New York City—my plane just touched down. LaGuardia Airport is a nightmare.

I am here for the BookExpo America, the largest book fair in the U.S. Think: Disneyland for people with big vocabularies.

I have only visited this city once before. I was a teenager, traveling with the church choir.

I was such a nervous wreck I had a panic attack downtown. Dizziness, heart racing, the works. The choir director took me to a walk-in clinic and they gave me a sedative that made me drool on the subway ride back.

I come from simple people. My mother often told horror stories about such big cities. These urban legends were almost never true, but they freaked me out.

“Did you hear about my friend’s sister, Jeanne?” Mother might say. “Her brother’s cousin’s neighbor’s nephew was in New York for a wedding, someone shot him in the kneecaps when he was leaving church, then threw him into the Hudson River.”

Welcome to New York.

I hail a Yellow Cab. I am in the backseat.

My driver is from Indonesia. He drives like he’s clinically insane.

He is telling me about himself, but I can’t focus on a word he says because—it’s important that you understand this—there is a lizard is in his backseat.

“Where are you from?” the driver asks.

“Why is there a lizard in my seat?” I say.

“You aren’t from New York, are you? Wanna know how I know that?”

“Can we please slow down?”

“Because you are not wearing all-black Ha!”

“I think your lizard is carsick.”

The cab spits me out onto 76,397th Street, and charges me six hundred dollars. Soon, I am wandering sidewalks, looking for my hotel.

I am lost. I can’t seem to find my way. My mother’s horror stories are coming back to me.

Like the one about the man in…

On my mother’s coffee table. A magazine. Always, this magazine. Ever since I can remember.

To her, it was the magazine of all magazines—second only to a Billy Graham newsletter. It sat beside her Bible, between a bowl of potpourri and an ashtray for company.

I have memories of her reading recipes. Hot chicken salad casserole was one such recipe. If you have never had hot chicken salad casserole, I’ll pray for you.

She had hundreds of back issues. They sat in the corner. Over the years, they collected dust bunnies that were roughly the size of Joe Namath.

Sometimes, she used these magazines to balance rickety tables. Other times, she rolled them up tightly to use as disciplinary devices on sass-mouths.

My wife loves this magazine, too. When we first married, we moved into a ratty apartment. She brought a box of hardback cookbooks with her—yearly compilations of the magazine’s recipes.

“Are those all yours?” I asked.

“Yeah, been collecting them since I was a kid, my parents give

me a new cookbook every Christmas. It’s tradition.”

That’s when I knew I had married the right woman. The kind of woman who would never wear white after Labor Day because her mother would have strangled her with the cord from a kitchen mixer.

To the women in my life, it was more than a magazine. It was the secret to red velvet cake. It was a collection of house plans they daydreamed about. It was like Emily Post and Dale Earnhardt had given birth to a love child on Mama’s coffee table.

Every church lady revered it. Every elementary school teacher read it on lunch break.

And rumor had it—I shouldn’t be telling you this—that Michael Swanson’s mother, Miss Adeline, tattooed the famous ‘79-issue banana pudding recipe on a hidden region of her body.

You didn’t hear that from me.…

He was unknown to you. But not to me. We were friends. Sort of.

Ours wasn’t a long lasting friendship, but we rode the school bus together. So I guess that made us friends.

He would save a seat for me; I would board the bus, walk the aisle, and plop on the cushion beside him.

He was funny. We laughed a lot. Some kids are just born to be funny.

He kept a journal of sketches. They were good. He could draw anything. And I remember when he trusted me enough to let me look through his journal. Inside were dozens of bald eagles.

“Why do you draw so many eagles?” I asked.

“‘Cause they’re cool, why else?”

He didn’t have many friends because he was shy, and shy people are like that. I was the same way.

Between the two of us we were so timid we squeaked. And if ever we saw each other outside the confines of the bus, we were even shy

around each other.

When he got a part in the school play, nobody was sure how it would go. The kid was so quiet he wouldn’t even raise a hand in class.

He was afraid to play football, he didn’t like baseball. He liked to read and draw instead.

Yet here he was playing Mayor Shinn in the Music Man.

I was in the musical, too. In fact, I played one of the guys in the barbershop quartet. Our quartet sang a song named “Sincere.”

