The night-shift cashier gave him hotdogs and egg rolls—lukewarm from the warming rack. She did this instead of throwing them away. She did it because she liked Tony.
A gas station. The middle of the night. Tony stopped by this store every evening. He came for the food, and the company.
The night-shift cashier gave him hotdogs and egg rolls—lukewarm from the warming rack.
She did this instead of throwing them away. She did this because she liked Tony.
Tony. A nice homeless man with yellowed beard, gentle spirit, and dusty skin. A man who occasionally smelled like whiskey.
The two would sit on the sidewalk during the wee hours. They’d swap cigarettes, stories, laughter.
He was a spiritual man.
He told her about himself. In another life, he’d been a fella who was working his way through seminary. A thirty-something man, trying to do something worthwhile.
Then, his pregnant wife died in an interstate accident. He lost two people in one day. And he lost himself.
Anyway, Tony listened to her, too. She told him about boyfriend problems, her runaway father, and her unstable mother. She looked forward to his visits, they helped each other with late-night boredom. They helped each other period.
He gave her advice.
She brought him clothes. He gave her presents on her birthday.
One particular week, Tony never showed. She sat on the sidewalk, waiting. No signs. She felt like something wasn’t right.
She called the hospital. The voice on the phone said, "Yeah, we got a homeless guy here… Been here a few days. He belong to you?”
Tony had checked himself in. He’d told doctors he couldn’t breathe. His chest infection had become pneumonia. He was dehydrated.
She visited when she got off work. She lied to the nurses and said she was family. They knew better, but looked the other way.
She found him in a bed with tubes connected to him. She sat in the chair beside him. When his eyes opened, she handed him a greasy paper bag.
“I made these fresh,” she said.
Hotdogs and egg…
As I live and breathe. You might not know this, but that is my word. A long time ago, my father gave it to me. I’m not sure if Webster’s Dictionary has been made aware of this yet. But they’re working on it.
It’s my birthday. I’m at a gas pump at a Walmart. It’s a fancy pump, with a digital television screen mounted in it. Please Lord, bring back the days before gas pumps had flatscreen TV’s.
There is a brief commercial on the screen, then a news advertisement. Then, an ad for birth control. Birth control. On a gas pump.
Then: the Word of the Day. Elevator music plays. A word appears on the screen.
The word is: “loquacious.”
As I live and breathe. You might not know this, but that is my word. A long time ago, my father gave it to me. I’m not sure if Webster’s Dictionary has been made aware of this yet. But they’re working on it.
I remember the night I was given that word.
A man got home from work late. He called his nine-year-old into the garage. The man laid beneath a Ford, changing engine oil. His denim shirt hung on a workbench.
“Go reach into my shirt pocket,” the man called from beneath the car.
In the denim pocket was a piece of paper with several words
in sloppy handwriting.
“Read’em,” said the work-a-holic.
“What’re these big words?” the boy asked.
“Just read’em.”
The boy crawled beneath the vehicle with his father to read them. The boy could see the man’s face in the glow of his hanging shop light. The man’s cheeks were covered in oil smudges. His auburn hair was a mess.
The kid rubbed motor oil on his own cheeks and messed up his own red hair because he wanted to look like the man.
“A fella NEEDS a big vocabulary if he’s gon’ do something with his life.”
Said the man who once wanted to go to college but took up steelwork instead. The man who didn’t WANT to climb on skyscrapers, but did it anyway.
“Go on, now,” he said. “Read me them words.”
The first word…
Her boyfriend didn’t stick around during pregnancy. She was forced to work. Her job was in a hotel laundromat. She was promoted to a maid last year.
Colatta is her name. She and I are in the elevator together. She is pushing a large cart of cleaning supplies and mini shampoos.
Colatta is short, black, cheery. She’s wearing scrubs. She is pure Alabama. She has an accent that won’t quit, and wears a War Eagle headband.
“Went to Auburn,” she says. “Wanted to be a vet, but didn’t even come close to finishing ‘cause I had my son.
"Man, I thought my life was over, it was just beginning.”
Her boyfriend didn’t stick around during pregnancy. She was forced to work. Her job was in a hotel laundromat. She was promoted to a maid last year.
