Pensacola, Florida—a sports bar. I'm eating a burger that tastes like five-day-old meatloaf. My fries are cold. On a gigantic television over the bar: Alabama dominates the football field.

This place is a nut house.

The bartender is chatty. He's a husky man, thick hands, early forties. He asks what I'm doing for Thanksgiving. It's only polite conversation. He can't hear me over the noise.

Alabama scores. The bar goes wild.

He asks how I like my burger. I tell him it's magnificent.

He winks and says, "You're a liar. Our burgers are awful."

Clever fella.

I ask him what he's doing Thanksgiving.

He says, “My kids and I are driving to Texas. My girlfriend has a huge family, it's gonna be our first time meeting them."

As it happens, the girl comes from a Mexican family. And in preparation for the big day, she's been teaching him and his two boys Spanish. But, he explains, he can't roll his R's.

Perhaps it's because he's from Geneva County. R's don't roll in Geneva.

Another touchdown. Screaming.

He goes on, “My boys're

more excited than I am, we usually just eat Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving.”

He was married once. But a few years ago, she died. It was sudden. She was young. His oldest boy was two. The other boy, a newborn. One morning, he found her body on the sofa.

“Heart defect," he says. "Doctors didn't even know she had it, I thought I'd never make it. Until I met my girlfriend.”

Field goal kick. It's good.

He digs into his pocket and removes his phone. “You wanna see a picture?”

Sure.

He shows me his boys. Then, an image of an engagement ring.

"Just bought this," he says. My boys and I are gonna ask her to marry us all at once, on Thanksgiving morning.

"My boys wanna get down on their knees and surprise her, do the whole…

“I won't have you turning my son into a preacher,” his father once shouted to his mother, during an argument.

To men like his father, there was nothing worse than a soft-handed Bible-man, stuck in an office. He wanted his boy to do what men have done since the dawn of testosterone—spit, cuss, grow callouses.

His mother wanted him to memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

So, the kid tried to do both. He attended Sunday school, learned the Bible, recited long passages from memory. Outside of church, he worked with his father, operating heavy machinery, learning to cuss.

He was a rowdy child. He drank too much, smoked more, and hopped from party to party. Since he discovered long ago he couldn't please both parents, he disappointed them instead.

He was successful at that.

He was in the car with his friends when the cops pulled them over. A routine traffic stop. One of the boys had just robbed a grocery store and had a gun tucked in his jacket. Another boy had meth in

his pocket.

Off to prison.

That's where he met Billy, who runs an educational program, teaching inmates to read and write poetry and literature.

Billy says, “It helps'em work through their emotional stuff. You wouldn't believe some of the things these boys write. Ain't a dry eye in the classroom sometimes.”

For his first project, he wrote nothing. Instead, he recited something he learned long ago.

"I couldn't believe he knew the whole Sermon on the Mount from start to finish," Billy says. "There was something exceptional about him."

Billy took special interest in the kid. It only took a few heart-to-heart conversations for the kid to realize what he wanted to do with his life.

He wanted to make his mother proud.

"See" Billy explains. "Lotta these boys ain't bad, just mixed up.”

With Billy's help, the boy finished a GED. When he…

"My dad raised three girls and a boy," she said. "He deserves an award or something."

She's probably right. She says he was an expert at getting them ready for school, braiding hair, making lunches, and scaring away rowdy love-interests.

She didn't realize how hard he'd worked until she had her first child.

But it was more than that. Her mother left when she was a baby. Her father explained it long ago: “One day, your mother just went nuts."

That was all he said. The family spent their entire lives with nothing but photographs. And over time, even those faded.

He worked long hours, but still managed to win Daddy of the Century. She tells me he never remarried because he was too committed to his family.

“I used to tell my friends,” she goes on, “my mother died. Mostly, I made her sound like a saint. You know, kids wanna remember their mother in a good way, even if it's a lie.”

Now that she's an adult, she's discovered it was as far

from the truth as it got.

Two years ago, they tracked their biological mother down. They found out she'd done time in prison. She was living in a women's rehab.

“We were heartbroken,” she says, “We cried. It opened up a can of worms I didn't know I had. My dad took it hard. All kinds of feelings resurfaced."

