Years ago I interviewed elderly people who survived the Great Depression. They were old and frail. Their skin was lined like Rand McNally road maps. And most of them, I believe, were wearing diapers.

I showed up for the interview with a yellow legal pad and automatic pencil, like a Grade A dweeb from the Daily Planet.

My first question was clarifying when the Great Depression officially ended for these people. Yeah, I know history books say it ended in ‘39, but something about this seems too cut-and-dried. I mean, it’s not like there was a ceremony.

I’ll never forget how they looked at each other and laughed at my question.

One lady said, “Ended? Is is over?”

Another man said, “We were poor for a long time afterward.”

The rest of them said the same thing, more or less. Until I started to get a sense that the Hard Times never did truly end. Not for these people.

Furthermore, the Great Depression wasn’t just a financial thing. It was collective mental crisis, too.

It made people do some pretty bizarre things just to cope.

Things like chain letters. Do you remember those? Chain letters were the rage during the Depression. The idea was easy. Get a list of names and addresses, then send letters out for good luck.

Everyone was in dire need of luck. Maybe with enough good fortune they could afford to feed their kids something besides ketchup soup.

Then there were then all-night dance marathons. These were inhumane endurance contests that lasted for a few days, sometimes longer. They occurred in every state, each major city, and in backwater towns.

Doctors and nurses were on hand while scores of kids passed out from exertion and sleep deprivation. The guy or gal who danced the longest would win prize money. It was a big deal.

But these were not happy-go-lucky parties like they they sound. These were…

I come from people who believe food is otherworldly. Miraculous, even. We are simple people who have built our religions partly around food.

Take Baptists. When you are ill, before anyone at church even says a prayer you get a casserole. When you have a baby, the first things you receive are baked goods. At your funeral, nobody will come unless Cousin Bentley makes deviled eggs.

So you can imagine how wonderful it was to wake up to the smell of food this morning. All kinds of food.

I rolled over in bed to check the clock. It was 6:03 a.m. and I could smell things baking. I stumbled out of the bedroom into a kitchen that was lit up like the Las Vegas Strip.

There was the hum of an electric oven, the sizzle of a skillet, the smell of vanilla, the overwhelming taste of melted butter, and the whir of a KitchenAid mixer.

My wife was preparing about 10,398 dishes at once. She is what you’d call a bipolar cook.

She cooks by frantic inspiration, sometimes standing near a stove for forty days without sleep.

When these bouts of inspiration hit, it is like watching a tropical storm in slow motion. Or a monster truck rally.

Mixing bowls sat on every shelf, each table, and on the top the fridge, loaded with cake batter.

I love cake batter. But I know from experience that I am not allowed to taste her cake batter with my finger. If at any time, my greasy digit desecrates her batter she will alter my anatomy with a pair of tongs.

“Mmmm,” I said. “Cake batter.”

And she answered me with a wild-eyed look often seen in “B” horror movies just before an unimportant supporting actor gets decapitated. She indicated she was about to reach for the tongs.

So I left the kitchen and watched from afar. My wife was cooking up a…

Somewhere in the deep woods of North Carolina. A two-lane highway. The middle of the night. It’s dark outside.

Thomas is driving with his windows down because his AC doesn’t work. The gust coming from the window helps him think. He is on an all-night drive back to his hometown. His dog, Rascal, sits beside him.

He’s left Houston forever. His girlfriend dumped him for his best friend. A guy Thomas might have even asked to be his best man. When he discovered the affair it was the worst double betrayal of a lifetime. It was like being stabbed from both sides.

So he’s bitter. He’s angry. Thomas does not believe in anything good anymore. The world is out to get him. There is no such thing as love. People are inherently bad. Santa Claus is a jerk. The Easter Bunny is evil incarnate. And there is nothing sacred in the sky. Nothing whatsoever. The sky is empty.

This is not Thomas’s best year.

So he is going home with his tail tucked. He quit a comfortable job

at a great company. He left his apartment and took his most basic belongings.

