The Cracker Barrel is slammed. And loud. Inside, there isn’t much in the way of elbow room. There are heaps of people. And I am trying to master the wooden Triangle Peg game.

The object of this game, of course, is simple. Leave the fewest pegs remaining on the triangle as possible. Finish a game with only one peg is left; you are a NASA-level genius. Two pegs; you are moderately clever. Four pegs; your parents are first cousins.

I love Cracker Barrel. But then, I have a long history with this institution. I’ve eaten at Cracker Barrels from Beaverton, Oregon, to Prattville, Alabama. I’ve eaten here on Thanksgiving, the day I graduated college, the morning after my wedding, and the day after my father died. The food suits me.

The overhead music always has steel guitar in it. The people in the giftshop always ask how you’re doing. And if you’re bored, you can always embarrass your wife by buying a Davy Crockett hat and wearing it into the dining room.

Today, an elderly couple

is sitting next to me as I fiddle with the peg game. The old man is skinny. She is frail. They are shoulder to shoulder.

The man is wearing a hospital bracelet. His entire lower leg is in a medical brace. His face is bruised purple. There is dried blood on his forearms. He is resting his head onto the old woman’s shoulder because it looks like he’s been through hell itself.

She is helping him drink his Coke with a straw.

“Thank you, Judy,” he says between sips.

She just pats his head.

On the other side of the dining room is a table of paramedics. They are young, wearing buzz cuts, cargo pants, radios mounted on their shoulders. Their eyes are drooping, the coffee evidently isn’t helping. It looks like they’ve had a long night.

I eavesdrop on their conversation:

“What’re…

You’re going to make it.

I know you don’t feel great right now. I know you’re having a crappy day. A crappy month. A crappy decade. I know this isn’t your best life.

I know your whole world is falling apart. I know your father is dying of pancreatic cancer. I know your daughter just passed away from a drug overdose. I get it.

Your grandchild has life threatening bone cancer. Your car was repossessed last night. Your dog died. You’re ill.

Your husband cheated on you with a younger woman. Your dad has a neurological disease. Your mother passed away. Your mom died by suicide. Your son is going blind.

You have breast cancer. You’ve lost everything. You’re a young man who was convicted by a jury of your peers, and now you’re probably going to prison. You are an alcoholic, and you don’t know what to do about it.

You’re scared. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. The doctor is suggesting chemo.

At night, sometimes, you lie there wondering what the point is. Why keep living? Why live a life that’s nothing but pain? You’re starting

to lose steam. You’re starting to get tired.

I don’t blame you. But—and I want you to listen to me closely here—you are going to make it.

I actually believe this. Wholeheartedly. In fact, I would bet a million dollars on it.

Sadly, I don’t have a million bucks because I am an English major. So—let just me empty my wallet here—I will happily bet $11 cash that you are going to be okay.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

“This schmuck doesn’t even know me. How the heck can he know whether I’ll be okay? He’s just writing a bunch of hyper-emotional B.S. He doesn’t know my life.”

And you know what? To be frank, you’re absolutely right. For starters, I DON’T know anything, so how can I know whether you’ll…

I joined social media in my thirties. Back then, social media was still a new, exciting frontier. Sort of like outer space except no zero-gravity toilets.

In the early days, I used Facebook to communicate with friends. I reconnected with schoolmates and marveled at how everyone had gotten old except me.

Your deepest interaction with social media was sitting at a keyboard and tapping out something clever, or important, then hitting “Publish.” Posting important stuff was the whole point of social media.

Sometimes, I would spend hours just thinking up devastatingly important sentences, such as: “Due to inflation, the FDA says you may now eat food which has been on the floor for 8.9 seconds.”

These sentences were posted as “status updates.” Back then, your statuses were a kind of headline to the people within your inner circle.

“Today, I had math finals…” “This morning, I’m gonna ask her to marry me…” “I have a nasal polyp.”

But then, inevitably, your family

members started joining social media. People such as your aunt Eulah, who has a life-threatening humor disability. The same aunt who cannot visit a restaurant without developing a strong need to speak to the manager. Suddenly, this aunt could comment on everything you posted.

YOUR STATUS: Ugggh! Going to a job interview is the worst thing EVER!

AUNT EULAH: What about cancer?

Social media became a normal part of our lives. We were using social media all the time. Even in public.

Then, along came the era when people started taking pictures of their meals. This was followed by the era of mandatory family photos wherein everyone wore matching outfits for each major holiday, including Easter, Christmas, and the onset of daylight saving time.

This was briefly followed by the era of memes, when nobody actually posted anything, we just shared memes of Gene Wilder.

Then came the…

On Highway 67, atop Priceville Mountain, stands the Cross of North Alabama. The 121-foot cross stands proudly in a flawless blue sky, overlooking a rural Morgan County.

The base of the enormous cross is peppered in Post-It notes. All sizes, all colors. Flapping in the autumn breeze. These notes are prayers from those who visit the cross.

The prayers are written with differing standards of penmanship. Some prayers, you can just tell, are written in a teenage hand.

“God, why do I feel like I am not enough for myself or for anyone? Help me.”

