Welcome to Mississippi. It’s an overcast day in the Magnolia State. I’m at Waffle House, consuming my daily quota of grease.

I’ve been driving all morning. And Waffle House serves the best T-bone in the southeast. For $9, you can’t be beat that kind of deal with a Louisville Slugger

There is a man at the bar next to me. He is large. Towering. Thick limbed. His hands are as big as supermarket chickens.

“How tall are you?” I ask.

“Six eleven,” he says.

His voice is a muffled baritone, originating somewhere in his deep chest.

“Six eleven?” I remark.

He takes a sip. “Mmm hmm.”

“How’d you get to be so tall?”

Shrug. “Just prayed real hard.”

His name is Robert. He drives a truck. Born and raised in Mississippi. He’s been driving since the early ‘80s. He says he’s logged nearly 4 million miles on his old body.

He started driving because of his child. His daughter. She needed medical procedures for her legs. Without the operations she might not have walked. Trucking paid pretty good in the ‘80s.

So the

road became his home. He sent paychecks back to Mississippi. He lived on coffee.

“I’m a good driver. I’m aware of my surroundings. I work hard. That’s my secret.

“Ain’t never had a preventable crash. I been married for 48 years. I should be retired right now. All my friends are done with driving. But I’m still going. What else am I gonna do?”

I ask which truck in the parking lot is his. Because, deep in my heart, I am a little boy who likes big machines that go vroom.

He spins his stool. He points out the window. Red. Peterbilt. Tall exhaust pipes. Chrome fuel tanks. Four hundred horses.

“I seen the whole United States,” he says. “Front to back. Side to side. Up and down. Parts of Canada even.”

By now, our waitress is…

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…

This is a major religious holiday. August 15 is the Ascension of Mary.

Which might not mean much to you if you were raised Deepwater Baptist like me and thereby prohibited from keeping NyQuil in the house. But this holy day is a big deal for other denominations.

It’s the Feast of the Assumption. La Asunción de Santa Maria. The day Saint Mary’s body was lifted into heaven. It is the day of the year when many churches have giant potlucks and big to-dos.

It is also the day my mother-in-law died.

My mother-in-law happened to be named Mary. She was the quintessential mother of her family. The matriarch of her clan. We called her Mother Mary.

I was the one who began calling her by the nickname “Mother Mary.” I’m big on nicknames. I come from a long line of horse thieves and used car salesmen who gave everyone nicknames.

My cousin, for example, was nicknamed “Tater Log.” One of my uncles is named “Sugar Boo.” Another of my cousins—who is now a Primitive Baptist

minister and about as fun as elective surgery—is named “Doublewide.”

My aunts have a wide variety of nicknames, too. There was Aunt “Muffin,” Aunt “Shortie,” Aunt “Puddin’” and we affectionately call my Aunt Eulah “Joseph Stalin.”

So it just felt right calling my mother-in-law “Mother” Mary.

What I liked about the nickname most of all were the slightly religious overtones. It was a moniker that conveyed piety. Sanctity. Fervor. Holiness.

Which is why we sometimes also called Mary “Blessed Mother,” or “Mother of Sorrows,” “Our Lady of Perpetual Yard Work.”

It was especially fun whenever my mother-in-law had Catholics over to the house. They didn’t know what to think of her irreverent nickname. Often, one of us would yell out: “Would someone get the Blessed Mother some more bourbon and Coke?”

When someone would refresh Mary’s drink, Mother Mary would always smile and say…

Cracker Barrel, 8:17 P.M.—it's busy tonight. There’s a boy in a wheelchair at the table beside me. His father is spoon feeding him cooked apples and fried chicken.

When the boy's sister says something funny, the boy claps and laughs.

His father wipes his face with a rag and says, “You’re my special boy.” Then, he kisses his forehead.

A nearby girl wanders toward the boy. She is four, maybe. Her hair is in locks. She stares at him with her hand in her mouth.

“Is he okay?” she asks.

The boy leans and gives a big “HELLO!”

There are apple bits on his chin.

The girl gives a smile brighter than a Christmas tree. “HI THERE!” she says in return. Then, she skips off.

Three tables from the boy is an old man. He is wearing a ball cap, Velcro shoes. He’s sitting at a two-top. He orders chicken-fried steak and potatoes. He has no cellphone to occupy his attention. No reading material. He sits.

He and I share a waitress. Her name is Blanche—it’s embroidered on her apron.

Whenever he speaks to her, he holds her hand. Something you don't see much.

He has a voice that sounds beautifully genteel. It's a wonder he's all alone.

Behind him is a table of Mexican workers—men, women, and kids. They sit covered in paint and grit. They speak rapid Spanish. Lots of laughing.

One Mexican boy crawls into his mother's lap. She strokes his silk hair with her paint-spotted hand, saying, “Cariño mio,” over and over.

And though I don't know Spanish, I imagine this, more or less, means: “You're my special boy.”

