The distant green mountains of North Carolina are speeding past my train window. I am eating an omelette, drinking coffee, watching America go by at eye level.

The train whistle screams. Two long whistles. One short. One long.

That’s whistle code. It means we’re approaching a highway grade crossing. Whistle code is the law. All trains traveling upwards of 45 mph are required to sound their horns this way a quarter mile before each crossing.

These are things you learn in the dining car.

I have a thing for trains. Always have. When I was a kid, I was one of those annoying little redheaded boys obsessed with locomotives. Some boys were into dinosaurs. Others were deeply committed to Richard Petty. My thing was trains.

I owned all the toys, of course. I had miniature versions of famous locomotives like the Super Chief, the Flying Scotsman, and the City of New Orleans. Also, I could make all the train noises with my mouth. Still can.

But my family didn’t ride trains.

We changed our own motor oil for crying out loud. All I could do was park my bike at train crossings and fantasize when trains blew past.

This is why riding trains is a big deal for me. Sure, I realize trains aren’t as flashy as air travel. They aren’t even efficient in our current Jet Age. A commercial airliner averages speeds of 575 mph. This train rarely exceeds 47 mph. But slowness is precisely why I love trains. Trains are laid back.

Yesterday, I boarded the Amtrak’s Crescent No. 20, which left from New Orleans bound for Philadelphia. I almost missed my train because of traffic on the interstate. I arrived in a frenzy, sprinting through the station, and finally reached the platform with three minutes to spare.

I was out of breath. My leg muscles burned. I was stressed. And since I’m used to dealing with embittered…

“Don’t kiss a girl without being prepared to give her your last name.”

My granny said that.

My father gave me this one: “If you so much as touch a cigarette, you might as well tear up half your paychecks from now on.”

My mother’s axiom, however, is my all-time favorite: “It’ll be okay.”

It might sound like a simple phrase, but my mother said this often. Whenever things were running off the rails. Whenever a girl broke my heart. Whenever I lost my job. Whenever I cried. Whenever I had a common cold that I believed to be, for example, tuberculosis, she said these words. I needed her to say them.

She also said: “Cleaning your plate means ‘I love you.’”

And this is why I was an overweight child.

I could keep going all day.

“Don’t answer the phone when you got company over,” my uncle once said. “It’s just flat rude.”

This one is from my elderly friend, Mister Boots: “That smartphone is making you stupid.”

My grandfather said: “Anything worth doing is worth waiting until next week to

do.” Then he’d crack open another cold one.

My wife’s mother once said: “Always carry deodorant in your truck. You don’t want to smell like you’ve been out roping billy goats when you bump into the pastor.”

Said the man named Bill Bonners, in a nursing home, from his wheelchair during an interview: “I never wanted to be a husband, I really didn’t want that. But I just couldn’t breathe without her around me.”

Mister Bill died only four days after his wife passed.

And one childhood evening, I was on a porch with my friend’s father, Mister Allen James who was whittling a stick, and he said: “Boys, if you marry ‘up,’ you’ll have to attend a lotta parties you don’t wanna go to. You wanna be happy, marry someone who knows her way around a supermarket.”…

As a writer, one thing you want to strive for is complete ackuracy. You don’t want grammatical mistakes in your work because this undermines your writing and makes you look like a toad.

Still, errors and typos do happen. One of the main culprits is autocorrect. Modern computers and smartphones are always correcting spelling without your permission, and the software often gets it wrong. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been burned by autocorrect.

I once wrote a heartfelt column about a man who nearly died in the hospital. I attempted to tell his story by describing his tearful return home. When I wrote about how his daughters rolled his wheelchair up the sidewalk and into his house for a triumphal entry, autocorrect happened.

I wrote: “Today, the old man’s family pushed him straight into his casket.”

I was aiming for the word “castle.”

Here’s another one:

My friend and fellow writer, Beau, was writing a social media post for his wife who was returning home after a trip to Europe. Beau wrote a

romantic essay for her in which he stated: “I have been waiting all month to see those big beautiful dimples again.”

