Atlanta, Georgia. The old man was a recluse. A hermit. He lived in an old neighborhood, in an old part of town. In a house built in 1910.

He’d been in this home since he was 16. The old man went to Vietnam, once upon a time. He jumped out of airplanes. Learned to shoot. Learned to survive. He came back, post-war.

Protestors ridiculed him in the airport. They crashed trash can lids together, like orchestra cymbals, spat at him, and called him “baby killer.” It did something to his mind.

He never married. In old age, he was the cat guy. He didn't drink. Didn’t smoke. Never touched drugs. But he had a weakness for cats.

He talked to cats. He let cats sleep in his bed. He fed the local ferals. They congregated in his front yard. And only he could tell them apart.

There were neighbors all around him, of course. Homes that had been redone, and fancified. Antique houses with modern American families inside them. Two cars.

Swingsets in the backyard. Two 30-something parents, and 2.5 children.

He never even stepped out of his house, except to crawl into his beat-up Chevy Impala and visit Walmart for frozen pizzas and cans of Campbell’s soup. Few in the neighborhood even knew his name.

His house was an eyesore, of course. Most houses owned by recluses are. He never cut the lawn. The exterior had been in need of a paint job since the Johnson administration.

Looking at him, it was hard to believe he once led a normal life. They say he used to be a plumber. Worked for a big company. Installed kitchen sinks, and outdoor spigots. Unclogged poopy toilets.

But recently, times got hard. He got a reverse mortgage on his home. It was a mistake. He got caught in a scam. There are some organizations who prey on seniors.

He fell behind on payments.…

The plane landed in Tuscaloosa at 8:37 p.m. Central Time. Coach Kalen DeBoer deboarded.

He was met with an entourage of photographers and reporters with iPhones. DeBoer’s press conference was scheduled for 1 p.m.

It was a blustery, rainy day in the Yellowhammer State.

Nick Saban retired on Wednesday. DeBoer was announced as his replacement on Friday evening. The former head coach of the University of Washington is about to be applying for Alabama auto insurance.

Kalen is a young name. I went to school with guys named Kalen. I played baseball with Kalens, Justins, Corys, and Brandons.

There was a Kalen in my seventh-grade drama class. He had epilepsy. We weren’t allowed to use strobe lights in our performance of “Cats.”

Kalen DeBoer isn’t much older than me. And so this marks the first time someone from my generation will be coaching Alabama football.

And I don’t know what to think about it. Or how to feel.

Nobody in my father’s generation was named Kalen. A guy named Kalen grew up playing Atari, watching Nolan Ryan, listening to Michael

Jackson. Or worse: The Osmonds.

A guy named Kalen owned a Walkman, rode BMXs, saw the final episode of “M*A*S*H,” and learned to “Just Say No” from Nancy Reagan.

All my life, Alabama’s head coach has been either someone from my grandfather’s generation, or my dad’s generation.

Someone old enough to remember Iwo Jima. Or Hamburger Hill. Or the Tet Offensive. Someone with enough gray in his hair to recall Benny Goodman, Nat Cole, or at the very least James Brown.

A guy named Kalen remembers Styx, the Gulf War, 9/11, the OJ Simpson trial, and he probably watched the Smurfs.

Alabama is my childhood team. I was born during the third quarter of Bear Bryant’s Liberty Bowl, in Memphis, Tennessee. I was born directly after a critical touchdown. Peter Kim made the kick. The kick was good.

And I…

The letter came this afternoon. Our mail guy was bundled up to fight the cold. I asked whether he was keeping warm.

He laughed. “Warm? Shoot. There’s been a rock rattling around in my shoe all day. Come to find out, it’s my toe.”

The first letter I opened was from Small Town, Tennessee. The author wanted to remain anonymous.

The note began, “I’m just sitting here, smoking a cigarette, writing you and trying to figure out what the [deleted] is happening in my life…”

No personal history is needed. He works at a brake shop. The kind of joint where you pop in and get your pads changed for a couple hundred, plus labor. He’s The Labor. His wife is a hair stylist.