Two-lane highways in the Carolinas are vacant in the midnight hours. They cut through hilly, tree-filled valleys like a ride at Six Flags. Sometimes you’re lucky if you pass one or two cars at night. Some highways are poorly lit, others don’t even have reflective dots in the middle of the road. Old rural routes can be dangerous.

Then.

Here comes a pair of headlights. The two lights are rocketing down the center of the highway, careening straight for him.

Thomas honks his horn. The lights don’t change course. They’re traveling seventy, hogging up the whole highway, riding the middle line.

In a microsecond, Thomas runs through his options. Veer right? No, there’s a steep embankment. Left? Nothing but big trees. He’s a dead man, that’s what he’s…

DEAR SEAN:

I’m a high-school senior and I’m confused about what to do when I graduate. I’m so lost and mixed up about which college I should pick, and thinking how weird this year is, I have bad anxiety, and I’m getting a lot of pressure about it. Please give me some advice.

Thanks,
MIXED-UP-IN-HUNTSVILLE

DEAR MIXED-UP:

One day, in the far-off future, when this world is more advanced than it is now, something will happen to you. Something cool.

Right now you’re a young woman and it’s hard to imagine the fast-paced future. But one day you might be living in a fiber-optic age where the world is über fast.

Everyone will be using futuristic high-tech devices that make today’s smartphones look like Playskool products.

Maybe there will be flying cars. Or perhaps we’ll have three-dimensional TVs so that, instead of simply watching horrifying 24-hour news, we can sit right in the anchor’s lap.

By then you will be old and gray. Perhaps you will have cataracts. Maybe your knees will hurt. Maybe your health won’t be great.

You might

find yourself in the corner of your room at the Magnolia Manor Nursing Home, seated in your electric wheelchair, looking out a window at your flower boxes. Thinking.

Then, let’s say you turn from the window, wheel yourself to the hall, flip on the overhead light, and look at Your Wall.

Every room in this nursing facility—without exception—has a wall like this. A wall loaded with old photographs. Look at your wall. Doesn’t it just beat everything?

See the picture at the top? It’s your grandson after he snagged his first buck. Neon orange hat. Camo jacket. He looks just like his father did at that age.

There’s a photograph of your daughter. The colors are faded. She had just gotten out of the hospital after having her appendix surgery. Boy, was that a scary time to be…

I was not a good grade school student. It was hard for me to follow a classroom lesson. I was always distracted and lost in my own world. My teachers didn’t “get” me.

Thus, whenever I was called upon to answer serious questions in class, I would suffer a minor brain seizure then announce clearly that I had to go pee.

“Slow” was the word they used on kids like us. If you weren’t sharp, you were slow. Which meant you were, more or less, as bright as a box of mud. I once overheard a teacher tell another teacher I was slow. She meant no harm. Which only made it worse.

But it didn’t matter. Once this word is attached to you it’s all over. After this, all you want in life is to feel un-stupid. You would do almost anything to prove that you are un-stupid.

Don’t misunderstand me, all my teachers weren’t like this. One of my school teachers actually understood me. She came up with an idea to help me learn.

I came to school one morning and my desk was outfitted with crayons and paper.

She said, “I want you to color pictures during my lesson. I don’t want you looking at me, and I DEFINITELY don’t want you paying attention.”

This felt like a trick. But I followed her advice. And when her lesson finished, she called me to her desk to ask questions related to her lesson.

To my own amazement I COULD ANSWER HER QUESTIONS! I had somehow paid attention to every word she said while coloring.

It was a miracle. I was pronounced to be un-stupid. I made perfect grades all year.

But it was short lived. By fifth grade, I was back to being a mouth breather again. I had a teacher who didn’t like me. She ended up putting me in the remedial class with a few other kids.…

Joy. That’s what it was. Pure joy. If you’ve never seen a newborn panda, you’re going to want to pause right here and look at some internet pictures. That way you’ll understand the level of cuteness we’re talking about.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

See? Wasn’t that precious? Weren’t you just overloaded with nuclear cuteness?