Big deal, you’re thinking, what’s wrong with that? The big deal is that autocorrect replaced “dimples” with a word that rhymes with “fipples.”

So the main problem with autocorrect is that it’s on drugs. You’ll be typing along and misspell the word “hapy” and your device immediately grasps what you were trying to write and helpfully replaces the word with “Russia.”

When I wrote this column, for instance, my computer flagged misspellings on words like “Beau,” and “fipples,” but it had no problem with “ackuracy.”

Still, this is no excuse. As a writer you must painstakingly proofread your work and catch all your senseless eros.

Which is why I highly recommend getting married to a math teacher. Speaking from experience, math teachers make…

They tell me Mrs. Simpson was a small, soft spoken 90-pound woman without family. And that’s how this story begins.

The lonely elderly woman was watering her plants one afternoon when she had her big accident. She slipped and fell off her porch. Hers wasn’t a tall porch, thankfully. But at her age, it didn’t have to be. The injury was severe. She was 86.

You fall off your porch at 86, they start throwing around terms like “celebration of life.”

When Mrs. Simpson awoke, she was in the hospital, eyes blinking. She saw medical people standing over her, smiling.

Mrs. Simpson’s first hoarse words were: “Will someone please…?”

Everyone gathered around for the rest.

“…Please feed my cats?”

This made the doctors laugh. They all exchanged looks and said, “Isn’t there someone in your family who can do that for you?”

“Got no family.”

“How about friends?”

She shook her head.

“Well, You aren’t leaving the hospital, Mrs. Simpson. Not after all the bones you’ve broken.”

“...And I can’t remember if I left the oven on.”

“Try to calm down, Mrs. Simpson.”

“...I

need my toothbrush, and the trash goes out tomorrow morning…”

So a few nurses got together to send someone to the woman’s house to do these things. They watered the plants, checked the oven, packed her a overnight bag, and someone even took care of the old woman’s cats.

After a few days, Mrs. Simpson had been transferred to a rehab, where she had all her belongings, including her prodigious collection of paperback romance novels, her big balls of yarn and her knitting needles.

Over the next months, Mrs. Simpson became the darling of the rehab facility and the favorite patient of many staffers. This easygoing 90-pound woman without family.

Often she could be seen sitting upright in bed, working on a garter-stitch pattern, peering over her reading glasses at her visitors.

She had many visitors.…

We had a major potato salad crisis at our Fourth-of-July barbecue. Someone forgot to designate a family member to be the official “bringer of potato salad.” So everyone took it upon themselves to bring potato salad. We had 2,927 varieties.

There are few things more American than a full-scale potato salad war. When I saw all that Corningware and outdated olive drab Tupperware lined up on the buffet, all filled with concoctions of boiled potatoes and mayonnaise, it made me feel warm and patriotic inside.

I don’t have to remind you that it’s been a long year. A really long one. This backyard barbecue was long overdue.

Last year my family didn’t even do a Fourth-of-July cookout. There was a pandemic going on. Instead, my wife and I sat at home and played dominoes. We had no covered dishes. No potato salad. I think we ate cold leftover Chinese takeout and watched a “Laverne and Shirley” marathon. And I hate dominoes.

Thankfully, that sad year is miles behind us now.

Today, the aunts and uncles arrived by the dozens, all carrying 30-pound jugs of potato salad. My mother-in-law made several kilos of her special celery-pimento potato salad. Even a few of the little kids had prepared some potato salad, which tasted pretty good once you picked out the Lego pieces.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law was manning the charcoals, flipping hamburgers, trying to remember everyone’s picky food orders. No two burgers at our get-together were the same. In this modern age everyone is on some kind of special diet.

We had the beautiful people who only wanted 99-percent lean hamburgers. We had “keto” and “paleo” people who wanted high cholesterol beef. And lastly, we had those who chose to eat tofu and grain burgers. “The tofu is colored with delicious beet juice,” reported one vegetarian.

