“I am a little old woman who lives in an assisted living facility…” her email began.

Her following message was about the length of “War and Peace.” She is a woman who is as sweet as Karo syrup. But—and I mean this respectfully—brevity is not her strong suit. Reading her email took me three or four presidential administrations.

“I had a baby when I was fourteen…” she wrote.

The 14-year-old gave birth in the singlewide trailer that belonged to an aunt. The delivery was in secret. Nobody knew her son existed. Least of all her immediate family.

Finally, the aunt put the child up for adoption. It was impractical for a girl of 14 to raise a child. This was a different era.

The goodbye between mother and son was almost too much to bear. The 14-year-old held her infant in her arms when officials came to take him away.

Over time, the girl grew into a woman. The woman grew into a wife. The wife had three kids. The wife’s husband made decent money.

She

moved into a nice house. Her children did pretty good in school. Her offspring grew up to be successful and handsome and beautiful and well-off and happy. Fill in the blank.

But the woman had a void in her heart.

“A child is a piece of you, physically. Like an organ. People who’ve never had kids can’t understand.”

She dreamed about her son. Every night. Without fail. In her dreams, she could see him. She watched him grow. She saw saw his smile. She heard him speak. Once again, she cannot explain what she means. But she tries.

“It’s like a radar,” she explains. “My soul was sending out a radar signal, and I think God was sending me radar signals back.”

I took a break from reading the email. I still had 78,000,000 words left to read before finishing her story.

So I’ll…

Birmingham is sunny. The weather is chilly, but not unpleasant. I am in a tiny church, sitting beside my cousin, his wife, and his three kids. His two girls wear white dresses.

Times have changed. Once upon a time, I remember when all girls wore Sunday dresses. Today, I don’t see more than four or five in the congregation.

Also, I don’t see any penny loafers on the little boys. As a boy, my mother never let me attend church without wearing a pair of medieval loafers.

There are forty-two people in this room. Elderly couples, young families, a few high-schoolers, some children. It’s a trip back in time. A reminder of the days when Sunday school teachers taught us to say grace by rhyming:

“God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food…”

The congregation sings from hardback hymnals. Then, a sermon from a man with white hair, who pronounces “Lord” as “Lowered.”

I just read an article that said more Americans are working on Sundays than ever before in history. “Sundays are

a thing of the past,” the article claimed.

Say it ain’t so.

The pastor tells the congregation that he and his wife have been married for fifty-two years. The church applauds. Fifty-two years is a rarity.

When the pastor and his wife moved into their first parsonage, his wife placed a large cardboard box beneath her bed, she warned the pastor never to touch it.

“This box is private,” she explained. “Promise me you’ll never open it.”

He crossed his heart and hoped to die. For fifty-two years, the Baptist man honored his word.

Until a week ago. He opened the box and it surprised him. Inside, he found it full of cash and four eggs.

He confessed to his wife what he’d done, then asked her about the box.

“Well,” she explained, “when we married, my mama said, ‘Darling, a preacher’s…

I was driving. I was hungry. I had to pull over because I was about to eat my own steering wheel. The Tennessee weather was in full swing. I had a long way left to go.

I found a meat-and-three in a strip mall. Lots of trucks in the parking area.

You can trust a place with trucks in the parking lot.

Everyone knows that if you see a throng of Fords and Chevys in a restaurant parking lot, the said establishment has exceptional fried chicken. If you see Cadillacs and Buicks, they will also have excellent congealed salad.

The server behind the sneeze guard asked what I wanted. He was tall, gaunt, wearing a hairnet. His neck and arms were painted in a gridwork of tattoos.

“Chicken of meatloaf?” he said.

“Chicken,” said I.

Fried chicken is a dying art in America. I was raised fundamentalist; fried chicken is my spiritual mascot. Fried chicken is holy food. And it is the only dish I don’t mind eating cold. Next-day chicken, straight from the fridge, is better

than Christmas.

The server selected drumsticks that were roughly the size of a James Patterson paperback.

“You want veggies with it?” he said.

