One of the first official dates with my wife took place at her parents’ house. That night, her extremely nosy parents promised not to spy on us, nor eavesdrop, nor bother us, nor hide behind the sofa and wait for us to kiss. They agreed to let us have the entire downstairs to ourselves.

I was very nervous. What would we talk about? What would we do?

Well, since my story takes place in an era when VHS cassettes still roamed the earth, we decided to rent a VHS movie. Although as it turned out, we were so timid we couldn’t actually decide on a movie. So our bashful conversation in the video-rental store went like this:

HER: Which movie do you want?

ME: Oh, anything you want.

HER: I don’t care, I’ll watch anything you wanna watch.

ME: Makes no difference. What do you wanna see?

HER: Whatever you wanna see.

And so it went. Because all young lovers are afraid to come right out and say something like, “Darling, I do believe I’d prefer

to watch something produced by the genius that is Monty Python.”

We had the same hem-hawing conversation about which restaurant to choose for dinner. But we went hungry because we never settled on a place. Instead we ended up driving in circles for two hours constantly saying, “Where do you wanna eat?” “I don’t care, where do YOU wanna eat?”

Eventually we returned to her parents’ house and spent the rest of the evening trying not to demonstrate symptoms of dangerously low blood-sugar.

When we entered her family’s living room, her mother and father immediately evacuated to give us privacy. Though, later that night I swear I saw their heads peeking around a corner.

As it happened, our date night got worse. Because the movie we rented turned out to be the foulest, most inappropriate skin-flick Hollywood ever released. It was so bad we…

Remember when you were a puppy? You used to sit by the front door all day and wait for your mom to come home. Because this is what all dogs do.

One reason you did this was because whenever your loved ones would arrive and see you sitting patiently by the door, they’d be so full of emotion they’d blurt out, “Who’s a good boy?! Who’s a good boy?!” And inevitably food would follow.

The truth is, all you ever wanted to hear was that you were a good boy. This phrase made all the front-door waiting worth it. Although you don’t feel too “good” right now.

Right now you’re lying on your side and there is a tube attached to your paw, and the veterinary doctor is injecting something into your bloodstream. Your mom is holding you.

You are panting slowly. You’re trying to wag your tail to show everyone that you’re a good boy. But nothing is happening, your tail muscles are too weak. And you’re struggling to breathe. Your heart is slowing. The lights

are dimming. And everyone is grim.

“Buddy,” says your mom. Because your name is all she can mouth through her tears. “Buddy.”

Somehow, within the innermost depths of your brain, you know what’s happening here. This is something big. Something frightening. Something final.

It takes a moment, but you eventually realize why the vet has a drip line attached to your veins. You understand why this room is getting so dark. This is your end.

You’ve been sick. Violently sick. You’ve been in the ER, the doctor said you have liver failure.

You are briefly sad about this. Mainly, because you are REALLY going to miss your mom. Oh, if you could only communicate to your mom in human language right now. If only there were a way, you know exactly what you’d tell her.

First off, you would thank her for being…

I believe cornbread can save humanity. Before you write me off for being a lunatic, think about it. Nobody can think negative thoughts while eating hot cornbread from a skillet. Cornbread is powerful stuff.

I don’t know if you know this, but cornbread has already saved the nation once. In fact, cornbread is one of the reasons you’re alive right now. I’m being absolutely serious. Allow me to explain:

One of the first foods Native Americans taught the pilgrims—our uptight fundamentalist ancestors—to prepare was cornbread. Thus, our puritian forefathers’ diets were heavy on the cornbread.

It is a fact that cornbread kept our fledgling infant country alive during hard winters and prevented colonists from starving in dire circumstances. Cornbread was life.

So in light of this simple information, this means that, in a manner of speaking, without cornbread, there would be no America. Simply put, cornbread is more American than Chevys, Coke floats, mailbox baseball, and pugs dressed in bow ties.

And I’m talking about the real cornbread here, not the fare from a box.