Me? I went straight for the potato salad. My wife had prepared enough potato salad to ruin…

9:02 pm—My wife and I parked beside the bay, facing the water, to watch the fireworks. I hear the distant sound of children laughing in the night. The popping of far-off bottle rockets.

It’s July Fourth and it’s been a weird day. I can’t pinpoint why. Maybe it’s because it’s been overcast. Maybe because we’ve been quarantining for a 42,382 days. Maybe because this year’s holiday has about as eventful as watching the Lawrence Welk Orchestra play “Beer Barrel Polka.”

Which is exactly what I did this afternoon. A cable channel was playing “Lawrence Welk Show” reruns. I watched about four male singers in sparkly ascots sing “Red Sails in the Sunset” while Myron Floren showed the world how the accordion should be handled.

And now I am here to watch the fireworks before going home to remove my teeth and go to bed.

There are a few other cars here tonight. Maybe four. In the vehicle beside ours are young kids. Their car windows are down, they eat red-white-and-blue popsicles.

They say little-kid things like, “COOL!” And: “COOLCOOLCOOL!”

I

believe this is the only word they know.

“Hey! Look!” one kid shouts to the other, pointing at any object ranging from a booger to a live water buffalo.

The other kid will say, “COOL!”

Their mother is young. Wiry. She sits upon the hood of her car—a mid-90s Nissan. When she arrived earlier, her vehicle made a loud noise. CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!

Her Nissan needs a new CV axle. I know this because I once had a ‘98 Altima with the same problem. You could hear me coming from a mile away.

The woman looks tired. She’s kept the same cigarette going for the last thirty minutes while playing on her phone.

“MOM! Can we have another popsicle?”

“As long as you share!” says Mom.

“COOL!”

I get the feeling that this woman is so tired that she wouldn’t…

It’s for the kids, really. Carol does it all for the kids. The American-flag decorations, the cookouts, the fireworks, and the patriotic bunting in the backyard. It’s all for them.

It’s going to be an interesting holiday. Normally, Carol’s family throws a shindig for the Fourth. But not this year.

Carol comes from a German family. Her great-grandparents came to the U.S. by boat. So all the ancient ways go unremembered. Carol’s grandkids, for instance, actually eat ketchup on their hotdogs.

My grandfather would roll in his grave.

The Fourth has always been the holiday when Carol’s family would visit. A big reunion. They would tell their children about the old days, and about baling hay on a Georgia farmstead. Kids love these stories.

But today there will be only three people at Carol’s house. One husband. An adult daughter. One grandchild.

There are summer disappointments like this happening all over the nation. Coronavirus is spreading faster than pee in a public pool, and everyone’s Fourth is affected.

In Ohio, Upper Arlington’s parade is marching a longer route so people can space themselves

several miles apart. Let us pray for the tuba players.

In Texas, Willie Nelson will throw his annual picnic concert—sort of. It will be a digitized virtual concert.

In Albuquerque, fireworks will be launched from four spots throughout the city so people can watch from the safety of porches.

And Carol’s family of four will eat hotdogs and potato salad in their backyard.

“The fireworks,” says Carol. “That’s all my grandkids are worried about. This virus doesn’t scare them, these kids want fireworks.”

Who doesn’t?

There will be a display downtown that people can watch from their cars. Carol will take the grandkids. They will eat ice cream in the front seat and watch the sky light up like… Well. The Fourth of July.

It’s a strange time to be alive. From Maine to California beaches are…

Yesterday I met an elderly man in the supermarket parking lot. He was loading his car, I was loading mine. He wore a surgical mask. So did I.

Beneath his mask all I could see were his bushy, white eyebrows, with stray hairs that grew 8 feet long and curled sideways like little corkscrews from hell.

Do me a favor. When I get old, if my eyebrows look like this, tie me down and take the horse clippers to me.

Anyway, my new elderly friend was very nice. He was telling me about his childhood during the 1940s. The Great Depression had just ended in the U.S. But not entirely. You don’t just snap your fingers and say, “Depression’s over!”

