When I was a kid I believed in miracles. All kids do. In fact that’s the best part about being a kid. You believe in practically everything and everyone.

You believe in Santa, cowboys, Bigfoot, love songs, happy endings, and you seriously believe that if Rachel Alison kisses you it means you're automatically married.

Personally, I was a big believer in eating SpaghettiOs for breakfast. I also believed in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and especially in Dale “The Intimidator” Earnhardt. I believed in angels, in magic, and most of all I believed in miracles.

But something changed over the years. I quit believing in stuff. I can trace this change back to fourth grade when my family life sort of went downhill.

By fifth grade, my home life completely fell apart, and shortly thereafter things got even worse when my father used a hunting rifle to remove himself from our lives.

That same year I learned some basic lessons about human nature. Firstly, I learned that nobody—nobody—knows how to deal with you after

you’ve experienced trauma. So they just don’t.

Friends quit returning calls. People instinctively distance themselves from you. They don’t mean any harm, but you end up getting blackballed just the same. Eventually you become a kind of foreigner in your own homeplace.

Which is why I dropped out of school, I felt like a sideshow among my peers.

By high-school age I was working on construction sites, and I was missing out on teenage rites of passage like homecoming, prom, football games, applying toilet paper rolls to trees, and mooning law enforcement officials on spring break.

The way I grew up left me disappointed with this world. I was disenchanted. And miracles? Don’t make me gag.

But one summer when I was an adult, this too would change.

I had just finished my high-school equivalency classes and enrolled in community college. I was trying to…

Troy, Alabama. Five years ago. It was a funeral unlike anything you have ever seen before.

It was raining hard in Alabama. The bleachers in Troy University’s Sartain Hall Gymnasium were filling with mourners. Lots of them. One by one the people came.

Outside the gym a Haynes Life Flight helicopter sat parked on the pavement for effect. Surrounding it were fire trucks, police cruisers, and five-hundred acres of ambulances and flashing lightbars. The horizon was packed with emergency vehicles.

The visitors came from all over the Yellowhammer State. Coffee, Pike, Covington, Dale, Elmore, and Montgomery. They came to honor their own.

In the gym, on the free-throw line, were three caskets draped in American flags. The funerary boxes were huddled together in tight formation. The hems of their flags barely moved in the air conditioning.

Those in attendance were wearing EMS blues, flight suits, duty belts, and class-A uniforms. Many were on-call. Radios were still clipped to vests. Tactical boots were muddy. Some had been working long shifts and were running on

fumes.

Gentle murmurs came to a close when an audio recording played on the sound system overhead. It was loud. The sound reverberated off the smooth surfaces and wooden floor.

This arena usually only hears the noises of screaming fans and the squeaks of rubber shoes. On this day the court heard the last radio transmission for Haynes Life Flight Two.

The helicopter crashed eighty miles south of Montgomery, only days before this service. This radio call was a ceremonial message to the deceased, a traditional send off among the initiated.

Static. “November-Nine-One-One-Golf-Foxtrot, we show you departing with four souls onboard, we’ll take it from here…” More static.

The sounds of sniffs were everywhere. And EMS workers don’t cry often.

The accident had happened during the wee hours on an average Saturday. The helipad crew at Troy Regional Medical Center was having a quiet night when a…

DEAR SEAN:

Since I am writing a book I wanted to know what it’s like being an author. So I prepared the following for you:

1. Does it get weird when people you don’t know know your name?
2. Is writing tiring?
3. Do you get too much attention?

Write me back soon with your answers. How are Otis and Thelma Lou and Ms. Jamie doing? Tell them I said hi.

Sincerely,
10-YEAR-OLD-IN-BATON-ROUGE

DEAR BATON ROUGE:

First off, kudos for writing your book. Books are fun. Writing a book is a lot like jumping out of a speeding vehicle. It hurts, and all your friends send Hallmark cards when they hear about it.