I still remember the lyrics:

“How can there be any sin in sincere?
“Where is the good in goodbye?
“Your apprehensions confuse me dear,
“Puzzle and mystify...”

There are some things you don’t forget.

I was the bass singer for the group. Not because I actually sang bass, but because I was…

Colorado Springs—I found a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk. And because I am a competent, responsible adult, I raced toward the money, shouting, “MINE! MINE!” at my wife.

There they were, two Andrew Jacksons, crumpled. I made the same sound a five-year-old boy makes when he discovers the Tootsie Roll center to a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop.

I don’t often find money. It’s not one of my skills. I have a friend who finds money everywhere. He once found a hundred big ones outside a convenience store. I happened to be with him when it happened.

I never forgave him.

Thus, with my newfound wealth, I walked into a giftshop to do some dutiful vacation-junk purchasing. Here in Colorado, I am a tourist, and a tourist can never have enough plastic junk to clutter up his home, office, garage, guest bedroom, or storage unit.

Then, I overheard his voice.

He was behind the cash register, talking to a customer. His accent was pure Alabama. It had to

be. He drew out his vowels the same way Good Ole Boys have been doing since the invention of the beer koozie.

I waited in line with an armful of overpriced trash. I was buying more than twenty-bucks’ worth—three T-shirts, a snow globe, a coffee mug, and a few bumper stickers for my accordion case.

That’s right, I play accordion. My grandfather played, too. Grandaddy told me long ago that the accordion was a great way to pick up chicks. He was grossly misinformed.

When it was my turn, I asked the gray-haired man at the cash register where he was from.

“Montgomery,” he said.

Bingo. Alabamians, you’ll note, don’t say “MONT-gomery” like the rest of the free world. They say, “Muh-GUM-ree.”

“How’d you get out here?” I asked.

“Long story,” he said. “I came here for my parents. They’re old…

Fayetteville, North Carolina—the middle of the night, on the interstate. She was on her way to start a new life in a new place.

She pulled over at a rest area.

It was dark. She was young. A man came from nowhere, forced her into a car, and held a gun to her. He told her what he was about to do to her.

Then, someone kicked open the window and pulled him off. There was a fight. Her attacker was never caught. Her hero was never found. She was unharmed.

“My mom thinks it was an angel,” she says. “I think so, too.”

Birmingham, Alabama—Daryl saw a man walking the highway. He offered the man a ride.

The man said, “No thanks,” and mumbled something nonsensical.

Daryl dove past him the next afternoon. And the next. One day he pulled alongside the man and said, “Please let me do SOMETHING for you, sir.”

The man said, “I’m so scared, dude. Help me.”

Daryl brought him home. He made contact with the man’s sister, who said her brother suffered from schizophrenia. He’d gone missing days earlier.

In

a few hours, the family was reunited on Daryl’s front lawn.

“You saved my brother’s life,” said the man’s sister. “And mine.”

Flowood, Mississippi—on Tuesday afternoons, Mary instructs a gymnasium of women, of varying ages and fitness levels, how to dance hip-hop.

One of her students—an elderly woman—had chest pains.

The ambulance came. Mary rode with her to the hospital. She lied to nurses, claiming to be the woman’s daughter so they’d let her into the woman’s room. She called the family.

One emergency open-heart surgery later, the old woman is alive and moving.

“Anybody woulda done what I did,” said Mary.

No. They wouldn’t have.

Southside, Florida—a boy and his mother walked into a supermarket. He pitched a tantrum and kicked her. She let go of his hand. He ran through the…

Colorado Springs—I’m standing on Pikes Peak, fourteen thousand feet above sea level. I’m looking at the world from a mountaintop.

Twenty-four years ago we scattered Daddy’s ashes here. He came packed in a cardboard box. I was a child.

The day we turned him loose, I prayed for something grand to happen. Maybe a gust of wind, a big cloud, or even snow. I’d heard it can snow on Pikes Peak during the summer.

That’s what I wanted. I wanted nature to deliver something. But there were no gusts. No clouds. No snow. Only hot sun.

Anyway, my father’s death happened suddenly. I was twelve. And this view takes me to that age again. The scenery up here is breathtaking. I can see clear to Kansas, and the sun is shining so hard it burns me.

