“Welcome to the University of Alabama,” says Ashley, as she shakes my hand.

Ashley is my liaison today. She is wearing a crimson dress and crimson shoes. Everyone is wearing crimson. Even the custodians are pushing crimson brooms.

Ashley leads me to my dressing room. I am doing a show at the Bryant Conference Center today.

Pinch me.

Today, I will perform in a room filled with six hundred bazillion people. I will play my guitar and tell jokes about the rural singlewides from whence I sprung.

The lights are dim in the giant auditorium. The room is big enough to qualify as an aircraft hangar.

The sound guy shakes my hand. He is probably wearing a crimson underpants.

“Welcome to the University of Alabama,” he says.

The University of Alabama is not like your run-of-the-mill State-U. This place is Disney World.

Everything is big here. If you ask for a Coke, for example, they give you a two-gallon jug of Coke and several hundred shares in the Coca-Cola Company.

In the lobby of the conference center are monstrous

glass cases with artifacts and oil portraits of Coach Bryant, Gene Stallings, and Joe Namath.

“This place is like the Vatican for SEC fans,” says the sound guy. “Only instead of Jesus, Mary, and Saint Peter, it’s Frank Thomas, the Bear, and Saint Nick.”

I am led into the auditorium to set up my guitar for soundcheck. Directly behind the stage is the largest video screen I’ve ever seen. The screen broadcasts gigantic slideshow photos of my face before the event.

“That’s a big screen,” I say.

“Biggest in the southeast,” says the sound guy.

My headshot is on a 32-foot, ultra-high definition, highly advanced, 4K, LED video wall that is roughly the size of a small subtropical continent. You could park a Buick in my nostrils.

“Has anyone famous ever been on this stage?” I ask the sound guy.

“Oh,…

She was a seventeen-year-old with love on her mind. Her nice-looking boyfriend convinced her that he would be around forever. They would marry. They would grow old together.

It was the same song and dance you’ve heard a hundred times.

But promises changed when she developed morning sickness.

She broke the news to him on a school night. They were in the car together.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He only stared forward and grit his teeth. He called her a bad name. He told her he didn’t want any “damn baby.”

It shattered her. It was her baby.

She jumped out of the car and walked home. They never spoke again.

That was a hard time.

And her parents only made it harder. When she told them she was planning on keeping the baby, they erupted in a mushroom cloud.

Her mother wanted her to get the pregnancy “managed.” Her father didn’t care what she did as long as she got rid of it via adoption.

They forced her. And because seventeen-year-olds are supposed to do what their

parents tell them, she agreed.

She had a girl. And for many years that was all she remembered. She never saw the hair color, eye color, or chubby fingers. She only saw a newborn from a distance. Her parents didn’t want her to see the baby.

When nurses took the infant away it wasn’t a pretty scene.

“My baby!” she yelled until her voice gave out. “My baby, my baby!”

She bawled for years. A piece of her body had been stolen. Her biggest part. She felt like her entire person had been cut into sections and auctioned off to the highest bidder.

But seventeen-year-olds eventually grow up. Even sad ones. And kids turn into adults.

She went to college. She became a woman with a good career. She found a nice life, a man who loved her, and…

They called us the TV generation. Because that was pretty much all we had. No smartphones. No computers. No internets.

We had a family TV. That was all. Some families had two TVs, but these were rich families. A few kids had TVs in their actual bedrooms, but these were kids known as “brats.”

Specifically, my family had a Zenith console TV that was about the size of a Waffle House. It sat in our den. The TV played “programs,” not “shows.”

We did not “stream.” We did not “binge-watch.” Episodes didn’t “drop.” We had commercial breaks wherein tiny men rowed little boats around inside toilet bows. Commercials wherein a strange older man reminded housewives not to suggestively squeeze toilet tissue.

We had no Disney Plus. No movie channels playing on iPad tablets. The only tablets we had were the ones Moses gave us.

My family didn’t have cable television. We were like a lot of blue-collar families. We simply had an antenna. This antenna was made of aircraft aluminum and

picked up exactly four channels: Channel 4, Channel 5, Channel 9, and Fred Rogers.

The antenna stuck out of your rooftop and looked like the weather vane from hell. Whenever the TV picture got fuzzy, the antenna could be easily pointed in different directions so that absolutely nothing would happen.

