I am sitting at a bar in Port Saint Joe. It’s a dark place. It smells like onion rings and Miller Lite. I might be mistaken, but I believe there are dartboards here. Waylon Jennings is singing.

It’s hard to believe this town used to be the largest city in Florida. Once upon a time, in 1838, this little place had 12,000 people and, amazingly, only one McDonald’s.

This was where the Florida constitution was first penned. That’s how important this town was.

They don’t teach us stuff like that in history class anymore.

There is a guy at the bar beside me. He’s from Chicago. He’s here for leisure. He is a columnist, like me. Except this man is pretty famous for writing political rants online. He is incognito this week.

I have never met another columnist in a bar. Let alone a famous one. What are the odds?

We did the whole “what do you do?” thing, and we figured out that we were both writers.

The difference is that he writes for huge newspapers and

drives a Benz. Whereas my career is still undetermined. I write for small-town papers and I drive 22-year-old Ford.

Even so, I’m not unsatisfied with my life. I have a good dog and most of my original teeth.

The man has never been to this town before. Florida is my home state. I grew up just two counties over. So I welcome him and tell him he’s picked the right time to visit.

October on the Gulf Coast is the season when—any meteorologist will tell you this—all the tourists go home.

I have spent many an October in Gulf County. This place has changed over the years, but it hasn’t changed too much. The fishing is still good. The barbecue is still stellar. The beer still flows like the mighty Apalachicola.

The famous man asks what my favorite part of Port Saint…

Dearly beloved, thank you for coming today, friends, colleagues, and well-wishers. Thank you Lyle, and Holly, for putting on such a marvelous spread. I just wanted to share a few words.

Let us not forget that we are gathered here to remember a good woman. Maybe one of the best. Perhaps THE best. She was old Florida. She was an artist. She was beautiful.

(Speech notes to self: Enunciate your words. Do not mumble. Make sure your fly is up.)

You know, it’s weird. When I was first asked to say something about my friend, Sherry Sandquist, for her celebration-of-life service, I couldn’t come up with words to say.

Which is remarkable inasmuch as you’re looking at a guy who has diarrhea of the mouth. When I was a kid, my mother said I could talk the paint off a fire hydrant.

On my first day of second grade, for example, the teacher had to move me around the classroom six times.

Six.

She later told my parents that “Sean is a very nice boy, but

his mouth never stops moving.”

I was an average kid. A straight-C student. But when it came to incessant talking I was without peer. Each one of my childhood report cards—every single one—explained that “Sean talks too much.”

And yet I am unable to find anything to say about one of my best friends for her final memorial.

Namely, because where would you start? What do you say about your friend while her whole family is staring at you? Where do you find the words?

Here you are. You’re behind a microphone. Your hands are clammy. Your chest starts to pound. And you’re about to crumble beneath the limelight.

Then, suddenly, you recall something the doctor said in third grade. He said you have a condition called “vasovagal syncope.” A prevailing medical condition wherein episodes of extreme nervousness can cause you to black out…

DEAR SEAN:

My doctor gave me some very bad news. I can’t even bring myself to talk about it. I’m so scared right now. I don’t know why God is doing all this to me. I am so angry with God right now. I hate God.

Thanks,
SLEEPLESS-IN-NEW-YORK

DEAR SLEEPLESS:

About 300 years ago, my wife and I were newlyweds, riding in the passenger seat of our crappy ‘88 Nissan Altima. My wife was driving.

My wife always drives. I’m pretty sure this was written in our wedding vows somewhere.

We were on our way home from Walmart, after buying groceries. And we were having an intense argument.

As newlyweds, we didn’t have much money. So buying groceries was a tedious ordeal for us. We would wander aisles, meticulously counting pennies, painstakingly deciding which products to forego, and which items were necessary for the success of our marriage.

On this particular shopping trip I was heavily in favor of buying a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon for our marriage.

My wife, however, said it would be

a cold day in Hades before we wasted hard-earned cash on beer. She wanted instead to buy scented candles that were roughly the size of municipal fire hydrants which made our apartment smell like a brothel.

