I knew a man who lived in a tent with his twelve-year-old son. He was plumb crazy. The real kind of crazy. He camped in the woods and wouldn't accept money from anyone.

Sometimes, his son would wander into the church next door during potlucks.

The kid's daddy had a heart attack. The last day we saw the boy, a few of us gave him a Tupperware container full of cash—since we didn't know what else to do. The boy just looked at us. I've never felt so pathetic.

He finally said, “God bless you, guys.”

If he's still alive, that child is a man today.

Another fella I knew: he was a rodeo king. We'd drink beer together. I'd ask him about the old days. He'd tell me about the steel pins in his hip, plate in his skull, neck fusion, and spinal surgeries. God, could he rope.

When they diagnosed him with prostate cancer, he retired from the circuit and started working at a hardware store.

Once he told me, “The hardest part about

dying is wishing I could'a done a few things different.”

Hardly anyone came to his funeral. I sat beside his daughter. They put his ashes in a saddle bag.

His daughter said to me, “I thought more people would'a shown up. God bless you for coming.”

My friend Davey and I painted houses. But he wasn't a house-painter. Long ago, he taught music at Auburn University. Symphonic composition. The man had orchestras playing in his brain.

He was bad to drink.

Sometimes, I'd visit his one-room apartment and find him face-down in his vomit. He told me once, “It ain't me who drinks, it's my demons. I just can't kill them.”

He was purple when the paramedics found him.

His landlady and I stood watching the ambulance taillights disappear. “God bless poor old Davey," she said.

Look, I don't know what happens when people…

She has long pink hair and a ring in her nose. She's only been hairdressing a few years—the money is awful. But she's got a way with folks, and a healthy sense of humor.

“Turn your head to the left,” she'll say. “That's good. Now cough for me.”

Cute.

There's a photograph tacked to her mirror. In the picture: a heap of kids seated on the steps of an old home, grinning. There are so many in the photo, the picture is busting at the seams.

“That's my family,” she says, pointing. “We're a hot mess.”

As it happens, only one of the children in the picture is her own—another one came from her husband. The remaining five are adopted.

I ask why she adopted five.

“Fosters,” she says. “If you only knew how many kids need homes, breaks your heart.” She taps the photo. “See him? His daddy used to beat him with a mop stick before we got him.”

That's nothing.

The tallest child's mother overdosed in a public park—they found him sleeping in a

twisty-slide. The two black sisters: rescued from a crack house. The little fella with fat cheeks: he has cystic fibrosis and uses crutches.

She didn't mean to adopt them. It just happened.

“Most days,” she says. “All I'm doing is running from point A to point B. I want'em to play sports, have friends, but it keeps me busy.”

It's hard. Her husband works for the utility company, she cuts hair while the kids are at school. Afterward, she rushes home to make supper and ensure nobody sets the sofa on fire. They're poor as red clay dirt, but they get by.

“Can't remember what it's like to have money,” she tells me. “All we do is work. And we just found out I'm pregnant again.” She laughs. “I'm three months along.”

Congratulations.

When she finishes trimming my hair, she spins me around…

His era is gone. He knows that. His barefoot childhood is just a memory. The soles of his young feet were like maple. He could walk five miles on those dogs. Today, children wear shoes with lights in them.

Something else about him:

He made fishing rods out of cane stalks. They weren't like store-bought varieties—they were better. In the afternoons, he'd steal corn from nearby fields, eat it raw, then puff a pipeful of fresh-picked rabbit tobacco.

If you ask me, it sounds like a shoeless fairytale. But it's not. It's lower Alabama.

He spent enough time on the Conecuh to be part catfish. In fact, it's where he took his wife for their honeymoon. She loves him. They get along.

He took up chewing twist tobacco. Nowadays, he has to special order it. Nobody sells twist anymore. It's a bad habit. At first chewing was something he did infrequently. Then it turned into routine. Now, he couldn't tell a story without it.

And stories. He spins good ones.

You want

comedies? He'll tell you about when he let a raccoon loose during a revival meeting—eons before they wrote country songs about it. You want mysteries? He'll tell you about the harlot found dead in a wealthy man's living room. Dramas? The one about his cousin—who fell in love with his own sister.

Anyway, the old fella has a television. A big one. His kids bought it for his birthday. But it's still wrapped in a box on the guest bed. He doesn't want it.

“He used to watch some TV,” his wife said. “Sunday movies, or football, he don't no more. Sometimes he listens to football on the radio.”

Ask him what's going on in the world. He'll tell you about the weather, where So-And-So's boy goes to college, about the deer the McWhoevers shot last weekend. He doesn't know what the Zika virus is, doesn't care who…

I was going to write about something else, but then a stranger dropped homemade cookies onto my front porch. It was the same woman who said, “Don't trust a baker who looks good in a two-piece.”

It took me a few hours to understand that. By then, I'd finished the cookies.

There was a note attached. She wrote: “I make everything the right way."

Well, heaven bless the good woman who does not walk in the path of the unrighteous, nor practice the spiritual defamation of plastic-tubed biscuits and frozen breakfast burritos.