“Does the pope go in the woods?” I said.

The list of side dishes was plentiful: Mac and cheese, fried green tomatoes, squash casserole, turnip greens, butterbeans, pintos, great northerns, zipper peas, cornbread salad, slaw, tater logs.

And don’t even get me started on the sweets. You had peach cobbler, lemon meringue, blueberry dump cake, caramel cake, chess pie, and complimentary syringes of insulin.

When my foam box was loaded to capacity, I filled my cup from the tea dispenser. The man who served me was on break, waiting to fill his tea.

We started talking. After a few minutes of conversation, I learned that he had just got out of prison.

“I was turned down for ten different jobs,”…

I’m 5 years old. On Mama’s stove is a steaming stock pot, filling the world with the essence of chicken and dumplings.

I’m watching her use her fists to mercilessly beat a lump of flour that will become dumplings. She punches the dough, making loud grunts, striking terror into the heart of childhood.

“What’re you making?” I ask her.

“Hush now,” she says.

For many years I sincerely believed that chicken and dumplings were called Hush Now. We ate a lot of Hush Now in my house.

Mama then tells me to “Go outside and play.”

Such was the fate of little boys. Any time you opened your mouth to ask a question, you were sent outside to “go play.” God help the child who told Mama he was bored.

“BORED!?” she’d shout. “I’ll show you bored!”

Then Mama’s eyes would fill with holy fire and she would wave her rolling pin around, sermonizing about idle hands. Frankly, you’d be safer telling my mother you were a communist.

So I walk outside to ride my bike.

Back then we all had bikes.

Every last one of us. Bikes were everything. A kid in the saddle was limitless.

Sometimes we would be gone for hours on our Schwinns. Nobody worried about us because there wasn’t much to worry about. Our parents weren’t like today’s parents. We didn’t carpool to soccer practice in hybrid vehicles while buckled in FDA-approved car seats, staring at the opiate glow of our iPads.

Our parents drove big-bodied vehicles with names like Lincoln Continentals, Custom Cruisers, and Ford Country Squires. We had no seatbelts except Mama’s right arm. Moreover, we didn’t know what soccer was.

So there I am, riding bikes with my pals. We pull over at a friend’s house. We dismount, midair, while traveling upwards of 89 mph.

We sprint to our friend’s doorstep to ring the doorbell. We are breathless and rosy-faced from exertion.

Some fool once called her “white trash.” And that’s when she made up her mind. She wanted to better herself, and her family. So, that’s what she did.

“That GED test,” she said, while she checked my blood pressure. “That ain’t no joke, now. It’s tough.”

Her accent is so Alabamian it hurts. She’s missing a few teeth, but it doesn’t look bad on her. She’s old. Wiry. Strong.

Where she grew up, country folks didn’t go past the eighth grade—some still don’t. And according to her daddy, “Once a young’un can read, it’s time to get out and work.”

Saying this made her laugh. I’m not sure why. Maybe one’s own private memories are just humorous.

All six of her brothers dropped out, so did she. It wasn’t a big deal to drop out of school back then.

Take me. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade. Nobody said a word about it. I returned to school as an adult and got my high-school equivalency stuff. And to this day, I still have a hard time spelling “equivalency.”

She and I aren’t that different.

She met a man who worked in a lumber mill, they had two children before she was 20. She’s still with him. She calls him Beater. I don’t know why. But personally, it’s not a nickname I would want.

When she was 24, Beater suggested she apply for a job at the hospital. She thought this was ridiculous. Hospitals didn’t hire “poor white trash.” Hospitals were for learned people. People with letters behind their name. Not hillbillies.

“Which is exactly what I am,” she tells me as she checks my temperature with an ear thermometer.

Even so, she inquired with the hospital about getting a job there. The hospital told her she would need college. So she called a college. The college said she needed a high-school diploma. So she called a high…

The year was 1950. She was 18 years old.

Her hair was brunette. She was as big as a minute. She attended her first Kentucky Derby, dressed in white lace. And she was excited. Her name was Ophelia. And it still is.