“Help me not feel so ugly.”

“Help me make good decisions, not hang out with a bad crowd, help me love me for me.”

“Bring my family back together, God.”

Many prayers are written in Spanish. Others are written in memory of the deceased. A lot of prayers—a whole lot—are written in childish handwriting.

“My brother killed his self.”

“Dear God, I prying 4 u cause who prys for u?”

“For my kitten to get better.”

I met a young woman at the

base of the cross when I was visiting. It was a clear November afternoon. We were the only visitors in the giant pasture beneath the towering monument.

She was writing a prayer on a Post-It notepad. She said she was on her way to the Dollar General, but she had too much on her mind to go to the DG. So she came here.

“I come here a lot,” she says. “I only started coming a few weeks ago.”

She is a meek woman. Soft spoken and kind. She finishes writing on the Post-It and sticks it to the base of the cross.

“We’re going through a rough time right now,” she says. “When I come here, I write my prayers down, and I just leave them. That’s the whole point. To leave it all here.”

She tells me her son has…

I’m backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, in my dressing room. Tuning my guitar. They tell me Dolly Parton used this dressing room once. What sacred visions this mirror must have seen. My cups runneth over.

Someone knocks on my door. “Twenty minutes until soundcheck,” they say.

I’m warming up my voice. Hoping the crowd will be hot tonight and laugh at the jokes.

The first time I visited the Grand Ole Opry, I was a little boy. We were living in Spring Hill, Tennessee, at the time. My old man was with the ironworking crew that built the GM plant. Local Number Ten.

We were rural people who did not use a P to spell “potatoes.” My clothes came from thrift stores and yard sales. I wore shoes that were hand-me-downs. We drove second-, third-, and fourth-hand Fords. It took me 30 years to finally realize we were poor.

When we wandered into the Opry Theater, we were following a throng

of theater goers. I was riding high on Daddy’s shoulders. I always rode on his shoulders. From up there I overlooked an ocean of heads in the lobby. Audience members filed into the auditorium like a herd of musk oxen.

I remember that electric feeling of anticipation. Straddling my old man’s shoulders. I felt like I was flying.

We took our seats in the nosebleeds. The room smelled of popcorn and hotdogs. My father was working on a cup of beer and my mother was busy praying for his eternal soul.

Jerry Clower was onstage. There was a fiddler who tore it up. I think the announcer was Keith Bilbrey.

I remember exactly which pew we sat in. I remember standing through most of the performances, shaking my little butt to the steel-guitar solos. I remember I was wearing red courduroy overalls. My mother called me Dennis the Menace.…

Next week is the birthday of a dear friend. He looks pretty good for his age. He’ll be turning 189. Which makes him almost as old as Keith Richards.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, 1835, late November. It was colder than a witch’s underwire.

His mother was not expecting him. She wasn’t even close to being ready, so she tried to squeeze him back in. But it didn't work. And now we have “Huckleberry Finn.”

During childlabor, Halley’s comet was passing overhead. The comet frightened a lot of rural people, causing many to either pray in tongues or drink whiskey. Sam says that his mother did both during childbirth.

Sam was a lot of trouble as a kid. He was sickly. Nobody thought he’d make it past infancy. Being born premature in 1830s was no cakewalk. He was tiny. His complexion was pale.

“When I first saw him,” his mother recalled, “I could see no promise in him.”

But he was smart. And talented.

And he could lie incredibly well. The kid was such a good liar he received annual Christmas cards from Satan.

He got in trouble a lot. The best humans always do. He started smoking in elementary school. He skipped class so often his teachers sent flowers to his mother and asked when the funeral was.

He grew up in Hannibal. He spent his idle hours beside the Mississippi, catching catfish, sleeping in the sun, or making up stories. Although his highest aspiration was not to be a writer.

“When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman.”

He apprenticed as a pilot at age 22. He became a steamboat captain. He learned every twist and bend of Old Man River. Every submerged log. Every snag, sandbar, and…

I stepped into the priest’s office. It was a dim room. Lots of woodwork. Lots of books.

The old man welcomed me into his office. White hair. Black suit. Collar. He was a slender guy who could have passed for a vegetarian.

I sat in an overstuffed chair that was a little too comfortable. There was a painting of a famous Nazarene on the wall.

I had this looming feeling I was going to be struck dead by a bolt of electricity because I did something wrong.

“Thanks for fitting me in on such short notice,” I said.

He smiled, waiting for me to begin. You could tell he’d done a few confessions in his day.

So I told him I had a problem.

“What kind of problem?”

I told him I was baptized as a Catholic as an infant, although I grew up Protestant after my father converted to Oral-Robertsism. Recently, I attended my first Mass, to honor my ancestral roots. Then I took communion. I wrote about it.

Which was why I apologized to the priest for taking communion.

He laughed. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Didn’t I commit a sin?”

“Who told you that?”

“People on Facebook.”

He sighed.

“You were baptized Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“Any baptized person can and must be admitted to receive Holy Communion.”

So we had a long talk. He asked why I was so curious about the Catholic tradition.

