was a thirteen-year-old when she found L.B. in her mother’s flowerbed. She was a tomboy in jeans, with scraped knees, dirty fingernails, and a bad case of freckles.

L.B. was a terrestrial box turtle.

Her parents had just divorced. Her father left town with his new girlfriend. He couldn’t have moved any farther away if he’d left planet Earth.

Life was sad. Her mother was always in a bad mood, her older brother started spending time away from home.

Most nights, she fended for herself, eating TV dinners, watching television, and waiting for her mother to get home.

When she saw the turtle nestled among the tall weeds, she noticed red nail-polish writing on his shell. Two initials which read: L.B.

He was a gentle creature, he didn’t squirm or

snap. She noticed something wrong with his shell, and blood smears on his wounded back leg.

Her first move was to call her father for advice.

“Dad!” she said into the phone. “I found something in the yard!”

“Sweetie,” he said. “We’ve been over this, you can’t keep calling long distance every fifteen minutes, I have a job, I’m very busy.”

“But Dad,” she said. “I just found a tur—”

A dial tone.

So, she took the turtle to her elderly neighbor, Miss Stanley. People said the old woman was a little crazy, and this might have been true.

Miss Stanley had dozens of animals wandering her place—dogs, cats, an iguana, exotic birds. But if anyone would’ve known how to fix L.B.’s leg, it was her.

The old woman invited Mary inside. She…

Sylacauga, Alabama—this is your quintessential American town. Old buildings, lots of Baptist churches, and Mama Ree’s restaurant, which serves fare so good you’ll wonder if Granny isn’t in the kitchen.

This is the hometown of Jim Nabors, better known as Gomer Pyle from the Andy Griffith Show.

Earlier today, I toured the city. There is a lot to see.

There’s the Comer museum on Broadway Avenue. They have a room dedicated to Nabors memorabilia. There you can see photos, news clippings, and costumes from the town’s own native son. Up the road is the high school Nabors graduated from.

And of course, Sylacauga is known for more than just Gomer Pyle.

Firstly: it’s one of the only places in the world that produces bedrock marble so pure it was used in the construction of the Lincoln Memorial, and the United States Supreme Court Building.

Sylacauga also boasts the first documented case of an outer-space object falling onto a human. It happened one autumn day in

‘54. A meteorite the size of a grapefruit crashed through a farmhouse roof and hit Mrs. Ann Hodges, who was napping.

It didn’t hurt her too bad, but they say she was fussy for several days thereafter.

Don’t get me wrong, I love meteorites and marble as much as the next guy. But I am here today to track down Gomer Pyle. I am looking for glimpses of a world once inhabited by Andy, Barney, Opie, and Aunt Bea.

The truth is, Andy Griffith raised me. After my father died, we lived with my aunt and my cousins in Georgia. Back then, I was a redhead boy, trapped in a house with six females and 1.5 bathrooms.

Every month, for a span of three to five days, these women would become very grumpy—AT THE SAME TIME. Then, they would gang up on me, threatening to behead and…

Montgomery—it was a sunny February day in 1956. Martha and her husband sat in an ugly, sterile, third-floor government office.

Outside was a blue sky, beautiful trees, and birds. Inside, it was dismal.

Martha was wringing her hands. She looked at her husband and saw him bouncing his knees.

“Would you relax?” she said to him.

“You first,” he said.

But the truth was, she was just as anxious as him. And who could blame them? Their adoption papers had been bouncing through the bureaucratic ping-pong machine for twenty-seven months now.

Twenty-seven months.

That’s long enough to earn a master’s degree.

When they first submitted the application they felt nothing but excitement. They filled out the forms and requested a son. The anticipation was almost too much.

What would he look like? Who would he grow to become? After ten years of marriage, Martha was ready to hold her own child. She wanted someone call her “Mama.”

In years past, she’d only ever

held children that belonged to friends or family, and this did nothing to satisfy her two empty arms.

So, they turned in their papers. They hoped, and waited, and stared at their kitchen phone every evening.

But time went on, and the phone did not ring. Six months became a year. A year became two years. Not knowing was torture.

Alabama caseworkers sometimes visited their home in Dothan, without warning. These were friendly social workers, certainly, but only in the governmental sense. The caseworkers would make notes on clipboards, then look at Martha like they were sizing her up for a butcher’s window.

Martha wondered if the phone call would ever come.

Three days ago it did. The bell sounded on Martha’s phone and she almost lost her mind.

