Dear God, today was a tough one.

If you’re listening to this prayer, Lord, we could use a little help down here. Where do I even begin?

Hurricane Helene made landfall as a category 4, with 140 mph winds. And all hell broke loose. The storm has taken at least 40 lives, across four states. That number will grow by the time this prayer reaches you, God.

The damage is unspeakable. The aftermath is shocking. It’s hard to watch the news. The images are downright—well—biblical.

Rescuers across the southeast are still rushing to free those trapped by the storm. Heaven only knows who’s still out there, waiting to be rescued. People are fighting for their lives, God. We’re talking about women and children.

Tampa is battered. Some areas of Florida are only reachable by boat. Cedar Key is beat up, with “water as high as the rooftops.” Keaton Beach. Steinhatchee. The whole Big Bend. Perry will be picking up the pieces for years to come.

And the hits keep coming, God.

Over 4.6 million without power across the southeast. In South Carolina alone, over one million customers are without power. That’s more than 40 percent of homes and businesses in the state.

There were two South Carolina firefighters killed, struck by a falling tree. They were just trying to save people, God. They were rescuing innocent victims. They lost their lives while helping others.

At least 17 people have died in South Carolina from Helene. And the number keeps climbing.

In North Carolina, it’s just as bad. Four people are badly injured after a tornado touched down in the Rocky Mount area.

There have also been mudslides, along with rivers of torrential floodwaters, washing out the interstates at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line

The death toll in Georgia has risen to 15.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed more…

They stand behind caged doors. They look at you when you walk by. They howl like their lives depend on it. Because, you see, that’s just what they do.

Some have barked so hard they’ve lost their voices. The old dogs, however, don’t even bother barking anymore. They know what awaits them. One day a woman in scrubs and rubber gloves will lead them away, and they won’t come back.

“People just don’t want elderly dogs,” a staff worker tells me. “It breaks my heart.”

There are a lot of old dogs here. There is Ophelia. She’s a beagle, almost 11. There is ‘Bama, Pistol Pete, Chocolate, Bradley, and Miss Daisy. Jack, the Labrador. Abandoned, elderly dogs. This is their last stop on the bus ride of life.

Through the doors walks Jace. Jace is a 7-year-old boy with rosy face and blond hair. His parents are divorced. Jace gets lonely.

“My son needs a friend,” his mother explains.

Jace walks the corridor and looks for a pal. He sees Rip—a basset hound with so

many wrinkles he ought to win an award. His face is long, his ears touch the floor. Rip is nine.

Rip starts howling when he sees the visitor. Jace pokes his hand through the bars. Rip wanders to the door. He licks Jace’s hand.

In dog years, Rip is older than this boy. I can’t find a good sentence to convey the way an old dog looks at you. But it’s like they know something we don’t.

“Can I play with him?” says Jace.

“Don’t you want a younger dog?” his mom says.

“Please?”

The worker opens the cage, then leads them to a small place called the “interview room.” Jace is pure energy, but Rip is no spring chick. The old dog does his best to keep up. This is, after all, Rip’s big audition.

But Rip appears to…

“Who is your favorite author?” the TV host asked me on the air.

I just blinked.

“My favorite author?”

Radio silence.

Sometimes, as a writer you will find yourself as a guest on TV shows promoting stuff. You’ll be seated on a television set that is an exact duplication of a family room. Except, of course, this family room has nuclear studio lights that cause third-degree sunburns.

Beside you is a perky female morning host whose sole job is to promote books on the air. These hosts, amazingly, manage to promote hundreds of books just like yours without having ever read a single sentence in their lives.

They do this by asking questions which make it sound as though they’ve read your book. But you know better.

Namely, because when they shake your hand they say in a sincere voice, “Thanks for being our show, Randy,” even though your name is, technically, Sean.

A favorite question TV hosts often ask writers is: “Who’s your favorite author?”

Which is a solid TV question because, in most cases, your

answer will buy the host a full three minutes, which allows them time to think up more insightful and intelligent questions such as, “How old are you?”

Usually, I reply that my favorite author is Gary Larson because I am a perpetual 10-year-old boy, and I think Gary Larson is a genius.

My response often causes television personalities and English majors to furrow their brows, because most literary folks can’t quite place the name Gary Larson.

Gary Larson is the illustrator and creator of “The Far Side” comic strip, once syndicated in 1,900 newspapers in the U.S. He is not often paired with Steinbeck and Hemingway.

But the truth is, if I had to name my earliest literary hero, I would probably tell you Wilson Rawls. You might not know who that is. So I’ll explain:

I was in grade school when our…

The letter came via email. “My dad died last year and I don’t really know what to do with myself anymore. My mom is trying to give me space, my friends ask when I’ll be normal again. I turn fifteen tomorrow and my dad is not here to see it.”

I’m the wrong guy to ask about normalcy. I haven’t been normal since third grade when I peed my pants at a school assembly. Even our school nurse remarked, “That child’s not normal.”

No matter. “Normal” is a made-up word. Normal doesn’t exist. Nothing in this world is normal. Not you, not me, or anything in nature.