“Have a good day,” she says to me, rolling her cart down a corridor.
“You, too,” I say.
“Me?” She laughs. “Already HAVING me a good day. I’m so blessed it ain’t funny.”
Colatta. I love that name.
Later that day, I drive two hours east. I stop at a cafe inside a gas station. It’s a hole-in-the-wall.
After eating, I pay at the register. The cashier is older, very skinny. She places a handheld vibrating box
to her throat to speak. Her voice is robotic.
She hands me a receipt. Then, she presses the device to her neck again and says: “Have a good day. Enjoy this nice weather.”
There is a gnarled scar beneath her jaw.
And she's wishing ME a nice day.
7:09 P.M.—I’ve driven all day. I’m eating in a locals-only beer joint. People in this room are looking at me funny. I’m an out-of-towner and they smell it.
There’s an old man with a service dog—a brown Lab named Hershey.
The man wears a ball cap with a battleship on it. He shows me a tattoo on his forearm which reads: “Albert, Daniel, Adam.”
“My three brothers,” he says. “Killed in Europe. I was too young for the Big War, they sent me to Korea.”
That’s…
Truth told, I always wished I were a poet, like my friend. But I’m not. I use too many words for poetry. If I WERE a lyricist, however, I know what I’d write about.
I got a note from my friend in the mail. He just got married. It was a private ceremony, he didn’t invite anyone.
He enclosed a handwritten poem:
“Thought I’d be single until I rot,
But someone thought I was hot,
Look at me, I just tied the knot.”
Cute.
My friend is a bona fide poet. He went to school for such things. He was an eccentric free spirit who lived alone in a poet’s ratty apartment—which smelled like a wet bird dog.
He stayed up too late, writing poet’s poems. He ate ice cream for breakfast. Cereal for supper.
He had big plans for his life.
Then she happened. He met her at his nephew’s soccer game. She had three kids.
Our middle-aged, fun-loving, bird-dog smelling bachelor became a family man with three kids, a minivan, and a backyard that won’t mow itself.
Yes. I like love.
I know another woman who found love. Her husband divorced her at age seventy-three. She was a wreck. She didn’t think she would survive.
She stayed indoors for a few years, and hardly ever saw
the sun.
Then, something happened. She began to make friends. She went to the beach some. She stayed up late, she went on dates.
Then, he happened. She met a retired boat captain—he steered barges on American river routes.
She married him. He asked what she wanted for a wedding gift. She wanted to see the world. He booked a one-year trip to Europe the very next month.
I could tell love stories all day.
Like the one about Stephanie and her husband—now there’s a story. They were told they couldn’t have kids. It devastated them.
A few years later, her best friends passed away unexpectedly. Her friends were in their thirties, with a two-year-old son.
Stephanie adopted the orphan and welcomed the child into a pink-walled nursery she’d already given up on.
Then,…
“Sir,” said the flight attendant. “Your accordion is not going to fit in overhead storage.”
At the time I was actively trying to shove a carry-on case the size of a Buick Skylark into the overhead bin, while weaving a tapestry of colorful expletives such as had seldom been heard at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport.
I was on my way to perform my one-man trainwreck in Virginia. I had my instruments.
Nobody else on the plane noticed me struggling with my instruments. Most passengers were busy playing on phones.
Have you ever noticed how eerie it is, watching hundreds of people stare at screens?
Fact: One of the leading causes of injuries in the world is walking into objects while staring at one’s phone. Objects such as walls.
The passenger in the seat next to mine was maybe 13. He was playing on his phone.
“What’s in the case?” he said.
“An accordion.”
“A what?”
“It’s also called a squeezebox.”
“I’ve heard of those, they’re basically big squirt guns, right?”
You have to worry about our nation’s youth.
“No,” I pointed out. “An accordion is a musical instrument.”
“Oh,” he said. “Do you play music?”
“No,
just the accordion.”
The airline attendant came by and made me check my accordion and guitar. They strapped my banjo to the wing.
“The accordion is weird,” said America’s Hope for the Future.
“Why do you say that?”
“That’s what people say.”
“Who’s ’people’?”
“I don’t know—everyone.”
“So you’ve met and spoken to all 7.9 billion people on earth?”
Shrug.
