“First you gotta peel the eggs,” says the old woman as she peels hard boiled eggs over a sink. “This is the hardest part. You gotta have good fingernails.”

We are having a video call. The white-haired woman is standing in her kitchen. When she finishes peeling, she fires up an Oster electric mixer that whirs like a son of a gun.

“I use an electric mixer to whip my egg filling ‘cause my hands get tired stirring.” She laughs. “My deviled eggs are so good.”

Good. The goodness of mankind is a hotly contested idea in today’s tense world. Historically, this is nothing new. People have scoffed at the idea that mankind is intrinsically good since Eve took up dressmaking. Many believe there is no inherent goodness in human nature.

And then there are people like Miss Reba, with her deviled eggs.

Reba is 83 and a committed deviled-egg artist. The woman has been cooking for funerals, weddings, and local clambakes for 60-some-odd years. And she’s still chugging.

“The secret to good deviled eggs,” says Miss Reba,

addressing the phone camera, “is there ain’t no secret.”

This makes her giggle again. Then Reba takes a sip of a potent clear drink her daughter, Annie, mixed in honor of our phone call.

I ask the old woman, “What’s in the glass?”

Reba takes a sip. “Ovaltine.”

Miss Reba’s deviled eggs are famous in four counties. This particular batch is for the family of a 17-year-old girl who died in a car wreck. These eggs are for the funeral.

Sometimes Reba has been known to travel up to six hours to deliver her deviled eggs.

I asked why Reba does this. Why prepare food for random people, then go to the trouble of hand delivering it?

“Because I need them to see my face. Need them to know someone’s praying for’em. Deviled eggs are my excuse for dropping by.”

Miss Reba…

An old Florida village. Not the touristy kind with swimsuit shops and scooter rentals. This is a place where the local high-school colors are probably camo and orange.

We are vacationing nearby this week. I am in search of tuna dip.

I pull into a random seafood market. The place isn’t fancy. This is rural Florida, where all seafood markets are required by state law to look like rundown miniature correctional facilities.

In the sandy parking area an old man and a kid leap out of a dusty Suburban then walk inside. The old man wears an Atlanta Braves ballcap. His grandson, maybe 9 years old, wears a Freddie Freeman jersey.

Inside the market, the old man never speaks. He communicates via sign language with the boy. I don’t speak sign language, but I speak fluent Kid. And I see a lot of love on that little freckled face.

When the employee at the counter is ready to take their order, the old man gestures to the kid who serves as our translator this afternoon.

The kid

points and speaks to the guy at the counter. “We want three pounds of those.”

The seafood market employee is a man with a shaved head, lots of inkwork, and an unlit cigarette wedged in his lips. We must have caught him just before a smoke break.

The inactive cigarette bounces when he talks. “Three pounds of shrimp? Anything else, boss?”

The kid checks with Granddaddy for instructions. The old man looks over the motherlode of seafood displayed on ice. Choices, choices. He signs to Junior.

Junior translates. “Yeah. What’re those things?”

“These? Grouper cheeks. Good eating. Want some?”

The kid signs to the old man who nods.

“Yes, please.”

The kid never stops signing, even when speaking to the cashier. It’s called being polite to Grandad.

“Sure thing, bossman.” The guy behind the counter is trying to act nonchalant about this exchange,…

I am driving toward the edge of the known Earth on a remote Franklin County highway. We’re going on vacation, and my old Ford is taking us there.

The speed limit is 65 mph, but we Fords just do the best we can.

I’m a Ford guy. My father and grandfather were Ford men. We Ford patrons have our critics, we’ve heard all the demeaning jokes. But we’re okay with being teased about our vehicles.

You can say what you will about our cars, but I’d rather push a Ford than drive a BMW.

This afternoon, I’m the only vehicle on this chipped, Floridian pavement. Save for a ‘78 Bronco Ranger XLT ahead with a bumper sticker that reads: “That’s not a leak, that’s just my Ford marking its territory.”

Ford guys.

I am driving through the real Florida. I roll past Panhandle hamlets and locales the general public rarely hears about.