“It was a big deal then,” Ophelia said, “Just like it’s a big deal now. Everyone wanted to go.”

Ophelia wore a flamboyant hat that day. She wore all-white. She swilled mint juleps, and hooked arms with her escort, a 23-year-old Louisville boy who was studying to be an attorney. He was handsome. He wore cream linen. She let him kiss her. On the lips.

“It was the first time that had ever happened,” she admitted. “I really liked it.”

That year, a horse named Middleground won the Derby. But Ophelia was more interested in the attorney with the cute dimples.

She is 92 now. This last year has been a trainwreck, healthwise. She just got out of the hospital due to a urinary tract infection. They thought she was going to die.

But she didn’t.

Today, she’s in brittle health. But the Derby never stops. And there’s something comforting about that.

She has endured Kentucky tornadoes, two bouts with COVID-19 that nearly killed her, and she has survived one husband.

“This Derby is for Mama,” says her daughter, Crystal. “We’re celebrating her today.”

This year, the Derby turns 150. Every year since 1875, the Run for the Roses has taken place without interruption. It is America’s longest continuously held sporting event, beating Westminster Dog Show by two years.

The Derby isn’t unlike Ophelia, in that it has survived a lot. Two world wars, one Great Depression, a few pandemics—the Spanish Flu, and COVID-19, when the race took place in near silence.

“We all know this could be Mama’s last Derby,” says her daughter, who is throwing the Derby party. “So we want it to be a good…

“Should I make my bed every morning?” the email began.

The writer of the letter is a 24-year-old who I’ll call Jerry. Jerry is in graduate school. His major is in medicine. He is—without getting too technical—a grown freaking man.

“My dad is a Army colonel,” Jerry went on, “who used to spank me if I didn’t make the bed each morning. …He believes making the bed is setting oneself up for success.

“But now that I’m on my own, I don’t make my bed, and I know Dad is disappointed in me. It even makes him mad at me. What do you think, Sean?”

Well, Jerry. The way I see it, there are two camps.

There is the camp that believes making the bed improves your mental health and propels you toward wealth and success. And there is the camp that believes in eating Cocoa Puffs out of a dirty bowl found in the sink that has not been washed since the Clinton administration.

I belong to the latter camp.

That isn’t to say I don’t believe in

making the bed. It’s just that I conscientiously choose to abstain.

Namely, because there are more important things in my morning routine than the condition of my sheets. Such as, strong coffee, properly cooked eggs, Gary Larson, and the importance of relief pitching in a National League lineup.

The problem is, this world rewards Type-A behavior. We learn about these rewards young. Authority figures are constantly telling us:

“Wake up early!” “study hard!” “brush your teeth” “go to college,” “get a good job,” “eat right,” “exercise,” “invest in an IRA,” “don’t eat cholesterol,” “buy a nice car,” “be a success,” “get your kids into the right school,” “and don’t forget to brush your teeth!”

But did you know that you can go one week without brushing your teeth before your enamel starts to fail? That’s right. You have seven days.

So…

Morning. I’m drinking my coffee when his photo pops up in my cellphone memories. And I’m thrown three years backward. I remember it all too well.

There I am, watching him. He sits on the steps of the Shell Station. A backpack beside him. His skin is rawhide. His beard is white.

His name is Buck. He’s from North Carolina. He says he completed two tours in Vietnam.

He’s not here begging, he’s resting his feet.

“My old feet hurt more’n they used to,” says Buck. “Hard getting old, buddy.”

There is a half-smoked cigar next to him. He dug this used cigar from an ashtray. It still has life in it, he says.

He’s sipping coffee.

“First cup’a joe I had in a week. Fella gave me a quarter a few minutes ago. Piled my coins together to buy me a cup.”

A quarter.

When Buck went inside to buy it, there were only cold dregs left in the pot. He asked the cashier if it were possible to brew a fresh pot. She told him to get lost.

“But I’m paying for it,” he

insisted.

She escorted him to the door.

So, he’s drinking dregs for which he paid full price—for which he is grateful.