His family lived in mountains of North Alabama. They were poor. They used outhouses. He and his brother hauled drinking water from the creek because they couldn’ t pay their water bill. And life kept getting worse.

His mother got sick. His baby brother died. His father left for California to find work and never

came back. These were not hard times. These were horrible times.

“Listen,” the old man said, “after growing up the way I did, I figured out the trick to finding happiness. Care to guess what it is?”

No. I didn’t. Because my carton of ice cream was about to melt.

He went on, “The only way to be happy is to be unhappy.”

I had to rub my chin for a second before making a profound and thoughtful remark: “Do what?”

The old man told me that the Great Depression made him a happy man. Not at first. But when it was over, it was pure euphoria. Good jobs were suddenly available, money was better, the War had finally ended. Everyone kissed the ground and thanked the sky.

“You can’t appreciate spaghetti and meatballs until you’ve had to live on ketchup soup,” he said.

I…

COLUMBUS—I must be crazy. I am riding a bike through this Georgia town, following my wife, who is riding her bicycle with no hands.

The weather is perfect today. Birds litter the live oaks that line the cobblestone streets. The Chattahoochee River is roaring in the distance. And my wife has lost her mind.

We came to Columbus to buy two second-hand bikes that my wife found in the classified ads. They are nice bikes. The thing is, I don’t even know if I remember how to ride a bike.

I gave up riding bikes in the sixth grade. I remember the day clearly.

Robert Danielson dared me to ride no-handed. I did it for five seconds. Then I fell onto the pavement face first. My mother said it was the most expensive dental bill she ever saw.

“Slow down!” I shout to my wife.

“WHEEEEEEE!” my wife says. Then my wife removes her hands from the handlebars again.

“Stop that!”

But she can’t hear me. She is carefree, pedalling, punching the air, singing the theme

song from the movie “Rocky.”

I should not be here. I am not a fan of the bicycle. If God had wanted man to ride bikes he wouldn’t have made biking shorts look so dumb.

Still, I am a big fan of the classified ads. You can buy a lot of nice things in the classified section. And in my family, we bought used things from the newspaper all the time. Most everything we ever owned was fourth-hand stuff.

I was brought up by a man who read the classifieds like some men follow the stock market. My cradle was lined with the “Thrifty Nickel” newspapers.

My father was always looking for a deal. He believed that the newspaper was the best place to buy cars, lawnmowers, radial saws, Christmas decor, wedding anniversary gifts, etc.

The thing is, buying used stuff always requires something…

I got a letter from a man named Mark. Mark is 78 and lives alone with his Chihuahua, Boo Boo, who has a very active bladder.

“I’m always taking Boo Boo outside,” says Mark. “Even at three in the morning, I don’t want him going on my rug.”

Mark has been stuck indoors since the COVID-19 outbreak. His life is a good one.

He gets his groceries delivered. He has a guy cut the lawn once per week. But he feels pretty depressed lately, being stuck in his den. He was so sad that he wrote to me.

Here’s what’s on his mind:

“When I was young,” says Mark, “I always wanted to see Europe, with a backpack, and just live my life, but I never did it, I guess it’s too late now. Isn’t that silly?”

Silly? No. In fact, I got to thinking about all the bucket-list things that I have wanted to do but probably never will. Such as rope a steer, win the lottery, or figure out how to make beer.

Also,

I have always wanted to hang glide. One time, I actually got a chance to hang glide with a professional. He gave me a call one morning and asked if I wanted to come. Free of charge. I told him I was busy.

I realized a valuable lesson that day; I do not want to leap off a cliff.

Although I did go bungee jumping once. I do not recommend it. The reason this happened was: My wife called me a wuss in public.

My wife was only taunting me. I am a cautious guy who has a hard time paying a hundred bucks at an amusement park to throw himself off a building. Which is basically what bungee jumping is.

“I am not a wuss,” I insisted.

“Are too,” she said.

The next thing I knew, a few teenage experts were leading me…