I wouldn’t feed box-cornbread to a Labrador. No, I’m speaking of corn pone cooked in a greasy iron skillet, smeared with so much butter your cardiologist disowns you.

Long ago, I used to work as a drywall man. One day my coworker, Bill, asked if I’d help drywall his basement. Males are always roping their friends into huge projects like this, often promising to pay them with beer.

The thing is, no amount of beer would have convinced me to help Bill. Because Bill and I weren’t friends. Actually, we were enemies. It’s a long story, and I don’t have room to tell it, but we had a falling out over a girl. So I responded by telling Bill to get lost.

Bill started begging. “Please? Nobody else wants to help Sheetrock my basement. If you help me, I’ll get my mom to cook for…

Let’s try something together. A positive mental exercise. Experts have named this technique with a fancy, multi-syllabled extremely hyphenated term, but I can’t pronounce big words. So I’m going to call it “remembering stuff.”

Ready? Let’s begin. Okay. Let’s start by closing our eyes. Excellent. Now we must2i pwof -jglm2-gukmm sd,vw 23hb uwewe.

Okay. On second thought, let’s both keep our eyes open.

New plan. I simply want you to recall the happiest day of your life. Take all the time you need. I’m talking about the king daddy of your happiest occasions. The time when you were giddy with hopefulness. Any great memory will do.

The reason I’m suggesting this is because I got a letter from a young man named Josh who told me that he has been depressed lately; he’s attempted suicide twice this year. Currently, he is in a rehab, which is where he wrote me his letter.

His message reads: “I just want to feel happy again… I miss being normal. I want to feel like I’m loved.”

That’s when I

started thinking a lot about this happiness business. Recently I read somewhere that simply recalling a happy moment can trigger small flickers of happiness. Which eventually leads to more happiness. Which theoretically will lead to Gaither sing-alongs.

So I decided to take this idea a step further. I called dozens of friends and asked what THEIR happiest moments were. As of now, I’ve spent the entire morning on the phone, talking to nearly 32 bajillion people, writing these happy moments down. Here are some:

“My happiest memory,” says Michelle (age 49), “was when the doctor told me my mom would recover from COVID.”

“Happiest moment?” says Randy (82). “It was when my grandson, Beau, was born. Beau has Down syndrome and he is my heart and soul. I thought my life was complete a long time ago. But then came Beau. Tell your friend,…

I’m in a hotel dining room, eating breakfast. Everyone is wearing masks, some are wearing latex gloves. I am wearing a bandanna around my face like I’m about to rob a stagecoach.

Even so, these scary modern times haven’t changed the state of the American hotel continental breakfast. Nothing can change that. I’m pleased to report that hotel eggs still taste like they were manufactured by the Reebok corporation. And all “sausage-like” products still taste like deflated footballs that were cooked on the radiator of an old Chevy.

The first thing I see in this dining room is a young family, hands folded, eyes closed. They are saying grace. The youngest boy is bowing his head in exaggerated reverence. Eyes shut tightly.

When they finish praying, I hear a communal “amen.” Everyone lifts their masks, and begins to eat.

“Mom?” says the boy. “What does amen mean?”

I love overhearing this kind of stuff. And I’m glad I overhear the kid ask this because sometimes I wonder whether kids still ask these wonderful questions.

As it happens,

I remember when I asked my granddaddy the same thing. I was a 5-year-old. We’d just finished saying grace.

“What’s it mean?” was Granddaddy’s reply. “Aw, well, amen just means ‘over and out,’ ‘ten-four, captain, ‘aye aye, sir.’”

And the thing is, I completely understood what he meant because Granddaddy spoke fluent Kid.

So here I am eating my manufactured “meatish” product, listening to parents explain the mysteries of Ecclesiastical Latin words to a child and I’m smiling. Because I live for this kind of stuff. I love to people-watch.

In fact, during the pre-pandemic era, when I traveled a lot, hotel breakfasts were my favorite moment of the day because you could people-watch all you wanted. I’m finding that people-watching during the COVID era is just as interesting, only a little more poignant somehow.