We got into an argument right in the middle of the store. It was the nuclear explosion of arguments. The kind of newlywed argument that lasted throughout the checkout line, the parking lot, and on the ride home.

So there we were, in the car. On the highway. We got so mad at each other that at some point my wife stopped the car and kicked me out onto the desolate two-lane road.

I was certain she was only trying to make her point. She wouldn’t actually leave me here on an empty highway, would she?

Yes, she would.

She slammed the door, stamped on the gas,…

The hotel parking lot. Early afternoon. He was packing his truck. Slamming toolbox lids. Reorganizing luggage in the rear cab. Iowa plates.

I’ve never met anyone from Iowa before. Or if I have, chances are they were so timid I don’t remember them.

Midwesterners, in my experience, are quieter than your average folks. They don’t enter a room like my people. Yelling, laughing, clapping everyone’s backs like a politician or a manure salesman.

They are humble people. Reserved. Kindhearted, but very hesitant to give away a free hug. In other words: they are Lutheran.

This man was late forties. Wearing denim and boots. Quiet disposition. He talked a little like Jimmy Stewart.

His wife was with him. Reddish hair. Pretty. They looked like they just stepped off the alfalfa farm. Good people.

I noticed the gas cans and chainsaws in the back of his truck. The entire bed of his Ford was weighted in heavy equipment.

The truck was towing an enclosed trailer with even more gear loaded inside. Lawn mowers, Weed Eaters, hedge trimmers, chains, axes, you name it.

There were garbage

bags full of secondhand clothes, boxes of diapers, and baby formula.

“I’m on my way to Fort Myers, Florida,” he said.

I asked what a mild mannered Iowan was doing traveling to Florida after a Category 4 hurricane had just struck.

He shrugged. “Way I figure, what Florida people need is help. I got the tools, I got the time, so I thought, why not?”

His wife added, “It’s what we’d want people to do for us.”

I can’t help but feel like heel. I am a Floridian. And yet I have never—not once in my life—traveled to Iowa after a tornado to help tornado victims. I’ve never asked myself what I can do to help blizzard victims.

For shame.

“You must have family in Florida,” I said.

That must be why he was going.

He shook…

The little girl stood before the small civic group on a Thursday morning before breakfast. The morning after Hurricane Ian made landfall.

The child had brunette pigtail braids. A white dress. Patent leather shoes.

It was your average weekday. Local business people gathered for a quick meeting before going to work.

Tired businesspersons sat at small circular tables, wearing sports jackets and neckties. Wearing hosiery and skirt suits. I had been invited here by my friend Howie. I was wearing a tie, if you can imagine.

I was wishing I would have never agreed to come.

When the little girl took the podium, I was wandering through the buffet line, stacking a Styrofoam plate with imitation breakfast fare that tasted more like wet napkins than it did edible organic matter.

The little girl tested the sound system by tapping the microphone loudly. The speakers nearly exploded.

TAP! TAP! TAP!

That got everyone listening.

“Can I have everyone’s attention?” said the master of ceremonies. “We have a special guest here to pray for breakfast today.”

He presented the girl. Everyone applauded.

The

girl’s name was Sadie. She was 9 years old. Sadie’s grandmother lives in Fort Myers, Florida, and nobody has heard from the grandmother yet.

Sadie is taking it pretty hard. Her mother is a wreck. Her father has driven down to Fort Meyers to locate the elderly woman.

Ever since Ian hit, hundreds are presumed dead in Lee County. Florida is a disaster zone.

Everyone bows their heads.

“Dear Lord,” Sadie began. “Please help the people in Florida.”

And this is all she says. She is a kid. Not a public speaker.

Her words were followed by a long silence. Sadie didn’t really know what to say. Her mother told me that her daughter had not spoken before a crowd this large before.

Sadie added nervously, “Help everyone to be okay, God.”

This was followed by another long gap.…

In God We Trust. That’s the motto of my home state. In 1868, the Florida legislature adopted this motto. Namely, because they thought it sounded better than “Florida—most of us are Realtors®.”