In fact the hardest part of the whole book process is simply beginning. I have met many people who want to write books, who have great ideas for books, who possess heaps of bookish talent, but never actually sit down and write the dang book.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You asked three well-formed questions. Therefore I will answer.

And I promise to answer with the kind of straight talk I wish someone would have used with me when I was your age.

You see, I’ve wanted to be a writer since the fourth grade. Whenever I would tell this to my teachers they usually responded by patting my head and saying, “Well, just remember God needs janitors, too.”

1. “Does it get weird when strangers know your name?”

You must be confusing me with someone else, nobody recognizes me.

Then again there was one time when I was in a train station after an author event last year. I deboarded and two excited kids rushed up to me with smiles and notebooks in their hands. I was so flattered.

One girl said, “Can I have your autograph?”

I did my best John Wayne and replied, “Be glad to, ma’am.”

No sooner had…

DESTIN, Fla.—The fireworks crackled above our little beach town. The moon was out. The beaches of my youth looked the way they always do: slammed.

“I wanna go home,” I told my wife while I hauled cheap beach junk onto a crowded shore. “I don’t care about fireworks.”

She laughed. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“Define fun.”

My idea of fun is not communing with greased-up tourist torsos on a public beach to watch low explosive pyrotechnics.

“I brought a radio,” my wife said, sweetening the deal.

“Wow. A radio. Gee, Wally, neato.”

That remark got me a rib contusion.

The beach was covered in blankets and families. Loud children played tag in the dark. People grilled. There were the sounds of fireworks that shook your skull. My wife fired up the old transistor and immediately Alan Jackson started singing about the Chattahoochee.

Against my will I actually made some new friends among the summer people. Like the couple on the blanket next to ours who was eating popsicles and watching the sky. The guy said he was a preacher

from Katy, Texas, on vacation with his wife.

“Hey man,” he said, reaching into his cooler. “You wanna popsicle?” Then he glanced in both directions and said suggestively, “They’re homemade.”

Before I could consider the deeper meaning of the clergyman’s coded words my wife answered for us both and pretty soon we were sucking frozen homemade ice pops that were made entirely from tequila.

The preacher smiled. His tongue was royal blue. “Good stuff, huh?”

Texans.

After that I found myself laughing often and sometimes singing backup with our little radio. Also I had double vision. Before my wife could stop me I was already introducing myself to total strangers on nearby blankets like I was running for public office.

I met a guy cooking hotdogs on a Coleman camp stove, he was from Atlanta. He was shirtless, large, with skin…

I’m driving on the interstate with Elvis. I found him at a truck stop. The “Aloha Live From Hawaii Via Satellite” album was on a clearance CD rack for $8.95 plus tax and I figured what the heck. It is now playing on my truck radio.

Forty-seven years ago this record peaked at number one and has yet to be outdone in my opinion. This album has it all. It has energy. Heart. Soul. A blazing hot rhythm section.

They called it “the concert seen ‘round the world” because in 1973 around 1.5 billion people viewed Elvis’s televised performance worldwide, more than tuned in to see the moon landing.

And it’s evident why. There is something electric about the whole album. Hearing a 6,000-plus crowd cheer like lunatics inside the Honolulu International Center is spellbinding. And when the king’s “Taking Care of Business” band opens with “See See Rider,” the concert takes on the intensity of a veritable nuclear event.

I can visualize Elvis taking the stage, wearing his American Eagle jumpsuit, doing his semi-karate

moves. I can see his 30-piece orchestra, the Sweet Inspirations backup singers, his silver screen smile, and his flowery lei.

No, they don’t have music like Elvis on the radio anymore.

Which is why I don’t listen to the radio. Today’s stations only play today’s “hits.” If you want oldies you need digital streaming services. Sadly, I have a non-digital truck radio that was manufactured back when today’s pop-stars were still filling their Pampers with fresh hits. So I’m obsolete.

Still, my old-fashioned radio is hanging in there. A few days ago I scanned local stations just to see what today’s music was like. I ended up learning a lot about modern society.