This year his daughter started having some health problems. First, she lost her appetite. Then she started bruising easily. She was dizzy a lot. They took her to the doc.

They ran tests. Scans. Consults. Hurry up and wait. It didn’t take long to figure it out.

“There’s nothing scarier,” he wrote, “than hearing the

words: ‘Your daughter has leukemia.’”

Treatment began. Medical professionals were actually hopeful. Leukemia used to be a death sentence. But over the past decades, cure rates and survival outcomes for acute lymphoblastic leukemia have improved significantly. Nearly 90 percent diagnosed achieve a complete remission in our modern world.

“But the tests didn’t work.”

His daughter was getting sicker. They’ve tried other treatment options. Nothing worked. Last week, doctors said they are at the end of the road. She doesn’t have much time left. Months maybe.

“...And I’m just sitting here watching my daughter live out the rest of her life, and I can’t figure it out.”

Last week, when news spread around their little town, the response was overwhelming.

The first casseroles started showing up on the porch around 4 in the morning. And the food kept coming. And coming.

People…

If you’re having a good day, the last thing you should do is read the news.

“No news is good news,” my grandmother used to say. And it’s true with newspapers, network journalism, and Internet news.

Most news broadcasts begin with a perky news anchor who says good evening, then spends the next 45 minutes telling you why it’s not.

So I want to tell you about a few things the newspersons forgot to mention.

Starting with Piper-Khol Kelly, who recently turned 5. She has spina bifida.

When her parents first found out they were going to have a baby, they were ages 19 and 20. The ultrasounds said their little girl had a spinal condition which causes weakness or paralysis in the lower limbs.

“Your child will never walk,” the doctor said.

The couple traveled to Germany for an experimental treatment. It was risky. Surgeons operated on the child’s spine while she was in the womb.

Recently, 5-year-old Piper participated in a schoolwide athletic day. She played, she ran, she horsed around with her

friends. Nobody would have ever guessed the child had a spina bifida.

“When she was around two,” her mother said, “[Piper’s] physio gave her a walking frame—she doesn’t use it anymore…”

Now let’s travel to Inner Mongolia, China. The Hulunbuir grasslands are a vast, empty pasture with hundreds of rivers and lakes. You’re looking at a flat landscape, covered in blinding snow.

A local was passing by, named Mister Wang, a man who does not enjoy jokes about his name. And no, his first name is not Peter. Grow up. He was walking along the fields one evening, in a remote area, when he heard sounds of animal distress.

He found a pregnant horse, lying lifeless in the snow crust. Brown, fuzzy coat. White star on the forehead. The horse was trapped in a hole, unable to lift herself from the frozen tundra. She wasn't…

Goodbye, Nick Saban. You just announced your retirement. Twelve minutes ago, to be exact. I don’t mind telling you that I cried into my Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I can hardly see the keyboard because my eyes are so blurry.

I was on my front porch. My neighbor was doing yard work next door. My neighbor’s wife, Melissa, burst from the front door and shouted to her husband, “Nick Saban just announced his retirement!”

Her words reverberated throughout the whole neighborhood. Leaf blowers stopped. Distant lawn mowers quit running. A commercial airliner made an emergency landing at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth. A kid fell off his bike.

“You’re kidding,” we all said.

“Shut your mouth!” someone shouted through tears.

A few nearby neighbors suggested that this was fake news. There was no way Nick Saban could retire. We told the bearer of bad information that she was full of a substance common to most barnyards and hog pens.

Then I read the news article on my phone. Nick Saban. Retiring at 72 years old.

Listen, I’m just one fan,

standing amidst 50 gazillion Crimson-clad football fans. Some of whom are far more rabid than I am.

I know one fan, for example, who has gone so far as to tattoo the face of Nick Saban over his left nipple. The caption reads, “Roll Damn Tide.”

But I hope Nick Saban knows what he meant to the common football fan like me.

He came to the University of Alabama when I was 24 years old. I was just a kid. Skinny. Without much ambition. I was a devout Alabama fan, which meant that I was accustomed to losing.