Three tables over from me, for instance, is…

About a year ago. Before the pandemic. I saw him across the crowded restaurant with his elderly parents. They didn’t look like they’d aged a bit. But he did. His face was lean, his skin was wrinkled, he was gaunt. And he still had his trademark sense of humor.

I told him I hardly recognized him.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s this new diet I’m on, it’s called being sick, the weight just falls off.”

This is not his best joke, I’m not sure whether I should laugh.

Then he gave me the real story. It’s a long one, I don’t have room to tell it all. He became very ill with an autoimmune disease. Doctors said he was dying. His parents were braced for the worst. His mother and father became his caregivers.

His parents tell me that for two years, they did a lot of talking to the sky, asking for help.

Doctors still can’t explain how he was cured. Maybe it was the treatment. Maybe it was something else. They aren’t sure. All anyone knows is

that one day he woke up better. No traces of illness are left.

“Now all I have to do is gain weight,” he tells me.

I have another friend I wanted to tell you about. I grew up with him. We once went to Mardi Gras together when we were young men—which is another long story that I don’t have time for. Let’s just say that I almost ended up as a permanent smear on a New Orleans sidewalk.

A few years ago my friend had the worst year of his life. His marriage sort of fell apart. His wife left him and took their son with her. Next he lost his business, then his money. He became suicidal.

One night, while asleep on his brother’s sofa-sleeper he had decided that he was going to end it all on the following day.…

“Yeah, I played ball with Hank Aaron,” said the old man on the phone. “Long time ago. He was a good man.”

Eighty-five-year-old Howie Bedell played with the Milwaukee Braves during the golden era. He started playing professional baseball during an era when names like Mays, Mantle, Snider, and Jackie were household names.

I talked to Howie this afternoon. He was in his living room in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. I’ve never met Howie before today. Actually, the way we met was: I looked his name up in the phonebook and took a chance.

When he answered the phone I could hear a TV blaring in the background. I heard a dog barking at the back door. I heard his wife whisper, “Who’s on the phone?”

He shushed her and said, “It’s someone calling about Hank.”

So I asked a few questions.

“Well,” Howie began, “I first met Hank Aaron at spring training in Bradenton, Florida. I was a rookie, I drove down to Florida from Pennsylvania in my first car after I signed.”

The

year was 1957. Eisenhower was president. Patsy Cline was on the radio. Gasoline was 30 cents a gallon. The Little Rock Nine had just enrolled in high school.

Howie was 22, newly acquired by the Braves minor league system. He batted left. Threw right. He stood six-one. He was 185 pounds of legs that could sprint to first base in 2.9 seconds.

“When I showed up to practice, I was nervous. I’s sitting in the dugout when someone said, ‘Hey, Howie, take the field and warm up.’”

Howie jogged to the outfield in an empty stadium. Two other players also exited the dugout: the 26-year-old third-baseman, Eddie Matthews; and a 23-year-old centerfielder from Alabama who everyone called Hank.

Howie’s heart was pounding in his throat. He stood in centerfield, crouched in a fielder’s stance, punching his mitt, trying to breathe.

Howie watched young Aaron limber up with…

I am walking in the woods on the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail. I’m in a world of slippery elms, black oaks, and chinkapins, strolling through the Tennessee forest. The last time I walked this trail I was an 8-year-old, holding the hand of my late father. We were singing at the tops of our voices.

There are horses on the trail today. I’m walking beside one such horse, a cocoa-brown animal named Danny Boy. The older man who rides Danny Boy is kind enough to keep pace beside me because he knows I am obsessed with his horse.

I have known this animal for approximately two minutes and I’m already professing my love.

I can’t think of a prettier place to be introduced to a horse than on the Natchez Trace footpath. This famous trail spans three states, stretches 444 miles, weaves from Mississippi to Tennessee, and dates back to 800 A.D., shortly before the birth of Mick Jagger.