Port Saint Joe, Apalachicola, Eastpoint, Tate’s Hell State Forest, Carabelle, Saint Teresa, Alligator Point, the Ochlockonee Bay. Florida’s “Forgotten Coast” becomes the “Big Bend” where, mercifully, you often lose

cellular service.

I check my phone. No signal. Hallelujah.

The beach house we rented this week is off the map. It’s an outdated shack, built during the Carter Administration. It’s got all the archaic fixtures you don’t see anymore.

The bedrooms are clad in honest-to-goodness shag carpet. In the kitchen is an olive drab rotary phone. They have tube TVs, and a Scrabble game that’s missing all the O’s.

There is a window-unit AC which only works if you slam your beer on it. The water heater is roughly the size of a football; hot showers last 27.3 seconds.

No cable, no internet. I’ll be writing these columns using my trusty 28-year-old portable AlphaSmart word processor—a primitive device that requires nothing but double-A batteries and a few Fonzie-at-the-jukebox slaps.

I’ve almost forgotten how good it feels to be disconnected…

He was two years old when his mother gave him away. He has one faint memory of her. In the memory, she is sitting in the backseat, holding him. He remembers radio music. Sunlight. That’s all.

It’s a short recollection, but it’s all he has.

His addict mother underhanded him to his aunt like he was an unwanted Labrador. His aunt had worse addiction problems than his mother, the situation didn’t work out. He was five when his aunt gave him to the foster system.

Group homes are not places you want to find yourself as a kid. Three squares and a bed. It’s no day at the Best Western. In orphanages love is hard to come by. Hope can seem like a myth.

When he was thirteen he came down with pneumonia. It landed him in the hospital for a week. He didn’t care if he survived.

At night, he’d often stare out his hospital window and wonder if anyone even cared whether he lived.

“I was alone, man,” he told me. “I was a kid

who was totally alone. Lotta people don’t know how that feels. I hope they never do.”

One night a woman with gray hair and kind eyes visited the boy’s room. She was a night-shift nurse. She saw him looking at the Milky Way through the window.

“Whatcha staring at?” she asked.

“I dunno. Stars, I guess.”

Their relationship was as easy as throwing a rock. She talked. He listened. She told stories that left him engrossed. A good story can do a lot for a lonely kid.

The woman told a particularly moving story the kid would never forget. It was a tale about her grandmother, who had been raised in orphanages during the Great Depression. This story hit the boy where he lived. His ears grew ten sizes while she talked.

She told him how her granny wore ratty clothes and ate…

I rear ended a Toyota years ago. I was driving the highway, John Conlee was on the radio singing “Rose Colored Glasses.”

It was the worst day ever. I can close my eyes and recall the whole scene. It had been a bad week. A dark year. And it got dimmer.

A car ahead of me slammed its brakes. The tailpipe came toward me so fast I didn’t have time to say: “Holy Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!”

The crash was loud. I blacked out.

When I awoke, I was lying in the median. Paramedics were around me. I couldn’t remember my name. I was out of it.

“You’re gonna be okay,” the EMT said. “You’re just in shock. And look on the bright side, kid, at least you didn’t poop your pants.”

Thank God for small blessings.

They rushed me to the ER. No broken bones. Only bruises. A doctor shined a light in my eyes and inspected my neurological reactions.

He was a white-haired man who said, “Say your ABCs backward for me, son.”

I closed my eyes and said,

“‘Your ABCs backward, son.’”

A good laugh was had by all—except the doctor, who charged an extra fourteen hundred bucks for laughter.

That night, I sat on the sofa with bruised ribs. The medication my wife had given me made me loopy, I was starting to see things. Julia Child, for instance, was on television, descaling a fish and I seriously believed she was trying to assault me with Japanese cutlery.

My truck was totaled. My face was beaten up. My collarbone and ribs hurt.

It truly was the worst day ever. And I’d just come off the heels of what had been the worst month ever. Weeks earlier, my longtime dream of becoming a writer had been squashed—I’d been rejected from an academic writing program.