I confessed that after my father’s suicide, when I was a boy, my father’s Catholic family disowned us. We were cut off from all family, in the name of righteousness.

My father’s parents shunned us. I never knew his siblings. I never knew his cousins. I was adrift in the world. I was alone. We ate Thanksgivings at Waffle Houses.

Once, on my 17th birthday, I called my grandparents just…

I walked into the gothic cathedral. It was early. There were sleepy looks on people’s faces. Puffy eyes. Saggy jowls. And that was just the face I saw in the lobby mirror.

One of the ushers shook my hand. He said it was good to see me. I don’t know if he meant it.

I sat in the rearmost pew because I was embarrassed to be here. The presbyterium was starting to fill up with people. I was not raised Catholic. We did not call them presbyteriums. We called them “the big rooms where the preacher had an aneurysm.”

You could tell that a lot of parishioners had particular seats. They marched into the room with purpose, families in tow, striding directly toward their seats. They wore nice clothes. The old folks wore suits and dresses. The young marrieds were dressed “snappy casual.” More casual than snappy.

The back pews, where I sat, were filling with only Latino congregants. Suddenly, I was surrounded by

an ocean of rapid-fire Español. A few women wore maid-service uniforms. Several guys wore construction boots. There were a lot of children. I counted no Latinos up front.

A little girl sat beside me. She looked at me and smiled.

Service began. Priests proceeded forward, wearing what looked like kaftans, and hats that looked like traffic cones. Right away, I could tell this service was going to be unfamiliar to me.

Even so, my dad was raised Catholic. By the time I was born he had already converted to full-tilt evangelicalism. I never knew of his early life. All I knew were fire-breathing sermons, angry fundamentalists, and preachers who took important mission trips to Honolulu.

But my old man was Catholic. He grew up in a traumatized home of abuse and violence. And I know his Catholic origins helped him through this difficult boyhood. I know this because sometimes,…

Today, schoolkids across the nation will sit at desks, forced to write at knifepoint the same essay we all wrote each November: “What I’m Thankful For.”

Every student approaches this essay differently. Some, primarily front-row students, draft an itemized list wherein items one through 49 explicitly thank the teacher for being so incredibly, stupendously, unmitigatedly awesome that she is finally forced to wipe the brown stains from these students’ noses.

Meantime, kids in the back rows pass around M.A.D. magazines, retelling the timeless joke about the pig with the wooden leg, a joke which has brought me, personally, more comfort than any major religion.

Nevertheless, we wrote our lists each year. I never received an A-grade on my essays. But to this day, I have a stunning collection of magazines which bear the face of Alfred E. Neuman on the cover.

So, in no particular order, here is my list:

“The Andy Griffith Show.” I grew up in a tragic, fatherless home. I look back now and realize I was probably clinically

depressed. But each afternoon at five, the clouds parted and a local channel ran back-to-back reruns of Andy. Andy Griffith was my pretend dad. I’m grateful for that.

I am thankful for dogs. On any given day, I receive more tangible love from dogs than I could get, say, attending Woodstock.

I am thankful for music. Old music. The kind that forms a living scrapbook of our ancestors. “Amazing Grace.” “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” “Hard Times.” I am thankful for my old fiddle. My piano. And, God help me, even my banjo. I am not thankful for the accordion.

I am thankful for babies. All infants. Happy, plump, fat, pink newborns who laugh so hard that semi-solids come out both ends.

My wife and I were not able to have children. This has mostly been okay with me. After all, I didn’t have an example of a…

You’re a single mother. Your name is Deidra. Your wallet has three bucks in it. You have an old Visa gift card with twelve dollars left on it.

Something bad happened today.

It wasn’t because of anything you did. It’s because you’re in your late thirties and teenagers can do your job cheaper. They cut your hours. Management’s way of firing you.

You reacted. You let your manager have it. You called him an awful name. You wish you could take it back.

You cry in your car. You wipe your face. Then cry again. You wait for your kids to exit the free daycare.

And here you are, sorting mail while you wait. Power bill. Water bill. Cell phone bill. Cable. Insurance. It never ends.

Your kids run toward you. There are kisses, hugs. You notice how tall your oldest is. Your nine-year-old colored a picture.

They talk loud and happy.

You’re thinking about what’s inside your refrigerator for supper. A few slices of bologna, half a liter of Coke, old carrots, two eggs.

You look in your purse. The gift card.

You drive to a pizza

buffet. It’s six bucks for your oldest, four bucks for the youngest—not counting soda.

You slide your card and hold your breath.

Life isn’t supposed to be this way. You’re not supposed to skip suppers and feed your kids with gift cards.

You’re young, pretty, healthy. You’re supposed to be happy. Instead, you’re a few dimes shy of homelessness.

After the meal, you leave eighty-four cents for a tip. That’s all the loose change you have. You’re saving your last three dollars.

You drive. Your gas gauge is on E.

You’re humiliated. That’s how poverty works. It embarrasses a person until they think so little of themselves, they don’t like their reflection.

You pull into a gas station. You’re going to put three dollars into your old Ford Contour. Not a penny…