Amazingly, much of this national treasure remains almost unchanged by history. But for some reason, the trail wasn’t

as well known in nearby Nashville like I’d expected.

For example, at my hotel I asked some employees where the Natchez Trace trailhead was located and they looked at me like I had boogers.

“The WHAT trail?” said a guy at the desk.

“The Natchez Trace?”

“You sure you’re saying it right?”

“I believe so.”

“Wait. Is that the nightclub where the waiters set the martinis on fire?”

You have to worry about America.

Either way, I finally found the trail. And I couldn’t be happier because the footpath is the same as it was when I hiked it with my father.

The Natchez Trace is the granddaddy of American trails, predating the United States itself. In fact, this trail was here before the Chikasaw, the Choctaw, and the Cherokee.

It gives me chills to think this trail existed during the same…

At sunrise, the Great Smoky Mountains are so majestic their beauty could kill you. So are the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevadas at sundown.

The same goes for the Tetons, the Blue Ridge, the Bighorns, the Elks, the Adirondacks, and the Appalachians, which were carved by the pocketknife of God.

Oh, and the Missouri River, when seen from 34,000 feet above, it will break your heart with its glory. The Missouri moves like liquid silver across a green patchwork of American farmland. So does the Mississippi, the Rio Grande, the meandering Columbia, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, the Colorado, the Youghiogheny, the Chattahoochee, and the boisterous Potomac.

But then, you can also feel this wonder in other places. Like when the Gulf of Mexico reflects the colors of dusk.

Or when you gaze across the Chesapeake Bay. Past the river reeds and gray water. When you listen to the geese overhead, honking their chipper hellos.

You get this same feeling when standing on Ellis Island. You begin to

visualize the hundreds of thousands of congregated Germans, Norwegians, Chinese, Dutch, Sicilians, Hungarians, Polish, Jewish, Danish, and Swedish, all dressed in drab rags, holding tight to their entire lives, crammed into duffle bags. And it all makes sense, why your old man was such a tightwad when it came to buying your Little League uniform.

I visited Ellis Island once, I could swear I almost saw my Scots-Irish ancestors waiting in line. I could practically feel their breath on my neck.

You experience this same feeling in Savannah, within Trustee’s Garden, when an expensive tour guide reminds you that this was where the first seeds of American cotton, apples, coffee, and wheat were experimentally grown.

And when you walk Savannah’s streets to Oglethorpe Avenue, you feel a similar awe inside the home of Juliette Gordon Low; a girl who was deaf in both ears, who founded a humble youth organization in…

I receive a lot of questions in my email inbox. And I wish I could answer them all, but I can’t type very fast. So I have compiled a few common questions which I am answering here. Let’s get started:

Q: Your writings sometimes make me cry. Are you one of those sappy guys who cries all the time?

A: I never cry. Although my eyes perspire a lot.

Q: Are you a natural redhead?

A: Nobody has ever asked me this. So I called my mother to ask her. She said, “Well, the day you were born, the first thing the doctor said when he saw your head was, ‘Uh-oh, you know what they say about preachers and redheads.’”

However I never actually learned what they say about preachers and redheads.

Q: Why do you always feel the need to mention the pandemic in your writings lately? No offense, but it gets old. Move on.

A: Thanks for the question. May I ask where you live, because I think I would truly enjoy living on that

planet too.

Q: Did you hear that Prince Harry has quit using social media because people were being so negative, and leaving hateful comments on all his accounts? He and his wife said it was wrecking their mental health. What’s wrong with our world?

A: You know what they say about redheads.

Q: Why are people being so mean these days? Do people ever send you ugly remarks?

A: Every day. But it got bad during the pandemic. Some comments really sting, too. Here are a few of the tamer remarks:

“What’s wrong with your head? It’s enormous. You look like a freak.”

“The problem is that any untrained [bad word] can become a writer these days... And you actually think people care about what you have to say. Shut up.”

“Everytime I see his face on my newsfeed I want to gag.…