Baby pandas are nothing but hundred-proof happiness. They are born blind, pink, fragile, and very uncoordinated.

And if you were to look at these panda internet pictures with my wife, chances are she would have elbowed you in the ribs and declared, “We’re adopting a panda.”

My wife cannot look at internet animal pictures without announcing plans to adopt. Even though we share our house with two dogs that resemble Anheuser Busch draft horses, lately she has threatened to adopt a pig, a three-legged goat, a baby badger, an elderly ferret, an albino squirrel, and a blind Burmese python.

It will be a cold day in purgatory before a python enters this house.

The Smithsonian National Zoo’s baby panda is still unnamed, but he is a

cute little guy. And now the zoo’s panda team has obtained genetic proof that the cub actually IS a guy—it’s not easy to tell the gender of a panda who is about the size of a stick of butter.

Anyway, I first learned about the panda pregnancy from my friend Jon, who has three daughters that are all completely obsessed with the panda.

“Yeah,” Jon remarks, “we don’t go a day at my house without panda videos.” Jon says this with no emotion in his voice.

So it wasn’t long before I was tuning in to the Panda-cam. Each morning, I would awake, open my laptop, and check on the live feed showing the pregnant panda, Mei Xiang.

The panda team at the zoo placed cameras in Mei’s pen for a 24-hour Panda Fest. At first, the team wasn’t sure…

JANE—Thank you for your column about prayer shawls. I also wanted to tell you that I started knitting scarves, blankets, and shawls in 2009 for friends who were battling cancer. I live in Virginia and my first was for a woman at my job who was diagnosed with breast cancer, it took me a week.

I told her that it was made from all my prayers and tears and we became very close and I thought I’d tell you that the prayer shawls do work wonders for people who need that. For anyone who wants to knit them, there are pattern books out there with nice designs. Thanks, Sean.

LAURIE—Hey! I want to knit these shawls for people! How do I get started!?

BARB—Is membership to the knitting club open? Do you have patterns?

GINGER—We Baptists are busy making shawls and hats, too. With the onset of COVID-19 and little to do except knit I have made and donated 85 hats for this winter. Forty went to our Mission for the homeless,

and 45 went to our veterans home. Last year I only made 40 total. This year I had a lot more spare time. Thank you so much.

SANDIE—I was the recipient of a prayer shawl when I contracted an autoimmune disorder that my doctors could not figure out. My shawl was given to me by friends from Saint Michael Catholic Church who told me their whole church group prayed for me.

My autoimmune problem eventually lessened into a non-existent issue and is still considered to my doctors as a mystery.

Please don’t mistakenly think this is a miracle blanket, it’s so much more than that.

MARTINA—My mom knit me one for when I was at the hospital with my 9-year-old son. He had a brain tumor. We used the shawl to keep him warm because those hospitals get so cold at night in many more ways than one.

She’s every Methodist woman you grew up with. She is elderly, but still cooks.

She can turn anything into a casserole or a deep-fried surprise. Hand her an old softball and, with enough peanut oil and flour, she’ll make supper. She makes a killer pound cake. Her chicken and dumplings is off the chain.

And she knits. A lot.

She knits prayer shawls for anyone undergoing medical treatment or suffering disaster. Sometimes the shawls are given anonymously. Other times at special occasions. Wrap one around yourself and you will instantly smell like her living room.

She is one of an army. There are millions like her. From Sasketchwan to Birmingham. From Beijing to Texarkana. These women live under the radar. They rarely talk about their artwork because their creations are not earthly objects. And these are not proud women.

Their prayer shawls are not for sale. They are reserved for oncology units, emergency rooms, intensive care, and funeral parlors.

Visit any pediatric cancer ward. Peek into rooms and you’ll see these prayer shawls.

They’re draped over beds, wrapped around young shoulders, laid upon the deceased, or used to mop the tears of the grieving.