He went back to playing on his phone.
Times have changed. My grandfather played accordion. My uncles played. My father didn’t play accordion, but he played the horses.
In the 1950s, over a million accordions were manufactured and sold. You couldn’t visit an American party, reception, or bar mitzvah without someone’s nephew Sal playing “Polka! Polka! Polka!”
Sadly, by the 1970s, accordion sales dropped into the…
I was a young man. Four of us guys walked into an average Florida Panhandle Waffle House before sunrise. We did this every morning before heading to a construction jobsite.
Our routine never changed. First we visited the gas station to buy newspapers, scratch-off tickets, and Gatorades. Then we went to Waffle House. And we did most of this in silence because that’s just how guys are.
Guys aren’t big talkers. Especially at breakfast. They keep conversations to a minimum in the mornings.
Many women, of course, manage to discuss every biographical event since middle school. Whereas most males use two-word sentences to discuss the importance of a strong bullpen, then they clam up until their next birthday. Like I said: that’s how some guys operate.
Our waitress was young, lean, a happy person. There were traces of tattoos climbing her neck, and she had a sweet face. She couldn’t have been taller than five foot.
Four of us piled into her booth. She doled out silverware and menu-placemats. She took our beverage
orders then announced, “Four coffees, coming up.”
Old-school waitresses are a dying breed, but Waffle House never seems to be short on them. I have traveled a lot during my halfcocked career as a writer; Waffle House always has great service.
Elsewhere in the world, food service workers are not always so amiable. And believe me, I am not being critical because I once worked in food service.
I’ve worked kitchen duty, manning fryers, scrubbing flat-tops, washing stacks of filthy dishes that were roughly the same height as the Space Needle. I’ve also worked front of the house—bussing, refilling glasses, and serving customers who INSIST on having their salad dressing served “on the side” only so they can dump the whole thing on their salad three seconds after you deliver it.
I read somewhere that one one out of five food service workers develops a drug or…
I receive a lot of questions in the form of emails, private messages, subpoenas, etc. Sometimes these messages are kindhearted. Other times, the messages are not. I have saved such messages in a special folder which I will address.
ROBERT, Indianapolis: Just a little constructive feedback, Sean: Why are you always calling it a column? They are blogs. You’re posting these on Facebook. Come on, this is not a column. Quit calling yourself a columnist and admit you’re just a Facebooker.
COMMENT: Thanks for the constructive feedback. As you read these words, other readers are consuming these words via their local newspapers.
I speak of faithful readers, such as Rita (72), who reads my work in the Charleston City Paper and writes: “I dislike your irreverent humor.”
And John (59), who reads my words in San Diego’s The Paper: “I am canceling my subscription.”
The truth is, I call this a “column” because Merriam-Webster defines a column as “waste matter discharged from the rearmost orifice of male bovine.”
No. Sorry. That’s the definition for “constructive feedback.”
ELSIE,
Clearwater, Fla.: You once wrote that Detroit is a “city with all the charm of a nuclear holocaust.” I’m a fifth-generation Detroit native. I live in Florida now, but my kids still live in Bloomfield Township and I’m offended. We love Detroit.
COMMENT: Very few retire and move to Detroit.
GARY, Jonesboro, Ga.: I’m a Pentecostal preacher. You tell a lot of Baptist and Methodist jokes, but you always leave us Pentecostals out.
COMMENT: The Pentecostal pastor tore his clothes and prayed loudly one Sunday, with these words: “Oh Lord, without you we are but dust.” He paused for dramatic effect. And a child’s voice said, “Mama, what is butt dust?”
DONALD, Aiken, S.C.: I like your work sometimes. Other times, you completely miss the mark. I’ve made a decision not to read you anymore because I just can’t deal with the irregularity.
…
“I am a little old woman who lives in an assisted living facility…” her email began.
Her following message was about the length of “War and Peace.” She is a woman who is as sweet as Karo syrup. But—and I mean this respectfully—brevity is not her strong suit. Reading her email took me three or four presidential administrations.
“I had a baby when I was fourteen…” she wrote.
The 14-year-old gave birth in the singlewide trailer that belonged to an aunt. The delivery was in secret. Nobody knew her son existed. Least of all her immediate family.