To their left: a teenage couple. He weighs a buck ten, she is a foot taller than him. They hold hands when they walk out. They kiss. They look drunk on each other. What a feeling.

When I pay my tab, Laney is my cashier. She takes…

Houston. The boy was at a park. A sophomore. He was doing his homework, watching his 5-year-old little sister play on the monkey bars.

She yelled at her brother, “Hey! Look at me!”

She fell from the bars onto her head. Blood was everywhere She was unconscious. The young man panicked.

You’re supposed to be a dutiful big brother. You’re supposed to know what to do. But sometimes you panic.

A man in a janitor uniform came from out of nowhere. He saw the child on the ground. He saw the blood.

The custodian spoke limited English. He scooped up the girl in his arms.

“Don’t worry, leetle girl, it’s gonna be okay.”

Don’t worry? Who was this guy?

Well, whoever he was, he wandered into traffic, flagging for cars to pull over.

None did.

He tells the sophomore kid that he is a runner. A competitive runner. He runs every day. His father was a runner. His brothers are competitive runners. He has completed multiple marathons. A few ultras.

So takes the girl in his grasp. He runs to the

local hospital. With a 40-pound kid in his arms.

When he arrived in the ER, the nurses asked whether he was all right. He was covered in perspiration. Breathing heavily. All he could say was “Help this leetle girl, help this leetle girl.”

They did.

Birmingham. It was raining, and the college girl was stuck in traffic. She had to go to the bathroom, badly. And Highway 280 traffic is not accommodating bladders that are about to redline. It was a jam. Miles of bumpers. Standstill gridlock.

So the woman pulled off at the gas station. She jogged inside, clutching her urethral region.

There was an old man seated out front, he was asking for change. She avoided him on the way in, but couldn’t avoid him on the way out.

He hit her up for cash.

She had…

My friend’s mother, Miss Sylvia, is making cornbread. Her house is alive with the smell. The 72-year old woman cooks cornbread the old-fashioned way. An iron skillet in the oven. Lots of butter.

Sylvia tests the hot bread by poking it with a broom bristle. If the bristle is gummy, she licks the bristle then returns the skillet to the oven. If not, it’s Cornbread-Thirty.

I watch this bristle maneuver. She breaks a piece of straw from her broom. And I don’t want to ask, but I have to.

“Is that broom clean?” I say.

“Relax,” Sylvia says. “It’s just one bristle.”

“But is it clean?”

“Define clean.”

“Has it been used to sweep your floor?”

“This particular broom? Yes.”

“Your dusty, residential, hepatitis-C floor?”

“Yes.”

So this cornbread is contaminated and will probably kill me. But then, I’m a dinner guest, I must eat it even though the old woman’s floors are frequently used by a family dog who is nicknamed “Egypt” because wherever he goes he makes little pyramids.

Still, I love cornbread. I was raised on the

stuff, just like everyone else in America.

My mother used to make cornbread a few times per week. Sometimes more. Primarily because it was cheap, and my family ate cheap food.

You always knew when it was cornbread night because my mother would make a fresh pot of boiling bacon grease with a few navy beans floating in it. She called it bean and ham soup, but I call it cardiac arrest stew.

Either way, you would use your bread to sop the sides of the bowl. Occasionally, while doing this you would get so giddy that you’d break into song and sing a number from “Oklahoma,” “The Music Man,” or in extreme cases “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

All my life, I considered cornbread to be the fingerprint of a good cook. No two cooks make it alike, and I love…

DEAR SEAN:

I don’t even know how to begin. My ex-husband killed himself last week. We were good friends after our divorce. I keep asking myself the same question. I just want to know why. I am going insane trying to figure out why. His note gave me no explanation.

I am broken,
SLEEPLESS-IN-BOSTON

DEAR BOSTON:

The first thing that I can tell you about suicide is that there is no “why.” Nothing about suicide makes sense.

Most everything people do in life has some sense behind it. This sentence—hopefully—makes sense. Your daily routine makes sense.

You go to the store. You eat healthy. You exercise. You pay your taxes so the IRS employees can take paid family vacations to the British Virgin Islands. Things make sense.

But suicide isn’t about sense.

I was 11 years old when my father swallowed the barrel of a rifle. I was a hapless redhead with a perpetual smile. Life was pretty good.

Then, one summer day, my dad died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

His decision was one

that defied logic. Nobody understood his choice. Sense? His final act was nonsensical. Logic? There was none.

Over the years, I have thought about what he did. Examined it. Pondered it. Tried to make sense of it. But it’s a fool’s puzzle. It’s like trying to make four dollars out of nine nickels.

It’ll never happen, sister. And yet I keep trying to do it. I keep trying to see things from his point of view.

He was depressed. Maybe that was why he did it.

After all, depression is not like other diseases. It kills from the inside out. First it kills your social circle. Then it ruins your family. Then it steals your personality so that nothing excites you.