AND: I had been turned down from a job I’d wanted.

AND: I’d…

Morning. I’m drinking my coffee when his photo pops up in my cellphone memories. And I’m thrown three years backward. I remember it all too well.

There I am, watching him. He sits on the steps of the Shell Station. A backpack beside him. His skin is rawhide. His beard is white.

His name is Buck. He’s from North Carolina. He says he completed two tours in Vietnam.

He’s not here begging, he’s resting his feet.

“My old feet hurt more’n they used to,” says Buck. “Hard getting old, buddy.”

There is a half-smoked cigar next to him. He dug this used cigar from an ashtray. It still has life in it, he says.

He’s sipping coffee.

“First cup’a joe I had in a week. Fella gave me a quarter a few minutes ago. Piled my coins together to buy me a cup.”

A quarter.

When Buck went inside to buy it, there were only cold dregs left in the pot. He asked the cashier if it were possible to brew a fresh pot. She told him to get lost.

“But I’m paying for it,” he

insisted.

She escorted him to the door.

So, he’s drinking dregs for which he paid full price—for which he is grateful.

There are holes in his shoes. He found these sneakers in a sporting-good-store dumpster. Buck estimates he’s put nearly eight hundred miles on them. Who knows if he’s exaggerating or not. Buck has a flare for the dramatic.

Still, his bloody toes poke through the fronts. His middle toenail is missing.

Buck explains, “God says, ‘Don't worry what you’ll eat, drink, or wear.’ And I believe it. But it's hard sometimes. ‘Specially when you ain’t eaten and you don’t have [cussword] to wear.”

So I walk inside the gas station on a mission. I ask the aforementioned cashier to brew a fresh pot of coffee—I tell her it’s for me. I am very…

I am sitting in the living room with my elderly mother-in-law, Mother Mary. We are watching television. Mother Mary holds the remote.

The television is enormous. I am talking about a TV that’s bigger than a king-size mattress mounted to the wall. The volume is cranked up so loud that bits of ceiling plaster are falling into my beer.

My wife is away tonight, and she has left me alone with Mother Mary. We are watching TV. Mother Mary is flipping channels.

You’d like Mother Mary. She is white-haired, with a voice like Scarlett O’Hara. She sits in her recliner, and we are eating pizza delivery.

She flips past all the major networks. She pauses on HGTV for a little while, but nothing appeals to her. She scrolls past all her favorites: TLC, TBS, USA, TNT, Home Shopping Network, Univision.

She finally lands on the Discovery Channel. The show is entitled “Naked and Afraid.”

On the screen are two forty-somethings. Male and female. They hike through the wilderness trying to survive. And they are both—how do

I put this?—buck naked.

The gist of the show is simple and realistic. Two people with desk jobs suddenly find themselves wandering through the woods, fighting insurmountable odds, harsh weather, sleep deprivation, predators, and multiple commercial breaks. And they do it without wearing any pants.

The important thing to remember here is that these are not actors, and they are actually naked. Their primary body parts are blurred by special camera effects, but their secondary body parts are in clear focus.

For example: There is a man on the screen right now. He is bending over to get a drink from the river. And I see London, I see France.

“Oh my word,” remarks Mother Mary. “I see his little hiney.”

I cover my eyes. “Mother Mary, would you like another piece of pizza?”

“Would you JUST look at that?”

“How about something from…

DEAR SEAN:

I am a teacher. I’ve been teaching for almost 25 years. It was my dream job. I’ve always loved it and now I don’t.

Inept administration, difficult students, priority-confused parents, and lack of support with increased expectations have worn me down. Now all I think about is retirement.

Kids are my life. Their smiles, wit, hugs, those “aha moments” they have… Their wonder. It is what I live for. How do I find my spark again?

Sincerely,
NEED-HELP-IN-MICHIGAN

DEAR MICHIGAN:

Boy howdy. I’m the wrong guy to ask. Educators are persons who have answered the highest calling, whereas I am a guy who hasn’t emptied the dishwasher since Labor Day.