Our state motto was so good that Eisenhower signed a bill to make it the national motto in 1956. Congress voted. It was unanimous.

This is just one more clear example of how everyone wants to be Florida.

I am a Floridian. My family lives in Florida. My people are Floridians. My former Sunday school teachers. My in-laws. My exes. I grew up with hurricanes.

During the feckless summers of my youth, hurricane season ran from June until the following June. And that was life. You didn’t like it. But you tolerated it because you didn’t know anything else.

When the newspaper announced a hurricane in the Gulf, you would watch TV incessantly. You’d stay up until the wee hours, waiting for updates, watching endless commercials wherein grumpy old men in supermarkets warned you not to squeeze the Charmin.

There were no smartphones

or fancy weather websites back then. You just had a radio and a TV.

In the Western Panhandle, our television news came from either Mobile, Pensacola, or Panama City. And our newscasters wore so much hairspray they could deflect small caliber ammunition.

These newspersons were from the old school of broadcasting, which meant that they were pretty sedate and matter-of-fact. There was no anxiety among news anchors like there is today. All the meteorologists were calm men who wore coats and ties and looked like your father’s dentist.

The whole town came together during hurricane preparations. You’d go into Ace Hardware to buy plywood, and all the old men were sipping coffee from foam cups, talking about it. Most of us felt a slight thrill coursing through our arteries.

You’d help your neighbors put up storm shutters. You’d bring in Miss Betty’s potted plants. You’d…

The day begins for Jenny Hicks. It’s a day like any other. She wakes up. Loads the coffeemaker. Gets dressed. Brushes her teeth. Starts the car.

Then she saves the world.

She leaves the house. It’s morning time. The sun is rising over rural Georgia like an orange billiard ball.

She pulls her SUV to the curb of a nondescript house. She leaps out of the vehicle. Her friend’s wheelchair is parked by the curb.

Meet Ben. He is a grown man with a developmental disability. He is waiting here for her.

“HI MISS JENNY!” Ben says.

Jenny gives him a hug. “Are you ready for our trip today, Ben?”

“FIELD TRIP!” he shouts. “FIELD TRIP!”

Whereupon Jenny Hicks rolls up her sleeves and lifts Ben into the backseat of the SUV. She strains to get him situated. She twists. She uses every muscle she has. She struggles. Then she buckles him in.

And now that she has worked up a sweat, her day is just beginning. Because it’s time to go pick up her next passenger.

“This

is my life,” she says. “And I love it.”

Jenny started PEAK a few years ago. PEAK is a donor-funded program run by volunteers. It is a program for people with developmental disabilities. People who have graduated from high school and suddenly found themselves lost in the crevices of a society that has forgotten them.

Jenny cut her teeth working in high school special education. She’s seen the best and the worst. Early in her career, she noticed something was wrong with the system.

“Too many of my students were graduating and going straight to the sofa,” said Jenny. “And that just wasn’t good enough for me. I had a former student pass away, and she hadn’t seen her friends for years before her death.”

Everyone deserves the opportunity to keep having a life. Everyone should have the right to continue learning,…

Morning. The lobby of my hotel is crowded. It’s breakfast time.

This is the moment of day when guests emerge from rooms with messed-up hair, bedroom slippers, and wrinkled clothes. They shuffle through corridors toward Bunn coffee machines like the living dead.

I’m eating processed “scrambled-egg-like” matter, and sausage that has been labeled “100% real meat.”

There is an elderly man in line who uses a mechanical wheelchair. He wears a green ballcap with “Vietnam” printed on the front.

He cannot reach the buffet serving spoon because his wheelchair is too low.

Behind him in line is a boy. The kid has reddish hair and freckles. He is full-faced and friendly.

“Here,” says the boy, “allow me.”

The kid uses the serving spoon to dish the “eggish” abberation onto the old man’s plate. The old man thanks him.

“What else do you want on your plate?” Junior asks.

The old man says, “Oh, don’t worry about me, I can help myself.”

“I don’t mind. I’ll help you.”

The old man just smiles at the kid. This man is perfectly capable of fixing his own plate, but sometimes an act of service isn’t

about the servee.