At the time, our team had a lot in common with the common household mosquito. They couldn’t stop sucking.

But then Nick came along. He arrived after a long drought for Alabama’s athletics department. After our Gene Stallings years, we wandered in the desert. We had Mike…

I was an older college student. Early 30s. Bad at math. A dropout, going back to get his degree. I sat in the back rows, with plumbers and Hooters waitresses. I had fun.

As an older student, most professors were part of my peer group. Many teachers had attended the same wild high-school parties I did. Most of which I can’t remember.

But there was one teacher who was different.

She was older. Past retirement age. She was small. White hair. Skin like tissue paper. And in an era when female professors wore T-shirts, she wore tweed skirts.

Between classes, she smoked Marlboro Lights and read books. I often hung out with her on her breaks, because I liked the way she saw the world.

She introduced me to O. Henry, Jane Austen, and Victor Frankl. The woman loved the written word. She told me to read Robert Frost. Nobody ever told me to read Robert Frost.

Once upon a time, she wanted to be a writer. But being a writer is hard business.

It’s not about skill, or depth of prose. It’s about your marketing department.

So she stuck with teaching.

For one class, we were supposed to write an essay about our hero. I am not an experienced man, I don’t have many heroes. So I chose her. The unassuming woman, who could have been great, but chose to make other people greater.

She chose to teach night classes to raggedy adults with full-time jobs. She chose a life of anonymity. I didn’t know much about her, so I drew on what I knew from her lectures.

She was born in the Dismal ‘30s. Her daddy (“deadie”) walked five miles to a factory to support a big family. She attended school in a two-room schoolhouse. One room was a classroom. One was a bathroom with a broken toilet.

There were no college graduates in her family. But her…

There was this kid. In the supermarket. I saw him walking through the store.

He was pushing a buggy. He was maybe 18 years old. He was skin and bones. And I mean skinny. He would have had to stand up five times just to make a shadow. Your standard issue, all-American kid.

His cart was brimming full. It’s not every day you see an 18-year-old doing that kind of intensive shopping.

We were in the canned seafood aisle. He was comparing cans of tuna. He asked me what the difference was between white albacore and chunk light.

“Everyone knows the difference,” I said confidently. I inspected the cans. Then, drawing on my training as an English major, I replied, “I have no idea.”

We got to talking.

His mother has been on chemo. Her breast cancer keeps coming back. She hasn’t been responding well to the radiation, either.

He had to drop out of college to help her. He wanted to major in English, which only shows you how confused this poor child

is.

Caregiving became his life. At 18. He’s learned all the tricks. How to transfer a weak person from a wheelchair to a bed. How to feed someone. How to step into the shower with his mother, fully clothed, bear-hugging her, to bathe her.

“I even had to learn to help Mom use the bathroom,” he said.

Then his grandmother got ill. It was like a cruel joke from On High. So the boy took on caregiving duties for her, too. The elderly woman was hospitalized for pneumonia. It almost killed her. The boy stayed at her bedside. Day and night.

He bathed his grandmother, too.

So this year has been a tough one. He recently moved his mother and his grandmother both into the same rental house. A house he found online. Three bedrooms. Two baths. It was perfect.

His mother let the lease on…

I collect old cookbooks. Small-town cookbooks, mostly. Self published ones. The kinds of books that were pieced together by hand, using old comb binding machines and mimeograph paper.

Often, these books were crafted by ladies from civic leagues, community groups, United Methodist congregations, and NASCAR Ladies Associations.

I have an entire shelf full. People send them to me. Sometimes, when I have nothing better to do I read them.

There is one such cookbook on my shelf from First Baptist Church, Slocomb, Alabama (1978). They don’t get too worked up in Slocomb.

There is a recipe entitled “Company Potatoes,” by Cora Casey. If this dish doesn’t change your life it will—at the very least—change the life of your company.

I have one from Pintlala Baptist Church. Pintlala isn’t the edge of the world, but you can see it from there. There is a recipe for ice-box lemon pie, submitted by Nana, Lillie Evans. In our house, we lovingly call this dish “Baptist Crack.”