They weren't sure about contacting the woman. After all, she was as near to rock-bottom as anyone could get.

Her father tried to put on the brakes.

“Dad wasn't sure," she said. "He didn't want to know about what she'd been doing. I mean, a lotta years had passed.”

But girls are nosy, and it's hard to let sleeping mamas lie. So they arranged a meeting. It was in a public place. They're hearts were in their throats.

They recognized their mother across the room. The…

Waffle House—my waitress is named Laura. I know this because it's on her name-tag. She's worked three shifts, back-to-back. Her eyes are sagging.

Laura has four kids. Three boys, one girl. She shows me photos on her phone.

“That's my oldest,” she says, tapping the screen. “She's got a brain. I hope she makes more outta her life than I ever did. ”

She smiles. Her teeth are a wreck. She's gorgeous.

"What's so bad about your life?" I ask.

"Nothing, but I know I'm a failure, I'm okay with that."

Well, I'll be dog.

I've known some failures in my time. Laura's not one. Her hands might be rough and she might not descend from blue bloodlines, but she's not trash.

If she is, then I'm a club member.

After all, my family isn't exactly showroom material. My father wore denim. My mother lived in a trailer. I've owned four myself. Three leaked. One resides in the county dump.

And, my education is minimal. I went to college on my own dime and did miserably, working grunt labor

in the daytime.

When I passed my final, I walked outside and shouted in the parking lot—it seemed appropriate. A few classmates were outside smoking. A man with tattoo on his neck offered me a cigarette.

“I don't smoke,” I said.

“Neither do I,” he answered. “But we just graduated, that's a big deal for people like you'n me.”

You and me.

He was right. It was a big deal. As a boy, my mother sewed my clothes and shopped at thrift stores. Sometimes she even recycled teabags.

Then there was the time in eighth grade when a girl called me white trash. Her name was Beth. I'll never forget her.

“Your shirt has a hole,” she pointed out, then mumbled the ugly phrase.

It surprised me. Until that day, I'd never considered myself so lowly. I threw the shirt away…

He was a happy kid. He grew up with nothing, out in the sticks. His daddy was a turpentiner. His mother was a baby-machine. He had marvelous tales about the old days.

But they were nothing compared to his best story, about how he died—twice. He told that one often. Especially around redheaded freckle-faces.

It went like this:

While in his forties, on the operating table, he died. Three whole minutes. Doctors thought he was a goner. He came back. Then it happened again.

“Heaven is real," he told me once. "I seen it with my own eyes. And you know what I learnt? The secret.”

My eyes were the size of tractor rims.

He asked if I wanted to learn it. I didn't even have to think. You bet your cotton balls I did.

“Come here,” he said. “I'll show you.”

He wrapped his arms around me so hard I heard my ribs creak. He held me that way for two minutes. No words. He smelled like cigarettes and Old Spice.

“THAT'S the secret," he said. "And

that's how you change the world."

Oh.

Despite his poverty-stricken upbringing, he was jolly enough to make Santa look like a jerk.

He knew funny songs, complicated jokes, and he was bad to cry when the spirit hit him. Like when he talked about his mother. Or: when he talked about how he met his wife as a teenager—at a rat killing party.

Later in life, he worked as a salesman to keep his family fed. He sold everything from life insurance, to turkeys and vacuums.

“Vacuums was the worst,” he once said. “Had to lug'em to doorsteps before you even knocked. It was something awful, but you'll do anything to feed your young'uns."

He smoked like a fish and talked a purple streak. If you were lucky enough to catch him on smoke break, you'd see him do both.

I got…

Once, I saw an old man stumble on the curb. It happened outside a Mexican restaurant. He fell hard and cut himself. A waitress ran to help. He was bleeding on the pavement.

"First-aid kit!" she yelled.

He had a gash. She stitched him up with a needle and thread.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" the man asked.

"I was an Army medic," she said. "Used to practice on tomatoes all the time."

When she finished, he embraced her and got blood all over her shirt. He cried. She didn't.

Army girls.

