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…

Yeah, I believe in angels. Oh, I haven’t always. And truthfully, I wish I didn’t believe in angels. It would be easier not to.

It all started in third grade. My teacher, Miss Williams, read to us from a book. It was a mass-market paperback. A book about angels.

She read stories about impossible rescues, and unlikely redemptions. Then, she told a story of her own.

She was a little girl. She fell through a second-story window. She was bruised and battered. The paramedics said she would die.

But a man came to her. A man who only she could see. He said she would be in the hospital for a while, but she would be all right, if she could just hold on. She eventually taught third grade.

Yes, she was as crazy as a sprayed roach. But I believed her. And I still do.

There is another guy I know. He talks about being in the hospital, after an accident. The doctors said he was going to die, too. He

was in his bed in a coma.

A nurse came into his room. She was a large woman with ebony skin and white scrubs. She leaned over his bed, held him tightly, and sang to him. She sang, “God is going to deliver you.”

When he woke up, nobody believed him. It was a hallucination, they said. He asked medical staffers who the woman was. They said no employees fit her description.

I know a guy from Alaska. He wrote to me and said that his son suffered brain stem damage after a hunting accident. The kid was going to die. No doubt about it.

When his son was unconscious, a strange woman found him and kissed his face and said he would not die, for he still had work to do on earth.

Today, that kid is 46 years old and he works as a volunteer with…

BIRMINGHAM—Samantha had a baby. He was eight pounds. Even.

The kid needed emergency open heart surgery. He had a critical congenital heart disease. Doctors rushed him into the OR. Surgery took an eternity. The kid survived.

Today, he’s a teenager. Yesterday, when he got home from basketball practice, he had an epiphany. He told his mom he wanted to go into pediatric medicine. He wants to be a surgeon maybe. Wants to be in cardiac medicine.

“Why, sweetie?” Mom asked.

He shrugged his bony shoulders. She can still see the ropy scar on his sternum, beneath his sweaty tank top.

“Just ‘cause,” he said.

Teenagers.

FORT WORTH—There was a guy who had a car accident. A log truck pulled in front of him on the interstate. No blinker. Bam. It was nasty.

The guy was lying in a vehicle that resembled a crumpled Weltmeister accordion. Logs everywhere.

The fire-medics cut him out of the car. Officials were shocked to find that there were only a few scratches on him. He was dazed, but otherwise fine.

When the highway patrolmen

asked him about it, the guy said there was a man in the vehicle beside him during the accident. The man just appeared. The stranger wore white clothes. He had white hair. White beard.

Mid-wreck, the stranger had cradled the man’s head, bear hugged his body, and said, “You’re going to survive this.”

Today, that guy is in his late 70s.

VIRGINIA BEACH—She was walking home from work. She worked in fast food. She was still wearing her uniform. A dog started following her.

It was a Lab mix of some kind, and it was dragging two back legs. Even from a distance, she could see the legs had been crushed. Completely mutilated. A lot of blood.

The vet said it was probably a hit and run. The dog’s ribs were fractured. His head was damaged. Both back legs had been…