There are holes in his shoes. He found these sneakers in a sporting-good-store dumpster. Buck estimates he’s put nearly eight hundred miles on them. Who knows if he’s exaggerating or not. Buck has a flare for the dramatic.

Still, his bloody toes poke through the fronts. His middle toenail is missing.

Buck explains, “God says, ‘Don't worry what you’ll eat, drink, or wear.’ And I believe it. But it's hard sometimes. ‘Specially when you ain’t eaten and you don’t have [cussword] to wear.”

So I walk inside the gas station on a mission. I ask the aforementioned cashier to brew a fresh pot of coffee—I tell her it’s for me. I am very…

The letter came from 21-year-old Julia.

“Dear Mister Sean,” it began, “I cannot find a job that fits me…

“I keep trying job after job, and I just want to find my true career path… And be happy. What should I do?”

Well, Julia, I’ve had a lot of jobs. My first real job was hanging drywall, after my father died. I was 14 years old. I was chubby for my age. I learned how to sand drywall joints, how to apply drywall mud, and most importantly, I tasted my first beer.

Mister Rick, my boss, was a cheerful man who looked like Otis Campbell. He gave me my first sip. I was covered in Sheetrock dust and sweat, I looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Mister Rick handed me a can and said, “You earned a sip, son.”

I took three sips. He grabbed the can from my hands and said, “Easy, son. I don’t want you getting drunk.”

“What’s it like being drunk?” I asked.

“See those four trees over there? Well, if you were drunk, there’d be

eight trees.”

“But, Mister Rick,” I said. “There are only two trees.”

I was an ice-cream scoop once. That was a pretty good job. I was allowed to eat all the leftovers.

I gained 19 pounds in six weeks.

Once, I worked food service. I was a line cook. I wasn’t very good at it. I lasted one year. On the day I was fired, the head cook took me aside and said, “You’re an employee with incredible motivational skills, did you know that?”

“I am?”

“Yes. Whenever you’re around, everyone has to work twice as hard.”

I worked as a tile layer. I had a job digging drainage ditches. I hung gutter. I helped my mother clean condos and apartments.

And once, I stooped so low as to work as a telemarketer.

“Hello,” I said into the headset, “would…

Deputy Sheriff Jermyius Young was the first in April. He was laid to rest earlier this month. Killed in a traffic accident. A slender guy. Nice looking. Honest smile.

“I loved this young man because he was true,” said Montgomery County, Alabama, Sheriff Derrick Cunningham.

Jermyius was 21.

The next U.S. law enforcement officer to pass was Andrew John Faught (27). An automobile accident in Illinois.

Then, Chief of Police Steven Allen Singer (48), in Lake Lafayette, Missouri. He died of a heart attack. He was pursuing trespassers. At the end of a long shift, he went home and suffered a fatal heart attack.

Then, Lieutenant Rodney Osborne (43). He was shot during a training exercise at the tactical firing range at the Correctional Training Academy in Pickaway County, Ohio.

“One of the best men you could ever ask for,” said a family member.

Special Agent Derek Sean Baer (49) was killed in a head-on vehicle crash in Ranson, West Virginia. He served with the United States Postal Service

Office of Inspector General for 19 years. He is survived by his wife and three children.

And then there was Police officer Ross Bartlett (54). He was conducting a traffic stop in Ceresco, Nebraska. Parked on the shoulder. His patrol unit was struck from behind by a Ford F-150.

There was 26-year-old Police Officer Joseph McKinney. Memphis, Tennessee. He leaves behind a wife and daughter. He was killed in a shootout with two suspects. He was handsome. Nice. Funny. A former Chick-fil-A employee.

And don’t forget Sergeant William Marty Jackson, II. According to the Winchester, Kentucky, Police Department, he was involved in a struggle during an assistance call. This led to cardiac problems later that night. He was in law enforcement for 50 years.

Jackson was 73 years old.

Police Officer Michael E. Jensen (29) of Syracuse, New York. “He was a happy-go-lucky kid, always smiling, always happy,” said Jensen’s childhood…