He was tall, lean, and young. When he approached me, he hugged me. Then, his mother hugged us both. A three-person club sandwich.

He must’ve been a foot taller than I was. His voice squeaked with adolescence. His skin was freckled. He had a long neck. He recognized me.

“I liked your books, sir,” he said, through a nervous stutter.

Sir? No way. Such titles are reserved for men who wear penny loafers when fishing.

“I read them all when I was in the hospital,” the boy went on. “I kinda got to know you, and it was like we were friends.”

His mother tells me his story. It’s a long one, and it’s not mine to repeat. But he has the determination of a saint, and he still has a long road ahead of him. He suffers more than other kids his age. And as things stand right now, he might not survive his struggle.

Before he walked away, he told me something. Something that stuck with me.

“You know what I do when I’m

down?” he said. “I list ten things I love every day. I write’em on paper. My dad told me to do that.”

He tapped his finger against his head. “Gotta keep on thinking ‘bout things I love.”

I was mute. I couldn’t seem to find words. I noticed a large moon-shaped scar beneath his hairline. I tried to say something, anything, but I just smiled.

He hugged me one more time. His mother took his arm, they walked away. The boy walked with a pronounced limp, holding his mother for balance. And I can’t quit thinking about him.

On the off-chance that he is reading this, I’ve come up with a few things I love:

1. I love Mexican food. In fact, I have had a lifelong love affair with it. A Mexican man I used to work with with used to make a…

“So, we’re having a baby,” he said.

My friend told me this while we were eating breakfast in a crowded place. I looked at him and almost dropped my fork.

He started happy crying.

“You’re having a baby?” I said.

He nodded, then cried even harder.

The number one rule of manhood is, you are not supposed to cry. I don’t know where this rule comes from, but I think it’s in the Boy Scout manual somewhere. As men, our fathers were stalwart examples who taught us to be stoics. Like like little John Waynes, minus the hats.

So you can imagine how uncomfortable I was when my friend covered his face with a napkin and sobbed in a public place.

Soon, the waitress came. “Is everything okay, sir?”

I sniffed my nose manfully and said, “Pollen.”

You’d have to know my friend to understand what a big deal this baby is. He has had an uphill battle for most of his life.

For starters, he has a speech impediment, which has always been a challenge. When

he gets stressed, he has a hard time making words happen.

We once took a community college class together, epochs ago. I sat beside him in class. Whenever the teacher would call on him, he would look at me and say, “Tell her.”

Thus, I was sort of his mouthpiece. I guess he’d been made fun of too many times to risk speaking in a classroom. As I recall, I made a D in that class.

I always loved his mom. His mother was one of those exceptional kinds of women you read about in “Guideposts” magazines. She gave birth when she was 17, in a home for unwed mothers. Then she lit out on her own and raised her only son in a 22-foot camper.

She worked in a salon by day; she attended GED classes by night. They lived in squalor…

We are on a rural highway. We have a long drive ahead, but I could make this trip blindfolded.

Our journey starts in Defuniak Springs, Florida.

Defuniak is a lovely American hamlet. Before it was a city, it was a railroad stop called “Open Pond,” which featured a perfectly round spring-fed lake in the center of town, teeming with freshwater Baptists. The lake is still there. So are the Baptists.

After you leave Defuniak, you hit Mossy Head, Crestview, Deerland, and soon you’re riding through pine trees. Lots and lots of trees.

Which brings up an important point, I hope you like pine trees because you’re going to see a lot of them in the next paragraphs.

You’ll also see shotgun houses, rusty mailboxes, cows that stare, toddlers on ATVs, and speeding log trucks driven by adventurous men who steer only with their left knees.

Now entering Milligan, Florida. This unincorporated community used to be the county seat of Okaloosa County a hundred years ago. What will you find in Milligan today? Nothing.

That is, unless you count

all the churches.

First Baptist Church, Shepherd’s Church, Milligan Assembly of God, Lebanon Baptist, a Church of Christ, Beulah Missionary Baptist Church...

Keep following Highway 4 until you get to Baker. Land of Dreams. Founded in 1861, shortly after the birth of Willie Nelson.

There isn’t much going on in Baker, Florida, and even if there were, you’ll probably never hear about it because the internet is slow.

Baker does, however, have a couple world-class restaurants. There’s the Gator Café—try the burger. And, of course, there’s Taco Town, which resembles a Third World gas station but once served exceptional fare. Sadly, they’re closed now.

So maybe you could get lunch at the high school cafeteria instead.

Baker High School is every small-town school you’ve ever loved. Their football team is bar none. Last year, for instance, their running back, Kayleb Wagner, made…

Danny and the boys arrived late to the nursing home. They were running behind schedule because of traffic on I-65. But they were here, and that’s all that mattered.