After a while, nothing even aggravates you anymore. Because in order to get aggravated, you have to have some ambition…

A back porch. Rural Alabama. I’m with an elderly woman named Jenny. She’s sitting on a genuine rocking chair.

“Wish I were shelling peas,” says Miss Jenny. “I tell better stories when I’m shelling.”

This is how you know you’ve made it in life. When you find yourself on a porch—shelling, peeling, shucking, or listening to someone over eighty tell a story.

Miss Jenny has cotton-white hair, blue eyes. She lives in a house which her husband built after the Korean War.

Everyone loves her stories. Especially children. Those in her family recall sitting on this porch, listening to her gentle voice—like I’m doing. Here, they shucked corn, or shelled white acre peas. Field peas. An Alabamian pastime.

“Daddy was a part-time preacher,” she tells me. “He told stories, always had him a good one.”

Long ago, people visited her father for advice. Folks with drinking problems, people with marriages on the rocks.

Her father didn’t provide “help.” Instead, he took them fishing. On the water, he’d tell stories.

“Daddy used to say, ‘Going fishing can help a man more than a bellywash of cheap

medicine.’”

Bellywash. God, I miss words like that.

Miss Jenny’s breathing is labored, her voice is frail. But she spins a fine yarn.

She’s the real thing. Her stories are about olden days, clapboard churches, and a childhood with skinned knees.

She even tells stories about her cat.

“Kitty Brown was chasing Blue Bird one day,” she begins. “Blue Bird lured Kitty high into a tree, then flew away. Poor Kitty was stuck up there for two days before anyone knew he was up there.”

She laughs to herself.

She goes on, “Moral of my cat story is: all kitties should be happy on the ground instead of chasing things they shouldn’t.”

And I’m five years old again. Someone get me a sucker.

Then there’s the tale of her grandfather and the escaped fugitive. Instead…

The Vulcan is in a good mood tonight. He stands watch over Birmingham. The largest cast-iron statue in the world.

He is suspended 124 feet above the world. His right arm is outstretched, holding a spear. He wears a blacksmith’s apron. Roman sandals. And his butt is showing.

My wife and I showed up at Vulcan Park and Museum a few minutes before sundown. I bought a few tickets from the ticket booth. The cashier was a girl in a Troy University sweatshirt.

“Y’all new in town?” she asked.

“Moved here five months ago,” said I.

She gave me the tickets.

“Well, it’s nice to have you to Birmingham.”

My wife and I ascended the stone staircase toward the enormous tower. Atop the tower stands the statue. The Vulcan was built in 1904 by an Italian sculptor Giussepe Moretti. It’s a work of high art.

Every day I drive on the freeway I see the Vulcan, perched high in the distance, standing above the earth. He reminds me that I live in Birmingham now.

This town is my new home.

Which I keep forgetting. Namely, because I am a Florida man. I did my growing up two miles from the Gulf of Mexico, one mile from the Choctawhatchee Bay. My people ate raw oysters non-ironically. We had no basements. No fireplaces. Only sand spurs, yellow flies and doublewides.

But now I live here. A city of 210,000 with a metro area that brings it to roughly 1.2 million people. This town has it all. The Appalachians, museums, blues, jazz, soul, barbecue, unlimited breweries, and the unique transcendental torment that is Highway 280.

Before we ascended the tower, I showed the guard my ticket. He glanced at it and said, “New in town?”

I told him I was.

He tipped his hat. “It’s nice to have you in Birmingham.”

There are 159 steps leading to the top of the Vulcan tower.…

She lost her best friend. It happened yesterday.

He was a good boy. Fourteen years old. He was always beside her. When she ate supper. When she watched television. When she used the restroom. He even slept on the floor near her bed.

He was a Labrador, and then some. The biggest in his litter of 12. His shoulders were wide, his neck was a column of muscle.

He wasn’t a playful dog, but he was happy. He was gentle. He liked children, chewing, lying in the sun, he loved tomatoes. He enjoyed walks, but only short ones. He seemed to go crazy over “Downton Abbey.”

He could eat more than any dog she’d ever seen. He was a garbage disposal with a tail.

When she worked nights in a commercial kitchen, he waited for her to get home. She’d arrive after work, he would be seated at the front door, squealing.

She would bring him things from work. The spoils of her occupation. Fish guts, lamb fat, chicken gristle, and sacred ground beef.

And he

loved her for it.

But she owed it to him—and then some. He’d seen her through hard times. He knew her emotions like a roadmap. He knew when she was sad, happy, or angry, before anyone else did.

When her father died, he crawled on a sofa and placed his hundred-pound body in her lap. It almost crushed her.

“I love you,” is what he was actually saying. Which is the only thing dogs know how to say—except: “Feed me right now or I’ll poop in the kitchen.”

He was with her when she lost her job. He was with her when she moved houses. He was with her when she passed a class, certifying her as a teacher. He was with her when her mother was ill.

Yesterday, she took him to the vet. She sat beside him for a few minutes before…