Listen, I don't care how many election signs pepper the landscape. I don't care how many horrid disagreements there are. I love this country. Every bit of it. The good, the bad, and the Army medics.

I also love single mothers. The young man who unloads trucks at Winn Dixie. The woman standing outside the hair salon, smoking. The kids holding bake-sales for breast cancer. And anyone strong enough to go down swinging.

Tracy—who got out of jail a few weeks ago. She saw her

kids for the first time in two long years.

Arnold, my pal who left his fancy marketing job to drive a semi. His wife goes with him. He sent me postcards from the Grand Canyon. They just found out his wife is pregnant.

I like Pat, who wants to be a welding teacher. The supermarket employee with Downs syndrome who told me, “You have a colorful face, sir.”

Nobody's ever told me that before.

I like Roger—wounded Afghanistan veteran with mangled hands. Who said, “My therapist says I need to start living my life. So, I'm learning guitar."

You beat all, Roger.

I love Minette, whose husband is in critical condition. I love the South American woman who dug through her purse for exact change.

I love the man who paid for my lunch. I don't know him, but he told me…

His biological father beat his mother. But after eight years of busted cheekbones, she hit the road. In the middle of the night, she and her four kids left.

It took two days to drive from Tennessee to Alabama.

"Mama was from the old world," he said. "Didn't even know how to drive. So I drove the whole way."

He was thirteen. He sat atop suitcases and pressed the pedal with his tip-toes. When his younger siblings got fidgety, he pulled over so everyone could make water.

It was a new town. They were foreigners. They moved into a drafty farmhouse with cheap rent. She took a waitress job. He worked at a hardware store after school.

Once, he remembers not having enough to pay the power bill. They went without lightbulbs for six months. If you've ever wanted to hear about hard living, he's your man.

"Folks didn't like Mama," he goes on. "Especially other women. It was a different time. In a small town, a single pretty girl, with kids... People talked about her."

One

day, a man in town stopped by the restaurant. She was on shift. He was taken with her. He tipped two fifty-dollar bills, leaving them under his plate.

When she saw the money her temper flared. She stormed over to his house to give it back.

“I don't need no charity from nobody,” she insisted.

Skull of iron, that woman.

So, the man offered to pay her to clean his house on Saturdays. It made good sense. He was a bachelor, she'd been skipping suppers to save on groceries. She accepted.

He overpaid.

They became friends. One thing led to another. He asked her out to movies, picnics, church socials, lunch dates. People gossiped—said they were mismatched. Maybe they were.

Then it happened. The man didn't get down on his knee to ask—after all, they weren't kids anymore. She said yes.

"Mama went…

I'm watching the election results. The red and blue states look like a weather map—only more patriotic. The man on television points to the Southeast. He places his hand on top my house. He calls this the Bible Belt.

We're famous.

I guess he's right. When I was six, the preacher patted me on the back, saying, “Congratulations, son, you're born again.”

To celebrate, Mama took me out for ice cream. I ordered three scoops of vanilla with crushed peanuts. I went down for salvation the next three Sundays in a row.

My people have lived in The 'Belt a long damn time. We're feisty. And we share a particular fondness for certain man whose name we write on billboards, bumper stickers, neon signs, and barns.

But he's no politician.

Folks even use his name in fistfights. Once I saw a fight in a beer-joint. A fella landed his fist on the jaw of a young man. The kid went down like a sack of yams.

The boy crawled onto his feet. With a mouthful of blood,

he quoted the Red Words. Then, he offered the other side of his face.

The other man glared. Then he started crying.

So did I.

In rural Alabama, I once attended a revival service. It was a place where folks handled snakes. I didn't think places like that existed. They do.

A twelve-year-old yanked a snake out of an aquarium and held it. I nearly soaked my britches.

A woman beside me said, "Relax, honey. It ain't got poison fangs no more. Besides, God's bigger than snakes."

Bigger.

Just a few months ago, I attended the funeral of a friend. He was a hospital chaplain. Within his thirty-year career, he'd held thousands of dying hands.

A young girl cried over his open casket. She placed a leather-bound book inside. I introduced myself.

She was an ex-drug-addict. She'd almost died once. He'd sat beside…