Years ago, for example, while driving through rural Alabama, I saw something quite abnormal. I’ll never forget it.

It was an overcast day. My wife and I had just left a funeral. There was a lingering sadness over our vehicle. The kind that only the death of a loved one can bring.

We were riding through miles of farmland, grain silos, barns, and

cows staring at us as we sped by. That’s when my wife said, “Look!” She was pointing out the window.

I glanced out the window and saw it, too. It was a spectacular rainbow. I pulled into a random cow pasture.

We ran through acres of green grass, alfalfa, and fresh cow pies. And we saw the biggest, best, most vivid rainbow ever.

So help me, the colors were touching the ground. The rainbow’s tail was diving into the dirt like a spotlight.

I’d never seen anything like it. I didn’t know rainbows actually touched the earth. This was highly unusual to me.

The cows watched us with big eyes while we behaved like six-year-olds. My wife ran forward to get a better glimpse. I almost peed my pants again.

But here’s where things get somewhat magical.

Have you ever…

The Mexican restaurant was crowded. There were twinkly lights. Terracotta tiles everywhere. Trumpet music.

I was sitting next to Morgan Love, trying to make her laugh. Getting Morgan to laugh, as it turns out, is easy.

Morgan is a UAB student who has become a dear friend. I don’t know how my wife and I became friends with a college girl, but there you are.

Morgan is pretty quiet. But I have always liked quiet people. You never know if they’re floating in a daydream, or carrying the weight of the world upon their shoulders. In Morgan’s case, it’s both.

I first met Morgan a few years ago, when I wrote about her. Morgan is an exceptional kid. An A-student. On the president’s list. And she pulls it off while being low vision, paralyzed on her left side, prone to seizures, and a brittle diabetic.

Her digestive system is partially paralyzed, too. Thus, she is on a permanent feeding tube and cannot eat solid food. She hasn’t eaten

real food in months.

Tonight, this quiet young woman was my special guest at the theater where I performed my one-man spasm. After the show, I took her backstage. She stuck close to my side, shadow-like. I introduced her to the band, the sound guy, the theater manager. I let her play the piano some, and—God help her—even the accordion.

Then, several of us came to the restaurant for our traditional post-show supper. I had been in rehearsals all day, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. But I still didn’t want to eat in front of her.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” I said, “eating in front of you.”

“Please,” she said. “I go to restaurants with my friends, I’m used to it.”

“Are you sure?” I said, gazing at my steaming burrito, feeling like a consummate fool.

“I’m sure.”

Morgan misses…

I had a dream last night. It was a vivid dream. I was in a perfect place. A realm of unspeakable beauty. It was the kind of dream where anything could happen. The kind of dream where anyone could show up.

Anyone, such as, for example, Will Rogers.

I know this will sound stupid, but Will Rogers was in my dream last night. I’ve never seen Will Rogers in person. Never met him. He died 40-odd years before I was even a glint in the milkman’s eye. And yet here he was.

He was chewing gum, hands in his pockets, he wore a Stetson Open Road, slightly pushed back. He had an easy smile. He was sun-weathered.

This couldn’t be happening, I was thinking. Nobody even remembers Will Rogers anymore. Rogers, America’s favorite vaudevillian. Rogers, who predated the Great Depression. Rogers, America’s foremost syndicated columnist. Hollywood’s highest-paid actor. A lasso twirler. A jokesmith. A comedian.
He was the man.

At least that’s what my grandfather thought.

Not that you care, but William Penn

Adair Rogers was born in 1879 in what became Oklahoma. He was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He got into performing because he was quick with a one-liner. He was good with a lasso. He was a comedian.

Soon, Rogers was touring the vaudeville circuit, kicking hides and taking names.

He was a guy who wrote his own epitaph when he said, “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like. I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.”

My grandfather adored Will Rogers. He saw him in person twice. You know how people today make a big deal about how they once saw the Beatles, or Elvis, or Barry Manilow in concert? That’s how granddaddy was about Will Rogers.

“I saw Will Rogers perform,” Granddaddy would…

It’s a mess, that’s what it is. When you land in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Third World International Airport, you’re walking into a battle zone.

It’s nonstop chaos. Airport professionals ride golf carts with loud beeps and flashing lights.

Hordes of business professionals below age 40, speed-walk past you, having loud conversations with their earbuds, dutifully working on their first nervous breakdowns.

Middle-aged Midwestern guys in New Balances, shoulder a tonnage of roller luggage, most of which—you can just tell—belongs to their wives.

Everyone is on their phones

I notice the elderly man across from me. He is wearing khakis and Merrells, the universal uniform of the Old Guy. He is breathing heavily. Hyperventilating, actually. His hands are trembling. He takes a sip of water and almost drops the bottle.

This man is having a diabetic episode or something, I’m thinking.

“Sir, are you okay?” I ask.

He looks at me. His eyes are rimmed pink. I can’t tell if he’s about to cry or not. “Have you ever flown before?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Well, I haven’t.”

He returns to his trembling.

“I’m eighty-two years old,” he said, “and I’ve never flown. I’ve

never been anywhere or done anything.”