They are used for comfort, assurance, bereavement, stress, fear, clinical depression, marriages, birthdays, suicides, chemotherapy, baby showers, adoptions, reunions, death row inmates, dedications, homegoings, homecomings, hospice care, graduations, COVID-19 victims, and broken hearts.

The whole thing started with two ladies from Hartford, Connecticut. Janet Bristow and Victoria Galo started knitting special shawls for friends and family 22 years ago. Almost overnight their idea spread like a brushfire on the plains.

The creation process is straightforward: a shawl maker begins knitting while simultaneously praying. The craftswoman whispers her prayers the whole way through, with each movement of her needles.

The shawls take about 20 hours to make. Which is roughly 1,200 minutes’ worth of Granny’s sincerest prayers.

And not just old women make them. Prayer shawls come…

Andy Griffith. He would definitely be near the top of my list. I can’t think of many things better than Andy and Barney.

Next would be barbecue. In fact, it’s a toss up between Andy and barbecue.

Some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever had was at Tin Top Barbecue Restaurant, in Columbiana, Alabama. If you ever visit, tell them Sean sent you. They will look at you funny and say, “Who in the Sam Hill is Sean?”

Also, I love pictures of my friends. I recently had a picture taken with a buddy. When I saw the photo, I noticed how old I look. And it was a bittersweet feeling. It was a feeling that, perhaps, I need to cut back on carbs.

Laughter from a child. Especially a child who considers you to be their favorite non-parental adult.

Cowboy hats. I love them. As a child, I admired cowboys so much that I started collecting cattleman hats. My wife says I own WAY too many, and is threatening to have a neighborhood bonfire.

Good T-shirts. They’re hard to find. I don’t want slogans printed on them, or brand names. I just want a plain color, loose collar, and I need it to be soft. Maybe a few peanut butter stains on the chest.

Dogs who sleep all day. I love lazy dogs. In fact, you could say that I aspire to be one.

Typewriters, fresh newspapers, the sounds of lawnmowers in the distance, Hank Aaron, Shirley Jones singing “Goodnight My Someone,” John Wayne, and black-and-white photographs.

Garlic, cooking in a skillet. Homegrown heirloom tomatoes. Conecuh Quickfreeze sausage. The fuzzy storyboards from Sunday school class.

A good book. One that’s written by someone who isn’t trying to impress you with five-dollar words.

The color yellow.

Lamps with shades. I am serious about that. I cannot stand harsh overhead lighting. It makes me uneasy. I cannot think of a…

I just want to say that Michelle is very incredible. Publicly. I don’t know her, I’ve never met her. But she’s had quite a hard year and she deserves a little noticing.

After her parents’ divorce, Michelle’s dad decided to move out of state, she hasn’t heard from him in nine months. He won’t take her calls. Her brother left for college. And her mother got a new full-time job with a long daily commute. Michelle is lonely and having some major confidence issues this year.

Oh, and today is her 14th birthday.

So if you are reading this, Michelle, I want you to stop thinking about crummy stuff for a few minutes. And think about how indubitably awesome you are. I mean it.

Quit reading. Take a few seconds. And think about the Miracle that is You.

Now I realize that we are basically strangers. All I am is text on the screen. And you probably don’t think you’re miraculous. But here’s the thing: you are.

For one thing, you’re reading these pixels, and they are actually making sense to your ridiculously

advanced mammal brain.

You’ve probably never considered what’s involved in the simple act of reading. Truthfully, I never have, either. Not until I wrote this column.

Before I sat down to type the following paragraphs I did some research on the anatomy of the human eyeball. And all I can say is, whoa, it really opened up my aqueous humors.

Here’s what I found out:

While you’re reading these words, the lens of your eyeball is focusing and refocusing like a high-tech camera. It’s filtering lightwaves through your vitreous humor—a clear jelly substance in the back of your eyeball.

THEN, your retina transforms this image into tiny electrical impulses which are carried by the optic nerve to the brain.

But wait. There’s more.

All these alphabetic symbols and pixels that I’m writing have no real meaning. Not…