For starters, song melodies don’t matter anymore, neither do instruments, lyrics, or talent for that matter. They’d let you on the radio if you were playing an electric chainsaw.

Secondly, your average…

Dear Young Person

I am an imaginary old man. I am every World War II veteran you never knew. I am each faceless GI from the bygone European War. Or any other war for that matter.

I am in my 90s and 100s now. Lots of young folks probably don’t even know I exist.

In my war, I was one of the hundreds of thousands of infantrymen, airmen, sailors, marines, mess sergeants, seabees, brass hats, engineers, doctors, medics, buck privates, and rear-echelon potato-peelers.

We hopped islands in the Pacific. We served in the African war theater. We beat the devil, then we came home and became the old fart next door.

Wartime was one heck of an era to be young. Let me tell ya. When we went overseas we were still teenagers, smooth skinned, scared spitless, with government haircuts, wearing brand new wedding rings. We hadn’t seen action yet, so we were jittery and lots of us smoked through a week’s rations of Luckies in one day.

Then it happened. It was different

for everyone, but it happened. Shells landed everywhere. People screamed. And in a moment our fear melted away and we had war jobs to do. It didn’t matter who we were or which posts were ours. Everyone worked in the grand assembly line of battle.

When the smoke cleared and the action was over, we had new confidence in ourselves, and we were no longer boys.

And anyway, we weren’t just boys, we were girls, too. There were 350,000 females serving in the U.S. Armed Forces in World War II. People forget that.

Speaking of women. We guys were always talking about our sweethearts, wives, and mothers. If you mentioned someone’s girl a man was liable to talk for hours about her. And even if you’d already seen his wallet photos before, you never interrupted a guy talking about his gal. Because eventually you’d be talking…

Good morning, Erin. You don’t really know me, and I don’t really know you, but I wanted to thank you for inviting me to your wedding last weekend. It was a beautiful service.

You picked a good man to marry. Todd is an old friend. He’s moral, kind, loud-mouthed, and he can handle more adult beverages than any man I’ve ever known because he is an Episcopalian.

He is giving. Once, I saw him empty his wallet and give it to a handful of Latino boys outside the hardware store. It was cold weather. They were looking for an honest day’s work. They were wearing T-shirts. He gave them cash to buy coats.

That’s your new husband.

Anyway, it was a nice ceremony. They tell me that you and your mother decorated the chapel all by yourselves—and on a puny budget. It was breathtaking. We in the vestibule were all raving about how beautiful it was as soon as we walked through the doors. The white colors, the draped linen, the floral arrangements, and the magnolia

blossoms.

Somebody’s redheaded toddler was running around in the back pews throughout the service. And not that this was an issue, but evidently he had something fragrant in his diaper. We all know this because we could smell him before we entered the chapel, from a distance of roughly three blocks away.

His mother chased him, she was livid. She wore the angry face of maternal wrath, adorned in pearls and heels. She couldn’t catch the kid. He eluded her grasp, then ran toward the altar of God just before the wedding started.

He waved hello to the congregation.

We waved back.

Then he dug a hand into the seat of his britches and fished around for something which we all sincerely hoped wasn’t semi-solid organic matter.

And once his furious mother caught him, we all knew this particular redhead would not see his…

It’s overcast. I’m on the wide porch of a friend’s house, chewing the fat on a vacation weekend. The house is perched on a little main road which cuts through a nondescript small town.

There are sounds of kids laughing and playing. Easy traffic. A dog barking. Lawnmowers running. A distant radio.

My wife is inside with everyone else, small bursts of laughter come from indoors. I’m on a rocking chair counting cars.

This is an old porch. The kind my father used to sit on. I can almost see his ghost, shirtless, reading baseball box-scores. Or carving a pine stick without any real reason for doing such.

And all of a sudden I see vehicles. Lots of them. A chain of wheels and bumpers that stretches backward to the tree line.

The first car is a police cruiser—lightbar flashing, driving at a dirge-like pace. Another patrol car follows. Then comes a slow-moving, extended Cadillac, black, with funeral curtains, and chrome fenders. The Caddy is followed by the world’s longest procession of traffic, each car with its

high beams on. A gazillion headlights. Maybe more.

