NASHVILLE—The book publisher’s building is large, modern-looking, and intimidating. There is a mirror-like finish on the outside.

There is an intercom by the front door. Before getting inside, you must present a valid ID, a birth certificate, the blood of a sacrificial ram, and five years of past tax returns.

No, I’m only kidding. The intercom is probably for weeding out crazy people.

Which is why the most important thing to remember when speaking into this intercom is to relax and be yourself so the receptionist doesn’t think you’re a crazy person.

I mash the button.

“Hello,” I say, using a 17th-century British female accent. “I am not a crazy person.”

The voice says, “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes.”

The door unlatches with a buzzing sound. And I am inside the HarperCollins building. This place is fancy. Tall ceilings, big windows. There’s a pianist in the lobby playing “Moon River” on a six-foot baby grand piano.

Again, this is just a joke. He’s actually playing “Red Sails in the Sunset.”

I am greeted by Alecia and other members of her

team. We all exchange hugs. Alecia says, “Thank you so much for being here.”

This seems to be the phrase of the day. I hear it a few hundred times from many nice people.

These are book-people. Their lives revolve around books. Anything you can imagine doing to a book, they have already done it. They eat, sleep, and bench press books.

They think in complete paragraphs that are virtually typo-free. Some copy editors even do double air quotes with their fingers before and after every sentence they say.

There are cubicles everywhere. People at computers. Bookshelves. Coffee makers.

The walls are lined with posters featuring some famous book covers. And these posters all leave you struck with the feeling that pretty much all people in the Western world—including various cast members from “Love Boat”—have written runaway bestsellers.

And…

I am looking for the peanut butter in my kitchen. But I can’t find it. I can never find things in my own house because I am married.

Just when I figure out where the silverware is located, or the peanut butter, or the master bathroom, my wife changes everything around. Then she changes it again.

When I ask her about it, she offers no explanation other than: “I moved the peanut butter above the dishrag drawer.”

If I actually knew where the dishrag drawer was located it would be smooth sailing. But I have not been able to find our dishrag drawer since the late 1990s.

So I just keep looking around for the peanut butter, opening and closing cupboards until I end up staring into a cabinet filled with vitamins and one Oster six-speed hand mixer. Then, I completely forget what I was looking for and end up on the sofa watching the “Young and the Restless.”

I forget things because we men have short attention spans. I get distracted all the

time. I can be talking about one thing, then suddenly (bam!) did you know that a squirrel’s front teeth never stop growing?

Which is true, by the way.

This attention deficit problem in males is annoying to women. But it’s just part of being a man. We can be very thickheaded.

This is why a man can wander into his own kitchen, open his OWN refrigerator, stare at fourteen different kinds of mustard on the door, including the moldy Grey Poupon that nobody has thrown away since his cousin’s wedding reception last summer, and without the slightest irony ask his wife, “Do we have any mustard?”

At my in-law’s house it was salad dressing instead of mustard. My father-in-law would accumulate salad dressing like nobody’s business. I finally figured out why when I went shopping with him.

He would take three steps into a Piggly Wiggly,…

I have a few hours to kill. I stop at a small place to eat. The place is dead. It is just me and a waitress. She is older. Covered in tattoos.

The place is rundown. My coffee mug has lipstick traces on it. The music overhead is George and Tammy. My table is sticky. I’ve been in a lot of breakfast joints in my day, but this is definitely one of them.

I order eggs and bacon. And I type on a laptop while listening to George sing.

She watches me. At first she isn’t going to say anything, but eventually she does. Her boredom is unbearable.

“What are you writing?” she asks. Only it comes out sounding like “Choo rattin’?”

“It’s just a story,” I say.

“Story ‘bout h-whut?”

“This and that.”

“You a writer?”

“Sorta.”

“You any good?”

“Not really.”

“I ever heard of you before?”

“I doubt it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sean.”

“Never heard of you.”

The music overhead changes to Randy Travis. I have always liked Randy Travis.