This is a man old enough to be my father, but at this moment, he seems very childlike to me. Fear has a way of reducing one’s age.

There is a little girl sitting on his other side. She notices what’s going on. She joins our conversation. She is maybe 10.

The kid says, “What do you mean you’ve never been ANYWHERE or done ANYTHING,’ sir?”

He looks at her. Her hair is in pigtails. She could pass for the Coppertone Girl.

“I’ve only left my hometown twice,” he says. He’s getting more nervous with each word. “I’ve never done anything of note. I’ve never been anywhere.”

“Do you have a family?” the girl says.

He nods. “Four kids.”

“How old?”

“My oldest…

The first day of autumn is almost here, and Tennessee is experiencing the birth pangs of fall. The colors are changing, the air is crisp, the natural scenery has become purely college football paraphernalia.

It’s a fine morning to drive across the Volunteer State. The sun is bright, the sky is cloudless. The Smoky Mountains have never looked so smoky.

Last night, I sang to a theater of people in Cookeville with a banjo on my knee. The audience suffered through my rendition of “Rocky Top.” They were nice enough to whoop and holler in all the right spots.

It’s difficult to sing the official fight song of the University of Tennessee when you’re an ardent University of Alabama fan. This isn’t because I carry old football grudges. I don’t. I let bygones alone. Truthfully, I barely remember the last time Tennessee played Alabama and beat us with a final score of 54 to 49 on October 15, 2022.

Even so, I like “Rocky

Top.” Namely, because there is something about Tennessee that enchants me.

I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the highland terrain. Could be, it’s all the winding highways which never seem to know which way they’re going.

The roads wander upways, downways, sideways, backways, past railroad crossings, across Purple Mountains Majesty, over the river and through the woods. Or directly past roadside vegetable stands.

Consequently, I just visited a little vegetable stand on a secluded highway, where an old man was sitting beneath a tent, selling produce put of plastic crates.

It was the handmade cardboard sign on the highway that attracted my attention first. The sign was made from a Sony flatscreen television carton, staked into the earth with a single two-by-four. “Homegrown Appels,” the large sign read.

The old man had a few varieties of “appels,” sitting…

If you’re going to drive in rural Arkansas, you must gamble with your own life.

Namely, because the Ozark mountains are home to dangerously twisting highways, with abrupt hairpin turns occuring every four to six inches. If you drive too fast you will have a collision and die. If you drive too slow you will die of old age.

I see frequent skidmarks on the pavement which lead directly into mangled guardrails. I see bits of wreckage on the roadway, which is a sobering reminder not to shop on Amazon while I drive.

There is a heavy, heavy fog obscuring the highway, clinging to the Ozarks like a wet dishrag. You’re almost totally blind in this dense, impenetrable wall of gray. It’s a wonder anyone survives backing out of their own driveways.

“We’re used to dangerous road conditions,” says my waitress at a local cafe. “I can drive these roads with my knees while nursing my youngest.”

There is a table of old men beside me, wearing seed caps,

nursing coffees.

One old guy asks where I’m from. I am a suspicious foreigner in a cafe tucked in the hinterlands of The Natural State. Everyone is staring at me.

“I’m from Birmingham,” I say.

The old guys nod at each other as though I have just informed them I am with the IRS.

“What brings you here?” one guy asks.

“I’m a banjo player,” I say.

I have immediately won their favor. Their guards drop. They are now smiling, aware that I have—at some point in my life—lived in a trailer park. I am smiling back at them. We are all grinning. Among us there are maybe nine teeth.

Soon I am driving through the Ozarks. Windows down. Sun peeking through the fog. The sky is ultramarine. The mountains are perfect.

The billboard signs along my route are uniquely…

Whenever I get sad, I think about the arrivals and departures gates of any airport. Popular opinion says our society is eaten up with hatred, anger, and senseless acts of politics. But you don’t see those things in an airport.

I am at the Dallas airport right now, Love Field, watching hundreds of people hug, kiss, take selfies, hold hands, smile at each other, give tearful farewells, or carry on with sobbing reunions. You see nearly every emotion in an airport.

Arriving passengers deboard escalators, rejoin with loved ones, shed tears, filling the airport with sounds of joy. Others are departing, about to check their baggage, about to leave for parts unknown, fitting in their final acts of affection before their flight is, ultimately, delayed.

A man hugs a girl who is maybe 12. The girl is squeezing the man so tightly that she has knocked off his glasses and ball cap. But he doesn't seem to care. He is weeping openly. She is sobbing too.

They are laughing through their own tears, which is my favorite emotion.

“The house is going to be so empty now,” the man keeps saying.

“I’ll miss you, Dad.”

An older woman is embracing three of her grandchildren who have just arrived in Dallas. She is on her knees, in the middle of baggage claim. Everyone is smiling. The kids are speaking Spanish as Granny kisses their faces, one at a time.

And although I can’t understand their words, it doesn’t take a linguistic expert to know what they’re saying.

A young mother, holding an infant on her hip, embracing a young man in a combat uniform. They are all crying tears of joy. Except for, of course, the baby, who is gaily picking his nose.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” the young mother is saying to the guy in the uniform.

There is another…