The cars are soon flanked by a railroad crossing. The train is about to run. The barricades close, and the procession’s lead car slows to a halt at the gate.

The faroff whistle sounds out train-whistle code—two long, one short, one long. Earth rumbles beneath the diesel locomotive’s power. The motorcade begins to accumulate more vehicles behind the Cadillac while waiting for the train to pass.

There’s a man on the porch of the house next door to me. He's within spitting distance.

“A funeral,” I hear him say to his grandson over the din of the passing train as he opens his front door.

They step off their porch together to stand barefoot in the front yard while cars pass and the procession gets longer.

“Why’re we standing here like this, Grandpa?” says the…

DEAR SEAN:

I know you have more important questions, but I’ve seen pictures of you wearing a cowboy hat and want to ask if you think it’s stupid for me to wear one? My brother says I will look stupid.

Thank you,
14-YEAR-OLD-IN-TAMPA

DEAR TAMPA:

Your brother doesn’t love the Lord.

I am a Resistol hat man myself. And it is my firmly held opinion that we need more kids in this world wearing behemoth headgear and dressing up like Willie Hugh Nelson.

Our nation’s forebears wore broad-brimmed, high-crowned hats; from the Pilgrim days to Burt Reynolds. Even the pope has his own enormous hat. So why shouldn’t you?

Take me. I’m no cowboy. Not even close. I am what you’d call a middle-aged homeowner with a 30-year-fixed mortgage. I don’t own a horse or live on a ranch, although my wife says my truck smells like a substance common to barnyards. But none of this matters because the main reason I wear a cowboy hat is this:

It works.

For years I worked on construction and

landscaping crews. We baked out in the sun all day, and ball caps didn’t cut it. In Florida, baseball hats are about as useful as ejection seats in a helicopter.

With a standard ball cap your neck and lower face remain exposed. And speaking as a card-carrying fair-skinned redhead who can develop third-degree sunburns in a movie theater, I need total coverage.

The second reason I wear the big hat is because I come from rural people, cattle people, livestock auctioneers, VFW bingo champions, and septic-tank installation specialists. These men wore tall hats with wide brims, and there was nothing unusual about it.

I received my first cattleman’s hat when I was very young and I never took it off. I have early photographs of myself wearing a diaper, sucking my thumb, and sporting a Resistol hat for my mother’s Bible study…

You’ve never heard of him. And neither had I until this morning when I received an email from a woman who I’ll call Matilda. She told me about a man she knew years ago.

He was living in his car, parked in a big-box superstore parking lot near the interstate. He was mid-40s, tap-water blue eyes, olive skin, he spoke only Spanish with a strong Argentinian accent.

His dwelling was a beat-up two-door ‘80s model Honda CR-X, which is perhaps the ugliest automobile ever manufactured in the history of mankind save for the Ford Pinto. With a close third being a ‘92 Buick Skylark I once owned.

Nobody really knows how he arrived in the parking lot except that his Honda went kaput one night. He managed to push the CR-X into the store entrance, and after that it was home sweet home.

Each night he would lie beneath his Honda with an electric lantern and a Chilton auto repair manual, turning a ratchet, but never getting closer to actually

repairing anything.

To avoid suspicion, he regularly pushed his hunk of vehicular repulsiveness into different parking spaces. Sort of like a game of musical Hondas. But management never ran him off because everyone liked him. In fact, the security guards helped him push the car.

Matilda says, “The employees got used to him being around, he was the first person to say good morning to me every day.”

Honda Guy quickly became a minor legend among employees. There was the night when a stranger placed a garbage bag full of puppies into the store’s Dumpster. Honda Guy saw it happen. He rescued nine newborn hounds and nursed them to life in his backseat. Later he walked several miles to deliver them to a shelter. He kept one puppy for himself.

There was the time an elderly woman’s car broke down. It happened when the temperature was over 100 degrees outside.…