The altitude is getting to me. There are tiny sparks in my vision. The EMT at the visitor’s center told me this means I am in oxygen debt.

Twenty-four years. It’s been so long since

he’s been gone that I often forget his face. I have to open a photo album to remember.

I have a favorite photograph. A faded Polaroid. He’s wearing his denim, his boots, and his work jacket. He’s all iron worker.

I loved him.

He used to play make-believe with me when I was little. Daddy would wear a cowboy hat and play Old West Saloon. I was Wyatt Earp; he was Billy the Kid.

We’d have gunfights at high noon. Our living room became the showdown at O.K. Corral. I would take him down with a cap gun. I was the best shot in the West. He would grab his gut, then fall on the floor.

Then, I would jump on his chest. He would kiss me on the forehead. He’d say, “That’s my little cowboy.”

How could a…

I just crossed the border into New Mexico. I’m only three hours from Colorado Springs, where I’ll visit my father’s resting place.

And I am lost. Not poetically, but worse. Literally. My GPS quit working a few minutes ago. I’m running blind.

Still, after two days of driving across the eerily flat Texas dirt, it’s nice to finally see some eerily flat New Mexico dirt for a change.

My wife is asleep in the passenger seat. We are traveling with two dogs: my late bloodhound, Ellie Mae,—God rest her soul—her ashes are in a cedar box, riding on my dashboard.

And my other dog, Thelma Lou—a twelve-week-old bloodhound whose bladder is the size of a zipper pea.

Thel sits in my lap while I drive, staring out my windshield. We are wandering across the Middle of Nowhere. This two-lane highway is bumpy, and jagged. In front of me: prairie. Behind me: prairie. There are no cars for miles.

But I’m enjoying the drive. So is the puppy. And I’m remembering

things.

Mostly, I’m remembering the dog in the box. She was the sort who rode shotgun. Always shotgun. Even when my wife was in the car, Ellie would sit between us. If you rolled down the window, she’d poke her head out. Her long ears would flap in the wind.

Ellie was my friend. She was born in Georgia, raised in the Panhandle of Florida. She loved all things that hounds love: pine trees, children, long walks on the beach, raw sewage, Lawrence Welk.

I think Ellie would’ve liked the West.

Thelma Lou certainly likes it. She is taking in the view like it’s the first time she’s ever seen earth.

She wears a look I can’t explain—like she’s thinking very, very hard. And all of a sudden, my vehicle smells like four-day old cabbage. Gurgling sounds come from Thel’s…

I’m in the Texas Panhandle. I wish I could tell you where, specifically, but I don’t know. Outside Amarillo.

There are no landmarks. No trees. No water. Just dirt, wind, and prairie. I am at a rundown barbecue trailer, parked outside a filling station. I am ordering food. My wife is waiting in the vehicle with our bloodhound.

The woman at the window is a gray-haired sweetheart.

When I first arrive, she is smoking a cigarette out front. When she sees me, she moseys into the trailer. I’ve always wanted to use that word—“mosey.”

She gives me a Texas barbecue lesson. Her voice sounds like a tuba.

“Our barbecue’s different than your Southern style, baby,” she says. “You need to know that.”

Fair enough. Since I am a Southerner, I ask her what the regional differences are.

“Oh, lotsa differences. Mainly, in Texas we actually know how to cook.”

Texans.

“Also,” she adds. “We don’t care ‘bout side dishes like y’all do.”

Say it ain’t so. Side dishes are sacred to people in my parts. In

fact, each year local heathens visit Southern Baptist barbecues simply to eat their yearly requirement of coleslaw.

The fourth time I got baptized, for instance, I ate so much coleslaw I had to ask the congregation for forgiveness the following Sunday.

I order a pulled pork sandwich.

“Pork?” The old lady gives a hoarse laugh. “We don’t do pork. This is Texas. Brisket.”

“Okay,” I say. “A brisket sandwich, then.”

“No sandwiches, neither. Brisket.”

I order brisket and ask for extra sauce on the side.

“No sauce,” she says. “Brisket.”

Texans.

So I’m eating brisket that’s wrapped in foil. And we are having a conversation.

Beneath the woman’s rough skin is a lady who was born in Amarillo. She married a man in the military. She saw the whole world with him. Top to…