There is an antique cookbook from a tiny town in Maryland, from a Unitarian

church.

If you’ve never been to a Unitarian service, they’re notoriously bad singers. Mostly, because they’re always reading a few lines ahead to see if they agree with the lyrics. My favorite recipe is the one for Kool-Aid pickles.

There’s one from Brewton, Alabama’s civic league. My wife’s hometown. They have recipes for squirrel, possum, and even skunk. A man has to be pretty hard up to eat a skunk.

There’s one from the Fort Lauderdale, Florida Ladies Association for Responsible Feminism, from the 1970s. There is a recipe called “Bra Burner Casserole.”

I have one from a Tennessee Church of God. The opening foreword is written by the pastor. He writes, “Why does a $10 bill look so small at the grocery store, but so big at church?”

One of my favorite books is entitled “Cooking in Wyoming: The Centennial Women’s Suffrage…

“I am nineteen,” the note began. “...There is a boy I like. He’s nice to me, but I don’t if he actually likes me back. I’m not super pretty. I’m okay, I guess, but not much to write home about. How can I get him to like me back?”

“Sincerely,
“SLEEPLESS-IN-SPOKANE.”

DEAR SLEEPLESS:

First thing’s first. Relax. Take a deep breath.

Males are no deep mystery. The internet gurus, female experts, and editors of Cosmopolitan magazine would have you believe that males are complex animals. The truth is, we are painfully simple.

I’m not saying we’re stupid. Our brains are just different, and less organized than females. This is evidenced by the way males load dishwashers.

Basic male differences begin before birth. During the first seven weeks in the womb all babies are female. After gestation, testosterone floods the womb and ruins the male brain.

But it’s okay inasmuch as testosterone makes males less susceptible to pain. Nature’s way of toughening us. Our culture embraces these differences. You can see this demonstrated at birth.

When a girl is born, what

does she get? Pink booties, pink ribbons, pink blankets. When a boy is born, what does he get? Circumcised.

There are, however, some things you can do to stand out from the crowd when it comes to getting this guy’s attention.

Firstly, let’s talk about something called the Benjamin Franklin effect.

Franklin was famous for asking favors from people who he wanted to like him. After doing the favor, suddenly the person would be, more or less, a friend.

This theory has been tested hundreds of times, throughout history, consistently proven. And there’s a reason why it works.

I should point out that I’m not a psychologist, I’m just a hillbilly with an overbite. But the reason this trick works is because of something called cognitive dissonance. Which is a fancy way of saying that the brain can’t hold…

There is a right and wrong way to say grace. I learned this when I was a kid. We were all gathered at my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving. One of the younger relatives said grace.

There were lots of uhs and ahs between the aforesaid relative's words. The kid even picked his nose before getting to the Amen.

Dinner guests were soon looking around, mid-prayer. We were wondering who should interject before my aunt castrated the boy with a serving fork.

The problem is, essentially, that there is a time honored way of saying the incantation. It’s important to get it right.

This is why many families usually ask a professional to say the blessing. At family gatherings there’s always a preacher lying around somewhere.

“Go get Brother Jacob to say the blessing,” my mother once said at a gathering.

“But,” I replied, “I don’t know where Brother Jacob is.”

“I do. He’s in your father’s liquor cabinet.”

In the absence of a professional, there are always a few classic prayers you can use. These are standard-issue prayers. Faithful

oldies. Like the prayer our preacher used at potluck socials:

“Dearest Lord of Mercy,
“We all need your blessin’,
“When this unrefrigerated food,
“Develops botulism.”

There is also a common prayer many of us learn in Sunday school, which is still uttered by all ages. You probably already know it:

“God is great, God is good,
“Let us thank Him for our food,
“By his hands we all are fed,
“Except for Uncle Joe,
“Who is dead.”

Even our non-religious people say grace at meals. Because, in this part of the world, not saying anything at supper just feels odd, no matter what you believe.

Take my uncle Peter. He was not a religiousman, but he always said a few words before each meal.

“I don’t believe in God,
“But wouldn’t it be…