The voice on the line said, “You can pick up your son at…

A breakfast joint, filled with smells of bacon and coffee. The sound of people, conversing. I was eating my eggs when I got the text.

I glanced at my phone and lost my appetite. An old friend died.

He was seventy-six. He used to be a singer. And I’ll never forget the story I heard about him.

Once, a nine-year-old girl from church asked him to sing for her dog’s funeral. He wore a necktie and the whole nine yards. He sang “Beulah Land.” That’s the kind of guy he was.

I was interrupted from my thoughts. It was another old friend who came through the doors. Lisa, a girl I grew up with.

I hugged her neck and asked how her father was doing.

Lisa smiled. “He’s okay, Mom hired a personal trainer to kick his butt, he whines about it.”

I’ll never forget her father. He once took me to a father-son church retreat at Blue Lake Methodist Camp, along with his own son. He

did this because I had no father and he didn’t want me to be left out.

I stood to leave the restaurant. That’s when I saw another friend. James is his name. James and I used to have a summer job together, parking cars. He’s a mess.

Back then, James would try to procure the phone number of any female unfortunate enough to make eye-contact with him.

I exited the restaurant and saw two more friends in the parking lot. Samantha and her husband, Wade.

We hugged. It was nice seeing them. We were once in a Sunday school class together.

Long ago, our class took a trip to Nashville. Wade brought a Mason jar full of something his Episcopalian uncle had brewed in a bathtub.

Consequently, Wade doesn’t remember much about that trip.

After saying goodbye, I drove across…

He was every old man you’ve ever met. And he wanted to go fishing. Doctors said it was a bad idea, but his son disagreed.

“Doctors don’t know everything,” says his son John. “Daddy wanted to fish, so by God, we took him.”

You should’ve seen it. A sunny day. Four men escorting an old man down the dock. They lowered him into a 14-foot camouflage boat.

The old man held them for support. He mumbled something to them. Nobody understood. The strokes had slowed his mouth down.

The men used ratchet straps to make an improvised seatbelt for him. And away they went.

The old man had been fishing here ever since the invention of red mud.

“Feesing heah wuh mah bess gurl,” the old man said through a contorted mouth.

His daughter translated for her kids: “Granddaddy says he used to fish here with his best girl.”

Granny. His “best girl.” When she was alive, they came here. The old woman loved fishing as much as he did.

The old man wanted a beer. He demonstrated this by reaching

for the cooler. His daughter held a can to his mouth. Beer ran down his chin.

Everyone cheered.

“Don’t tell Daddy’s doctor about this,” John said.

The boat was in motion. The motor trolled. The old man was smiling. Familiar feelings were in the air.

“I remember when Daddy took my middle-school boyfriend out here,” his daughter said. “I knew how to bait my own hook, my boyfriend didn’t. Daddy got a kick outta that.”

She also remembers a senior who once came calling on her. He drove a muscle car and wore too much leather. Her father greeted the kid on the porch, polishing his iron.

“Reckon you’d better keep a’driving, son,” her father told the kid.

The old man was something else. He was funny. He was clever. He was the best our land had to offer.…

Her name is Virginia. She is interviewing me. She is fourteen, and wants to go into journalism one day.

Virginia wanted to interview a real writer. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get in touch with any, so she called me.

Her first question: What is being a writer all about?

Jeez. That’s a tough one. I have no idea how to answer it.

I was expecting something more along the lines of: “How long does it take you to learn how to spell ‘receive’ without making mistakes?”

The truth is, Virginia, my writing career all started in a sixteen-foot camper with a bloodhound asleep on my feet. The camper was junk, parked outside Pensacola. The dog was a purebred.

I was there for work. I had just quit construction, and I had finished community college—which had taken me eleven years.

So the world was my oyster. And naturally, I took the next logical step on the ladder of academia to further my professional career. I played music in beer joints.

I’m embarrassed to

admit this. I know this isn’t what real writers do, but that’s what I did.

In the daytimes, to occupy my empty hours in the camper, I would read books. That’s when the idea hit me.

Early one morning, I was reading a book entitled—I’m not making this up—“44 Best Ever Fart Jokes and Poems.” The thought hit me like a shock of electricity.

I slammed the book shut and decided: “I’m going to become a writer! I am going to write a novel! A Western novel!

And I meant it, too. I ran the idea past my bloodhound. She wasn’t crazy about it.

“You don’t think I should write a Western?” I clarified.

She licked herself then fell asleep.

“How about a joke book?”

She sighed.

“A romance?”

She snored.

“Big help you…