“Okay,” says the old man.

The boy points to the sausage. “Would you like some of this stuff?”

“Yes, please.”

“How much would you like?”

“I’ll say ‘when.’”

The boy wrinkles his face. “When?”

“It’s what people say whenever they’ve had enough of a good thing.”

The boy still doesn’t understand. “They say ‘when’?”

“That’s right.”

The boy starts dishing up the faux-meat patties until the old man says, “When.”

“Would you like an apple or banana?” the boy says.

The old man shakes his head. “Only fruit I eat comes in a wine glass. But I’ll take some orange juice.”

The boy removes a plastic cup from a stack. He fills it from the Star-Trek-like juice dispenser.

“How about some bread?” asks the kid.

“You write too much about Waffle House,” writes John, from Hoboken, New Jersey. “I’m sick of reading about stupid Waffle Houses, they can’t be as good as you purport. We don’t have them here where I live.”

“You write about Waffle House like it’s the afterlife,” writes Carol of Clearwater, Florida. “For crying out loud, move on. It’s just grease and waffles.”

In response to my critics, I have three words: T-bone.

It’s 11:27 p.m. I walk into the Waffle House in Hampton, Georgia. The place is full tonight because it’s the only place open. And it’s the only place in America that serves a T-bone steak and a few eggs for under $15.

There are truckers with sagging eyes. College-age kids who have been out late, drinking too much Ovaltine. A table of young women in nursing scrubs, speaking rapid-fire Español. A four-top of guys in neon road-crew vests, eating hash browns.

My server tonight is Robert. He is young. His skin is the color of mahogany. His eyes do not focus on me directly. At first, I’m

not sure whether he’s looking at me until he speaks.

“How are you tonight, boss?”

My grandmother’s vision was impaired all her life. His mannerisms remind me of hers.

“Know what you’d like to eat?” he says in a friendly tone.

So I place my order: T-bone. Hash browns. Coffee. The trifecta.

Robert writes this down with painstaking carefulness. I can tell he is straining to see his own text as he writes. He holds his nose only inches from the notepad. But nothing slows him down. This kid is a real talent.

Meanwhile, Robert has a full house of customers constantly calling for him, asking for this and that, and just generally being giant pains in the Blessed Assurance.

Moreover, I can tell Robert is working against his own eyesight. This young man has every right to be aggravated tonight,…

Traffic is heavy. There is a blind dog in the passenger seat of my vehicle, emitting strange and exotic smells.

The dog’s name is Marigold. We call her “Marigold the Magnificent.” Or “Marigold the Marvelous.” Or, if she’s chewing another pair of my reading glasses: “Marigold the Maniac.”

We have traveled a few hundred miles. I have to make a speech at a private get-together tonight. The audience will include a very famous politician. I am more than a little nervous.

Also, I haven’t told anyone I’m bringing a canine with me. This gig was booked long before I rashly adopted a blind animal who needs me 24/7.

I’m hoping they allow coondogs at the venue.

I arrive at my hotel. It’s a nice joint. Art Deco interior. The woman clerk looks at me funny when I waltz to the front desk with a purebred hound.

The clerk is aghast.

“Excuse me, sir?” she says. “Is that a dog?”

“Is this a trick question?” I say.

“We don’t allow pets.”

“She’s not a pet.”

“What is she?”

“Episcopalian.”

No response.

“Look,” I say, “they told me

I could bring my dog when I called ahead and booked a pet-friendly room.”

She crosses her arms. “I’m sorry, sir, but nobody told me about this.”

“It hurts being left out, doesn’t it?”

It takes some doing, but we finally get things straightened out. The manager is called. He says it’s no big deal. Then I pay a pet deposit. Bada bing, bada boom. He’s glad to have our business.

Although, honestly, Marigold still holds a grudge against the clerk. She decides to let the disgruntled woman know exactly how she feels by making some Art Deco on the hotel grass.

Our room is fancy. It comes with all the trimmings. Huge beds. Fat pillows. Soft towels. Robes so thick and plush you can hardly get your suitcase closed.

I work on my…