Besides, I’m in the same boat you’re in. I too have lost my spark.

Have you ever seen the 1953 Western “Shane” starring Alan Ladd? Remember the iconic closing scene wherein the hero (Shane) rides away while Little Joey is begging him to stay?

To freshen your memory, here’s a replay of that movie ending:

The horse stables. Nighttime. Shane saddles his mare. Little Joey is crying, asking Shane not to

leave. Shane is Joey’s boyhood idol.

Shane, clad in a spectacular buckskin fringe jacket, tells the kid he’s leaving for good.

“Joey… You go home to your mother and your father, and grow up to be strong and straight.”

The boy sniffles. “Shane...”

Music swells for a dramatic goodbye while Shane steps into the stirrups and rides away into the Wyoming Territory.

The boy chases Shane, pleading with the enigmatic gunslinger not to leave. But Shane ignores the boy and rides off.

The final line of the movie comes from the weeping child who screams: “Shane! Shane, come back!”

That’s exactly what my year has been like.

Old Me climbed onto his horse and hightailed it into the Bighorns, while Current Me chased him and shouted, “Sean! Sean! Come back!”

Before COVID, I had a spark…

My mother once told me that the most beautiful things in life are often the things that go unnoticed. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that.

I believe she’s right. After all, I’ve never known Mama to be wrong.

Mama was right when she told me to always wear clean undies. She was right when she told me to never eat yellow snow. I believe she was right about nearly everything.

As it happens, this morning I read about a few beautifully unnoticed things. These items came to me in the form of emails.

I receive a lot of emails. Many of these messages come from people I’ve never met, who live in places I’ve never been. These perfect strangers write to me about small events that took place; microscopic happenstances that go unseen by society.

Like the woman from Michigan who told me about a young single father who lives in her building.

The father needed a ride to work because his car died and he couldn’t afford a cab. His jobsite was located nine miles away. So

he walked.

This became a routine. The man arose each morning and hoofed nine miles. Then he walked home after work.

He was walking 45-plus miles every week. Until last week.

Last week an older woman who drives a truck for a courier service had been noticing this man each morning. She pulled over and offered him a ride.

The man said no he’d be fine, and he kept walking. But the lady insisted, she did everything short of begging him to get in.

He got in. When she dropped him at work she asked, “What time you get off, hon?”

He told her.

She smiled. “I’ll be waiting right here to take you home.”

She’s been giving him rides all week. No charge.

I received another message from an elderly man in northern California who said he was out…

My truck is parked on the bay. I am watching a Florida Panhandle sunset while sharing a gas-station burrito with my dog who has not mastered sharing.

I’ve been out of town for a few days. I was on my way home when I pulled over here.

Home. One of my favorite words. If there’s anything more thrilling than coming home it’s probably frowned upon by Sunday school teachers.

Music plays through my open windows. Classical music. In my truck I only play classical. Usually, I select classic masterpieces from the repertoires of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, or Spade Cooley.

Such music goes well with Floridian sunsets.

You’d be surprised how few people are familiar with the finer points of the Panhandle region. A lot of Americans get confused about our area and assume we’re similar to mainstream Florida. These assumptions are wrong.

We’re nothing like Tampa. Nothing like Orlando. My front door is located closer to Houston than Miami. We don’t dress like Jimmy Buffet, and I don’t own mouse ears.

West Florida is

its own thing. Our region was settled long before the rest of our tourist-centric state, and it’s considerably more historic than big cities with theme parks.

In fact, for years this area never had much in the way of tourist amusement unless you counted the Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Bay County, where I once took Anna Lee Wilson on date.

Anna Lee puked all over me while riding the Loop-O-Plane ride. She had eaten nachos that night. I lost interest in nachos after that.

Our county is mostly rural. Here we have rich people and poor folks alike.

In the affluent zones, you have Land Rovers, Teslas, and hopped-up golf carts that cost more than Cadillacs. But on my street, most homes have double axles, high mileage, and foam-deer targets in front yards.

We are not fancy. We are painfully downhome. I…