I ask her the quintessential breakfast-joint question. “So, where’re you from?”

“Virginia, originally. Only, I been in Alabama since I’s twenty.”

“Doing what?”

“This and that.”

“You

any good?”

This makes her smile. “I was good at being stupid. So are my daughters. All been stupid just like me. My son’s the only one who did right. He joined up.”

“The military?”

“A Marine.”

“Semper Fi?”

“Do what?”

“I think that’s their motto, the Marines, Semper Fi.”

“Is that Spanish?”

“I think Latin.”

“Don’t know nothin’ bout no Latin, but he’s a good boy, when I get to see him.”

She returns to wiping the counter. It’s just busywork. There’s nothing to wipe. The cook is in the kitchen playing with his phone. He appears to have a runny nose. He wipes it with his palm. And I think I’m going to be sick.

Out of the…

I am leaving Florida, heading for Birmingham on important business. By which I mean barbecue.

My cousin is having a little get-together in his backyard. He is slow-smoking a large pork butt, serving homemade banana pudding, and his famous fall-off-the-bone ribs. I have been known to travel great distances for good barbecue.

I’m on a two-lane highway. It’s 99 degrees outside. The Florida weather is so hot that the trees are bribing the dogs.

I cross the state line, and I’m in Alabama.

The first town I pass is Florala. It’s tiny. It sits on Lake Jackson. Picture thick oaks with lots of moss, a small mainstreet, and Opie Taylor kicking a can on the sidewalk.

I once dated a girl from Florala. Her father hated me. One day he invited me hog hunting. Just the two of us. This was my cue to get off his porch before I had an unfortunate hunting accident.

You can follow Highway 55 upward for a breathtaking drive. Pass Lockhart, North Creek, miles of farmland, and soon

you’re in Andalusia. Hank Williams got married in Andalusia.

Pass the country club, the Conecuh River, and you’re back on 55 again. Follow this through Red Level, McKenzie, and you really ought to stop in Georgiana, at Kendall’s Barbecue—a little shack beside a gas station. Thank me later.

While you’re in town, visit the childhood home of Hank Senior. Get the dime tour of the museum from a sweet elderly woman named Miss Margaret, who I keep hoping will adopt me.

After that, you will have a few routes you can take to Birmingham.

1. Interstate 65—a congested mega-highway with every SUV in the known universe riding your butt and trying to ram your tailgate if you don’t drive 125 miles per hour even though they have bumper stickers which read “Jesus is my co-pilot.”

2. Highway 31.

Ride the sleepy highway past Chapman, Bolling, and…

He was outdoorsy. More outdoorsy than me. Don’t get me wrong. I love the outdoors just as much as the next guy. Sometimes, I spend all day watching movies that were filmed entirely outdoors. But he was different.

He smelled like the outdoors. That’s what I remember most about him. It was a leathery smell. Like soot, and foliage, and dirt.

He smelled like this because he worshipped his lawn. The man could waste entire weeks obsessing about one little brown spot in his yard. And he would work in the flower beds more than most peoples’ grandmothers ever did.

He was a blue collar man. It’s impossible for me to tell you much about him without highlighting that. His uniform was denim. He wore it every single day. Except Sundays. He was an ironworker. A union man. I never saw him sit in anything but a Ford.

On weekends, however, he was a certified nutcase.

Once, he had the bright idea to conduct a controlled burn on our land. Thirteen acres of

tall, dry grass. His friends told him it was a bad idea, but like I said, he was a nut.

On Saturday morning, he drove the truck around the property; his buddy rode on the tailgate, dumping gasoline onto the grass. They spent half the day saturating the land. Then he parked near the house and lit a match. One match.

Boom.

Thirteen acres exploded. The fire department was called. The police were called. I think he even made the paper.

It took a full day to put the fire out. And when it was all said and done, my father was covered in black soot, head to toe. He said, “Well, that was a bad idea.”

I remember those words exactly.

Another story I remember. He was driving and he saw this man on the highway whose car broke down on the side of the road.…