Finally, the aunt put the child up for adoption. It was impractical for a girl of 14 to raise a child. This was a different era.
The goodbye between mother and son was almost too much to bear. The 14-year-old held her infant in her arms when officials came to take him away.
Over time, the girl grew into a woman. The woman grew into a wife. The wife had three kids. The wife’s husband made decent money.
She
moved into a nice house. Her children did pretty good in school. Her offspring grew up to be successful and handsome and beautiful and well-off and happy. Fill in the blank.
But the woman had a void in her heart.
“A child is a piece of you, physically. Like an organ. People who’ve never had kids can’t understand.”
She dreamed about her son. Every night. Without fail. In her dreams, she could see him. She watched him grow. She saw saw his smile. She heard him speak. Once again, she cannot explain what she means. But she tries.
“It’s like a radar,” she explains. “My soul was sending out a radar signal, and I think God was sending me radar signals back.”
I took a break from reading the email. I still had 78,000,000 words left to read before finishing her story.
So I’ll…
Birmingham is sunny. The weather is chilly, but not unpleasant. I am in a tiny church, sitting beside my cousin, his wife, and his three kids. His two girls wear white dresses.
Times have changed. Once upon a time, I remember when all girls wore Sunday dresses. Today, I don’t see more than four or five in the congregation.
Also, I don’t see any penny loafers on the little boys. As a boy, my mother never let me attend church without wearing a pair of medieval loafers.
There are forty-two people in this room. Elderly couples, young families, a few high-schoolers, some children. It’s a trip back in time. A reminder of the days when Sunday school teachers taught us to say grace by rhyming:
“God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food…”
The congregation sings from hardback hymnals. Then, a sermon from a man with white hair, who pronounces “Lord” as “Lowered.”
I just read an article that said more Americans are working on Sundays than ever before in history. “Sundays are
a thing of the past,” the article claimed.
Say it ain’t so.
The pastor tells the congregation that he and his wife have been married for fifty-two years. The church applauds. Fifty-two years is a rarity.
When the pastor and his wife moved into their first parsonage, his wife placed a large cardboard box beneath her bed, she warned the pastor never to touch it.
“This box is private,” she explained. “Promise me you’ll never open it.”
He crossed his heart and hoped to die. For fifty-two years, the Baptist man honored his word.
Until a week ago. He opened the box and it surprised him. Inside, he found it full of cash and four eggs.
He confessed to his wife what he’d done, then asked her about the box.
“Well,” she explained, “when we married, my mama said, ‘Darling, a preacher’s…
I was driving. I was hungry. I had to pull over because I was about to eat my own steering wheel. The Tennessee weather was in full swing. I had a long way left to go.
I found a meat-and-three in a strip mall. Lots of trucks in the parking area.
You can trust a place with trucks in the parking lot.
Everyone knows that if you see a throng of Fords and Chevys in a restaurant parking lot, the said establishment has exceptional fried chicken. If you see Cadillacs and Buicks, they will also have excellent congealed salad.
The server behind the sneeze guard asked what I wanted. He was tall, gaunt, wearing a hairnet. His neck and arms were painted in a gridwork of tattoos.
“Chicken of meatloaf?” he said.
“Chicken,” said I.
Fried chicken is a dying art in America. I was raised fundamentalist; fried chicken is my spiritual mascot. Fried chicken is holy food. And it is the only dish I don’t mind eating cold. Next-day chicken, straight from the fridge, is better
than Christmas.
The server selected drumsticks that were roughly the size of a James Patterson paperback.
“You want veggies with it?” he said.
“Does the pope go in the woods?” I said.
The list of side dishes was plentiful: Mac and cheese, fried green tomatoes, squash casserole, turnip greens, butterbeans, pintos, great northerns, zipper peas, cornbread salad, slaw, tater logs.
And don’t even get me started on the sweets. You had peach cobbler, lemon meringue, blueberry dump cake, caramel cake, chess pie, and complimentary syringes of insulin.
When my foam box was loaded to capacity, I filled my cup from the tea dispenser. The man who served me was on break, waiting to fill his tea.
We started talking. After a few minutes of conversation, I learned that he had just got out of prison.
“I was turned down for ten different jobs,”…