And they brought their instruments.

“We’re all waiting for you, Danny,” said the nurse, leading the band toward the rec room.

Residents filled the day-use room, wall to wall. There were dozens of wheelchairs, O2 canisters, and a corral of roller-walkers stabled near the door like Appaloosas on the open range.

Residents had donned their Sunday best. Old men wore ballcaps with KOREA and VIETNAM embroidered on the fronts. Old ladies sported oversized tennis shoes and hairdos which hadn’t changed since the Johnson administration. Everyone’s hearing aids were cranked up.

The musicians set up near the spinet piano. Then Danny introduced the band over the mic.

There was Roger on the drums. Roger is no spring zucchini, he’s been playing the skins since Buddy Holly was a household name.

Albert was on double bass. I asked how long Albert has been playing the upright. His only

response was, “I have underpants that are older than you.”

And of course, there’s Danny, playing his collector’s item candy-apple-red Country Gentleman guitar, which is worth about as much as an amphibious aircraft carrier. Danny’s mother bought him this guitar in 1960. “My mom gave me this guitar for my thirteenth birthday,” he said.

The band opened with a few easy numbers. Just the classics. “Summertime,” by Gershwin. That always gets the collective heart rate up. Then “Fly Me to the Moon,” the older crowd loves that one.

One man in the front row became so excited that he began to shout, “I have to pee!” Whereupon the rowdy stood and attempted to demonstrate this for his fans just before the nurse escorted him from the room.

The band followed this with “You’re Not Mine Anymore,” by Willie Nelson. A song which debuted in 1954,…

M. Judson Booksellers is located downtown Greenville, South Carolina, right on Main Street. This is your quintessential bookstore, complete with comfy chairs, hardwood floors, and high-brow autobiographical material authored by Willie Nelson.

I walked inside and was immediately greeted by The Smell.

You know The Smell. It is the sacrosanct aroma found inside all establishments that peddle the printed word. I could live on this smell. It is the fragrance of libraries, bookstores, and newsstands. The smell is one part paper, one part soy-based ink. The scent is a narcotic for book nerds.

Oh, how I love books. I love them too much.

I was a dropout, you see. Not long after my father’s funeral I simply decided to quit going to school. We were rural people. Back then it wasn’t unusual for a kid to stop showing up for class. Happened all the time.

Today, of course, you couldn’t get away with such idiocy. You try dropping out today and you’ll end up in juvenile hall, chained to a desk, forced to read Tolstoy. Currently, there

are even laws in some states where dropouts cannot receive driver’s licenses.

Times have certainly changed. Because back in the day if you quit school, nothing happened. Nobody made a fuss. And so I willingly became a loser.

And that’s the thing about dropouts. They don’t like themselves very much. I realize I’m generalizing here, but almost every dropout I’ve ever met feels one of two ways about themselves:

They are either deeply ashamed, or they are falsely arrogant. Both attitudes are creeks shooting from the same ugly river. A river named Inferiority Complex.

Many dropouts also feel one of two ways about books: They either love them, or they avoid them like head lice.

I’ve worked alongside dropouts on construction jobsites who had severe aversions to books, refusing to use them for anything but leveling imbalanced tables and killing cockroaches.

And then,…

Remember when Walter Cronkite reported the nightly news and there was actually good stuff on TV? Remember when you watched news reports and didn’t need Tums afterwards?

No, I’m not saying the national news back then was always sunshine and Hershey’s bars, but it wasn’t all nuclear explosions, either.

Each weeknight Walter Cronkite appeared on your screen, hair slicked with axle grease, shirt pressed within an inch of its fibers, speaking in a voice that sounded like the Midwestern version of God. He’d cover topics ranging from exciting lunar launches, to Willie Nelson playing a concert at the White House.

And when the broadcast was over, Cronkite would sign-off with the same words:

“And that’s the way it is.”

Today, however, you don’t see good news on TV. Not even a little. You see talking heads chewing the same proverbial cud. The worst part is, the television people lead you to believe that goodness in this world is about as rare as a purple carrot.

Well, I recently discovered that this notion is pure bull.

It all started

yesterday when I discovered I lost my wallet. The truly frightening thing was that on this specific day, my billfold contained a lot of cash, which is a rarity for me.

I never carry cash. In fact, on any given day my wallet will contain dryer lint, faded Chinese restaurant receipts, old poker chips from Biloxi, and cryptic notes I’ve written to myself which are illegible. But I never carry cash.

Even so, this particular afternoon I had six hundred dollars tucked in my billfold. And I misplaced it.

I immediately became nauseous. I started slapping my pockets like a guy whose Levi’s were on fire.

“My wallet,” I said in the privacy of my truck, achieving the pitch of a mezzo-soprano. “I’ve lost my wallet!”

