Another prayer quilt arrived on Kate Rowe's porch. She’s lost count of how many she’s received by mail.

“This one's from Ohio,” she said. “That’s a long way away.”

The Buckeye State is a world away from Quitman. This small Georgia town has little more than a few thousand folks, some antebellum homes, and one hell of a football team.

The quilt is for Kate’s son, Gus. A one-year-old with a tranquil personality, red hair, happy face. When he was born, his calm disposition wasn't a concern. But over time, Kate thought he seemed too relaxed. She's a nurse—she has a sixth-sense.

She took him to a neurologist. It was bad. A brain tumor. Gus needed surgery. And fast.

“Two days later,” said Kate. “We were handing our baby to a group of strangers.”

Surgeons. A specialized surgical team that operated for thirteen hours—through a microscope. And that was only the beginning. For Kate and her husband, life didn't stop because Gus had a tumor. They had jobs.

Money doesn’t exactly grow in windowboxes.

“I called my manager,” she said “I needed

to take leave. My manager was like, ‘You don’t have any paid time off left, honey.’”

That's when it all started.

So, some of Kate’s coworkers had a plan. They surrendered their paid-time-off days to help Kate keep her job. Their charitable ideas caught on. Nearly every employee donated paid vacations.

Then:

Folks started giving money, clothes, shoes, toiletries, coffee. Daily packages began arriving. Baskets of snacks, handwritten letters. Friends in Valdosta sent baby supplies, toys, pillows. From Thomasville: enough gift-cards to fill a fifty-gallon drum.

Someone even donated a furnished apartment near the hospital.

“It was mind-blowing,” she said. “The love and support.”

In her hometown, people started a charity. “The Gus Bus,” they called it. Truckloads of bracelets were sold. You couldn’t throw a rock in Brooks County without hitting someone wearing a bracelet.

And prayer…

It’s a nice day in the Capital of the South. The sun warms the brick buildings downtown, making an urban place feel almost country.

I can’t do big cities. But I can do Montgomery. It feels small—sort of.

There’s a bearded man on the sidewalk, collecting cans. Businessmen eat lunch at an overpriced outdoor restaurant, playing on cellphones.

And Hank Williams.

I see him. He’s staring through the window of his museum on Commerce Street. We've been friends for a long time. He hasn't aged a day.

The first song I listened to after Daddy's funeral was “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” I laid face down on the floor and sobbed until I had a headache.

A boy will do anything to remember his daddy.

This museum is small. They have T-shirts, stationery, and a towering wooden Indian, standing by the door.

The exhibit is bare-bones, no digital displays like in a modern Smithsonian. The place resembles an antique store. His suits, his Stetsons, and the blue ‘52 Cadillac he died in—which is smaller than I thought.

“No photos allowed,” the woman tells a kid behind me.

The boy puts his phone away and complains under his breath to his girlfriend, "They let us take all the pictures we wanted in Nashville."

This isn't Nashville, kid. I’ve visited the Country Music Hall of Fame. I could give a cuss which rhinestone tuxes Kenny Rogers wore on his '83 Japan tour. Today, I'm a boy trying to remember his daddy.

Hank is on the jukebox. He wails. I remember things. Like when Mama got trapped in the chicken coop and almost passed out from heat exhaustion. I recall old men in suspenders. Alfalfa bales.

I can see the morning of my father's funeral. I was supposed to be getting dressed, but sat on the bed in my underwear, wearing over-sized boots.

Only one day earlier, I'd found Daddy at his…

Straughn, Alabama—thirteen years ago. It was a spring morning. The sun was low. Birds made noise. The Straughn High School football stadium was packed. Coach Taylor read a eulogy.

Kirsten was gone.

She was a softball player. Her Tiger teammates sat in the stands. So did rival teams from nearby schools. Her friends wept. Her family sobbed. It was a black day.

She was fourteen. A deer ran in front of the truck. They swerved. Flipped. It was bad.

“I had Kirsten when I was eighteen,” her mother tells me. “We kinda grew up together.”

Her mother is older now, Kirsten’s funeral is only a memory. But she was a good kid. Straight A’s, cheerleader, student ambassador, church-involved. She was cut from rural cloth.

Between ball practices, Kirsten did youth group. After that, she'd ride muddy four-wheelers until the sun went down.

Then the worst.

Churches in nearby counties held vigil for the unconscious girl. Kirsten's waiting room saw the most visitors to ever grace Sacred Heart’s halls. Welcome to small-town Alabama. When one falls, so does the whole of Covington County.

They needed a stadium just to hold her funeral.

When Kirsten was twelve, she began talking about organ donation. She became so enthusiastic about the idea, her mother got concerned.

“I thought it was odd,” her mother says. But the girl was nothing if not passionate.

Her organs were in coolers only hours after she flatlined.

Years went by. Life moved on. The fourteen-year-old beauty queen seemed to fade into history.

“I HAD to know who received those organs,” says her mother.

So she wrote letters, but never received responses. She kept writing. Nothing. She almost gave up. Then, one day it happened.

An envelope from Okeechobee, Florida. A mother whose daughter had needed a kidney. It saved her life. The recipient's name: Lacey.

Kirsten’s mother met Lacey.

Their first meeting was on Mother’s Day—of all days. It…

I'm not crazy about our presidential candidates. But it's not their fault. These politicians are who they are. While I'll bet they're upstanding, God-fearing folk, I sure as shoeshine don't want them at my barbecue.

Thus, I've come up with the only political idea I've ever had. You can slap me sideways once you've heard it.

I suggest we elect Sheriff Andy Taylor for president.

If you don't know who Andy Taylor is, you might as well quit reading here. Because Andy is good people — most folks from tiny rural towns are. Furthermore, I can relate to Andy. He was raised in church, he fingerpicks a flattop, he's good with a joke, and he believes in skipping work to go fishing on occasion.

I don't care which party he's affiliated with, because I'm confident all Andy's parties have plenty of potato salad.

You want his political record? Fine. Andy's been sheriff since 1960. And, there's never even been one auto accident in his town. Not a one. Andy's

the kind of guy who once grounded his own boy for not donating enough to the Needy Children's Fund — let that sink in a moment.

He's an extinct breed.

Andy's got big ears, talks with a drawl, and sings Southern Gospel like your grandaddy did. And he'll sing you whichever hymn you please. He knows the entire Baptist Hymnal by heart.

The best thing about Andy, is that he doesn't campaign. In fact, he doesn't give a damn who you vote for. He's a simple man, not a self-promoter passing out flyers. He'd rather be catching a small-mouth bass on a cane pole — frankly, so would I.

In the only debate speech I ever heard him deliver, he said, “You're either satisfied with me, or you're not. And, uh, I guess we'll find out when you vote.”

Good old Andy. The world could do with more of him. Some…