I'd like the record to show that I miss the days of real food . I miss country ham—the kind that comes from a hog in a nearby county. And real fried chicken—made with an iron skillet and slippery floor.

Last Christmas, a friend served ham from Walmart. It was an affront to decency. The meal tasted like undercooked linoleum. The package label on the ham read: China. I'd rather eat chicken feet than red ham.

Not only that.

I miss grits

that come from feed-sacks, that take more than two minutes to prepare. I miss French fries cut before frying. I miss popcorn made in a skillet, with enough butter to short circuit U.S. Congress.

A friend made microwave popcorn during a football game last weekend. When it finished popping, he opened a yellow packet of slime, labeled, “butter-flavored topping.” That gold-colored degradation ruined my favorite shirt.

And my mouth.

What happened to real butter? The kind that made your arm muscles sore. Or ice cream that turned into soup if you didn't eat it quick. Commercial ice cream wouldn't melt on my dashboard.

I'm just getting warmed up.

I miss how it was before people worried about deadly mosquito bites, dookie in our drinking water, whole milk, and deer ticks. As a boy, deer ticks were no cause for national alarm. Now they'll turn your brain…

She almost wouldn't let me write about her. She finally agreed, but only after I vowed to cut her lawn. That's no joke.

First, I had to promise I wouldn't give away much information about her identity. Then, I had to edge her sidewalk.

Her lawn-man had bronchitis.

“Well," she said. "As a little girl I wanted to be famous. I wanted see something big, to get out of a small town and see stuff. I used clip out pictures of exotic places and hang them in my room.”

She's silver-haired now, her left hip is a wreck, but she has terrific posture. And she looks stately in her pearls.

As it happened, fame wasn't so hard to accomplish. She studied hard, attended college, then found a job selling makeup on television. There, she married a man. He wanted notoriety too. To be a politician.

Which is like fame, only filthier.

Before she knew it, she was traveling back and forth, shaking the right hands, kissing babies, mumbling inspiring things.

“He started off a good man,”

she said. “Wanted to change things. In the sixties, he had ideas for water-treatment that would've changed everything. He was, 'green,' before there was such a word. Fought for equality, too.”

But ideals don't last in politics. They're like candlesticks in a hurricane.

“Everyone shot him down,” she went on. “Too many people offered him too much money to push bad ideas. So, one day, I think he just started playing their game.”

They went to parties, she wore white gloves. They ate at fancy restaurants, she used the right forks. They rode convertibles in parades, she waved to crowds. They slept in separate bedrooms—sometimes his secretaries spent nights in his.

She faded inside.

“I don't think people know what goes on in that world. It's a crooked way to make a living. It's worse now. I remember when he and his buddy..."

Let's…

“He was a dirt farmer, last of his kind,” she said. “Poor as a church mouse, we never had money.”

Back then, few Alabama farms did. After a Depression, a world war, and losing acres of cotton to the boll weevil, she says they were almost licked. Then he started growing tobacco.

“His daddy was a cripple,” she said. “Not only did we farm, we cared for my husband's daddy, fed him meals, bathed him."

When her husband wasn't doing that, he was supervising seven field workers. Or maybe it was ten. She can't remember.

"He was good to'em," she went on. "Remember once, this little old man came running and said, 'My wife's sick, boss. Think she's dying.' Right in the middle of a work day, they took her to the hospital. My husband paid for everything, even her funeral. It was sad."

But farming wasn't all sadness and poverty, there were high moments, too.

“Tobacco's gotten a bad name over the years, but we thanked God for the money. I used to string

leaves with the women all day, we sang work songs, you wanna hear one?”

Why not.

She hummed a somber melody, tapping her fingers to keep rhythm. Her voice was old, but if you listened close enough, you heard the entire South.

“When the crops got sold, we'd throw parties. Folks came from everywhere. Black, white, all kinds, didn't matter. We ate and drank until the sun came up.”

She laughed.

“Thing about farmers is, they work twice as hard for half as much. My kids're surprised when I tell'em how poor we were. 'Course everyone was poor then. But, we never got so down we lost our morals."

God forbid.

These were decent men, with good values. Men like her husband. Who paid workers before himself, who bought them new clothes and shoes. Who attended their baby dedications, hat in hand.

He was one…

The moment I first heard of my father's death, I wanted to run. I don't know why. It was a gut instinct. I wanted to dart out the door, past ponds, down dirt roads, into the creek-bed, and keep going until I hit Baton Rouge.

I flew toward the door, but didn't unbolt it fast enough. They caught me while I flailed like an idiot. A room of people watched while I cried.

It wasn't supposed to happen that way. I wasn't supposed to feel so naked, with so many gawkers. But that's the way it happens.

The following days were black. I cried myself to sleep. I couldn't eat. I looked in our kitchen and saw more casserole dishes than I'd seen in my cotton-picking life. I tried to eat chicken and dumplings, but couldn't keep them down. I ended up vomiting in the sink.

There was a live oak, at the edge of our pasture, behind the cattle fence. I went there to be alone, my Labrador followed me.

She and I passed entire days there, until I'd fall asleep with her on my lap. Sometimes I didn't get back until well after dark.