My wallet is pretty hard to miss. I’m like most males, my wallet weighs at least…

The sun was coming up. We rode toward Charleston, doing sixty-five miles per hour in a two-seat truck.

“I can’t believe we’re married,” said my new wife.

“Me neither.”

In my wallet was two hundred dollars cash. It was all I had. I earned it by selling my guitar, one week earlier.

My late father told me once, “If you ever get married, marry a woman who don’t care about money. Happiness and money are of no relation.”

Well, she must not have cared because I had none. I was a blue-collar nothing with a nothing-future ahead of me. I had no high-school education. No achievements. No pot to you-know-what in, and no plant to pour it on. And not much confidence. Until her.

She unfolded a roadmap on the dashboard. My truck radio played a Willie Nelson cassette. I was married. Married. Things were looking up.

We arrived at a cheap motor-inn. She took a shower while I watched the idiot box. Andy Griffith was on.

I’d seen the episode a hundred times. Barney makes Otis jump rope to prove he’s

sober. You know the rest. Crisis. Cliffhanger. Andy saves the day. Roll credits.

I made reservations at an upscale restaurant where the waiter pulled the chairs out for you. I wore the only necktie I owned.

We ate food I could not afford. I paid a hundred bucks—plus tip. We walked the streets, arm in arm.

“I can’t believe we’re married,” she said.

Then came the sound of horse hooves. A carriage. A man stepped out and groomed his animals on the sidewalk. My wife remarked how pretty the horses were.

I asked how much he charged for rides.

“Hundred bucks,” he said.

I handed him my remaining wad of cash. “How much will this buy?”

He thought about it. “How’s ten minutes sound?”

We covered ourselves with a blanket. He carted us through the streets. We saw…

ATLANTA—I don’t do big cities. But if you were to force me to pick my favorite American city, I wouldn’t pick one because I don’t like being forced to do anything.

My mother used to “force” me to eat tapioca pudding as a kid, the texture reminded me of snot and I refused to eat it because I couldn’t understand how the same advanced civilization that gave us bacon came up with mucus pudding.

But if you were to ask me nicely to pick a favorite major American city, maybe I would pick Atlanta. Because I have history here.

Right now I am thinking warm fuzzy thoughts about this city because I am standing in a 32-mile long line in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, awaiting airport security to strip search me.

We in the crowd of air passengers have been dutifully removing our belts, earrings, shoes, dentures, and insulin pumps, waiting to get past the Transportation Security checkpoint and board the plane. But I just tripped the metal detector for the second time, which

is a lot like winning the lottery.

A friendly veteran TSA representative informs me that she is eager to help me through the frisking process. “Halt and put your hands where I can see them, sir,” she says in a helpful voice. “Now.”

So I have plenty of time to remember things during this moment. Things like, for instance, gag-inducing tapioca.

And while I’m being fondled by TSA, I’m also thinking about the days when the Atlanta Journal Constitution was the highlight of my life, back when newspapers were still newspapers.

We lived in Atlanta for a hot minute when I was a boy, and I loved the AJC newspaper. Each morning I would be the first to retrieve the news. My uncle thought this was hysterical, a kid fetching the paper.

“That’s a pretty good trick, Fido,” he’d say. “How about I teach you to…

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…

I pull into the designated parking space at the supermarket. My vehicle is idling. This is what you call “touchless” grocery shopping.

This pandemic has brought a lot of heartache and misery. But, let us never forget, this pandemic also brought us touchless grocery shopping, wherein store employees magically fill your car with groceries while you listen to Willie Nelson on the radio. It’s quite wonderful.

My back passenger door opens.

“Can you pull forward a little, sir?” says the happy young woman in the surgical mask.

Sir. I hate it when people call me sir. Especially young people. It makes me feel like Fred Mertz.

I inch my vehicle forward until she says stop. She is late twenties, long dreadlocks, and the personality of a cherub. “You just want them in the back seat, sir?”

“In the back will be perfect,” I say.

She gets busy loading. “You having a good day so far, sir?”

“I’m alright. How about you?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I’m having maybe my best day ever.”

“Best ever? You only get one of those.”

“Well, I’m

pregnant,” she blurts out. And I get the feeling she just needs to tell someone. “I just found out a few hours ago, before work. My boyfriend and I are gonna have a baby. I’m so happy.”

She loads several more bags onto my floorboards. I am observing her through my rear view mirror. I can tell by her squinty eyes that she’s smiling.

“Congratulations. You must be so excited.”

“Oh, you have no idea, I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant. I was told I’d never be pregnant. I have a bunch of medical issues.”

“Ah.”

She bear hugs a sack of dog food that weighs about as much as a government helicopter. I suddenly wish this pregnant woman wasn’t lifting such heavy things. My reflex is to lift these things for her, but she instructs…