Once, I even fell asleep in the shower. The water turned ice-cold and I realized I'd been out for nearly thirty minutes.

Nobody tells you grief feels a lot like exhaustion. It's demoralizing, and reshapes your mind. During the nighttime, you feel afraid. In the days, you wonder why the sun seems so dim. You still want to run, but you don't know where to go, or why.

Food tastes bad. Conversations feel shallow. Your friends seem selfish and disinterested. And whenever you remember your loved one, you hope it will bring relief. It doesn't. It slices like sheet metal.

Why am I telling you this?

Because two out of two people die. One day, you're going to go through this—if you don't die…

We went to college together. He worked at a hardware store. His parents were illegal immigrants who didn't speak a lick of English. He was born in Prattville, but spoke with a Latino accent.

His high school counselor helped him choose a career path. He joined the Marines, got a few tattoos, served his country, then enrolled in college on the GI bill. Today, he has a wife, two children, and he's an engineer. He cares for both elderly parents.

He told me once, "My father come to this country so I have opportunities. Taking care of them is the least I can do."

She was pretty, but she always looked tired. You would too if you worked three jobs. Two waitress jobs. One cleaning hotel rooms.

Her sister was sick. Bedridden. When my friend wasn't cleaning rooms or bussing tables, she was swapping shifts with her mother to care for her.

When her sister finally passed, she told me, “I wish I could'a done more for her.”

More.

His parents were drug

dealers. They were rough customers. As a five-year-old, he spent one year living in a tent before they got arrested. When they were hauled off to prison, his grandparents gained custody of him.

Suddenly, he had his own room. A television. He watched all the Westerns he could stand. When he got older, he decided to try his hand at junior calf riding, and team roping. He was awful. Anyway, he's a school teacher now.

He saw his father recently, he treated him to breakfast. His father told him, “After all I put you through, I want you to know I'm proud'a you.”

His father overdosed a few months thereafter.

She's been married forty-eight years now. Twelve years ago, her husband's tremors started. It was Parkinson's. Today, he can't get a spoon to his mouth, or walk without help. He's in diapers. She is his caregiver.

She…

Pinch yourself. Right now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

You feel that? You are—to put this quite bluntly—pretty damn incredible. If you don't believe me, think back to when you used to poop your diaper five times per day. You've come a long way since then, big guy. Your brain is faster, your skin tougher, you don't make impulsive decisions, you'll even admit when you're wrong.

And.

You're getting better looking with age. Hand to God. If you think I'm making this up, go look at your prom pictures. Better yet, try taking cellphone photos of yourself. Just be certain you hold the camera above you when you do it. Otherwise, your face will turn out looking like Porky Pig's older cousin.

Look, I don't care if you have wrinkles on your forehead and silver in your hair. Who ever said this was a bad thing? Not me. Because I squarely disagree. I love gray hair, and I think wrinkles are privileges some people never get. Besides, I'd rather have crow's feet and good

insurance, than the body of a sixteen-year-old who couldn't get heartburn even if he ate Cajun-sausage pizza past five o'clock.

Each year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second, you get better and better. And every few seasons, you make new friends—they all think you're wonderful. I know this, because I'm one of them.

Furthermore, if you keep making buddies at this rate, by the time you take the ferry to Beulah Land, you'll have your own personal ethnic group.

Also,—and try to stay with me here—you look good naked.

I just lost most of you. But I'm not sorry. I've never seen you naked, thank God, but you have. And I hope you stand before a mirror, jaybird-style, admiring the body God gave you. I don't care what shape it is. It's perfect.

If you're a woman, you ought to take pride in your hips—no matter their…

Cheeseburgers are God's gift to humanity. You can quote me on that. Once, I traveled to Montgomery, to try what some call Alabama's best burger—at a hole-in-the-wall place called Vicki's Lunch Van.

As it happens, Vicki's is not a van. It's an old building. Furthermore, I can assure you, the rumors are false. This is not Alabama's best. This is the best in the cotton-picking United States.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Long ago, when I worked as a house framer, I ate burgers every lunch. This went on for years. I ordered them with extra cheese and pickles.

My friend ate with me. He had a curly black afro and stuttered badly. Because of this, he usually wanted me to order for him. So, each day at lunchtime, I'd tell the girl at the counter, “Two burgers, fixed pretty.” She knew what to do.

We'd eat on the tailgate. My buddy would often say something like, “Y-y-you think you could g-g-get me more C-C-Coke?”

“What am I, your butler?” I'd say, then

I'd get him a refill.

I remember the day he told me about a girl.

He said they'd gone bowling. And then, with great enthusiasm, he explained how she was a special girl. She had a young son, with cystic fibrosis. She lived with her friend in a bad part of town. Their relationship was, for all practical purposes, fiscal failure. Between them, all they had were a few nickels and a car payment.

He married her.

I showed up for the wedding. There were maybe five people attending. His mother, brother, and a few others who looked like they'd just gotten off work. His tux was cheap, so was her dress. Her son sat in the front row, crutches on his lap.

When my friend said his vows, he stammered so hard the preacher winced. His bride never quit smiling.

They moved out of town—she…