To reorient your antenna for a better signal, your mother stood downstairs, watching the screen, shouting commands through an open window to your old man, who was on the roof, painstakingly turning the antenna.

“Wait! Wait!” your mother would shout to him. “Okay, stop! No, wait! Go back! STOP! HOLD IT!”

The picture would be clear for exactly six seconds until your old man let go of the antenna. Which would unground the signal and ruin everything. This is why many evenings, everyone’s fathers just drank beer on the roof.

Thus, fundamentalist families like mine planned entire days around…

You’re a single mother. Your name is Deidra. Your wallet has three bucks in it. You have an old Visa gift card with twelve dollars left on it.

Something bad happened today.

It wasn’t because of anything you did. It’s because you’re in your late thirties, and teenagers can do your job cheaper. They cut your hours. Management’s way of firing you.

You reacted. You let your manager have it. You called him an awful name. You wish you could take it back. You cry in your car. You wipe your face. Then cry again. You wait for your kids to exit the free daycare.

And here you are, sorting mail while you wait. Power bill. Water bill. Cellphone bill. Cable. Insurance. It never ends.

Your kids run toward you. There are kisses, hugs. You notice how tall your oldest is. Your nine-year-old colored a picture.

You're thinking about what’s inside your refrigerator for supper. A few slices of bologna, half a liter of Coke, old carrots, two eggs. You look in your purse. The gift card.

You drive to a pizza buffet. It’s six

bucks for your oldest, four bucks for the youngest—not counting soda.

You slide your card and hold your breath.

Life isn’t supposed to be this way. You’re not supposed to skip suppers and feed your kids with gift cards.

You’re young, pretty, healthy. You’re supposed to be happy. Instead, you’re a few dimes shy of homelessness.

After the meal, you leave eighty-four cents for a tip. That’s all the loose change you have—you're saving your last three dollars.

You drive. Your gas gauge is on E.

You’re humiliated. That’s how poverty works. It embarrasses a person, until they think so little of themselves, they don't like their reflection.

You pull into a gas station. You’re going to put three dollars into your old Ford Contour. Not a penny more.

You walk inside to pay cash.…

I’m warning you beforehand, what I’m about to say is going to seem utterly ridiculous:

My mother once told me that I could conquer the world if I ate a decent breakfast. The whole world. All because of breakfast.

See? I tried to warn you.

Anyway, to this very day I’m still not sure how this meal can make conquering the world possible, but my mother never lies.

I remember the day she told me, I was having a devastating morning. I was about to take an entrance exam into the sixth grade. And this was a big deal because earlier that year, I’d failed fifth-grade—which drained my confidence and made me feel about as useful as a white crayon.

But getting back to breakfast.

Mama made the greasiest meal. Three eggs, cooked in fat from a Maxwell House can, bacon, potatoes, grits, and toast hearty enough to sand the hull of a battleship.

I passed my test. I made it to the next grade. And eventually, my confidence began to improve. Thusly—and I’ve always wanted to use that word—I

can only assume that breakfast played an important role in my sixth grade success.

Since then, I’ve always believed in the first daily meal. I ate a good breakfast the day I got married. A big one. That day, the waitress kept bringing me plates of pancakes.

“You must be starving, honey,” she said.

I smiled. “Thusly,” said I.

But I was only nervous-eating. Truth told, they weren’t even good pancakes—the blueberries tasted like freeze-dried goat pellets. IHOP, I’m looking at you.

I also ate a big breakfast the day I got fired. My boss called me into his office and chewed me a new nose-hole. He said things so hateful I can still remember them. I quietly walked out of his office before he finished speaking.

I went to eat breakfast. I read the paper, I watched the sunrise.…

It’s evening in Jackson, Tennessee. The sky looks like a Monet sunset. I am at the fairgrounds. About to deliver my one-man show from the mainstage.

Tonight’s event benefits local libraries in Madison County.

I have met many librarians today. Small, white-haired ones. Tall, middle-aged ones. Elderly librarians who smell like bath powder and wear Reeboks. Most of them are sipping white wine and giggling a lot.

And I love these people. Because I am a product of libraries. More specifically, I am a product of librarians.

I was 11 when my father’s suicide happened. I dropped out of school the next week.

It was simple, really. One day, I just quit going to school. At first it was pretty cool. I thought I was getting away with something outlandish. And I was. I was getting away with the destruction of my own future.

It was one of the stupidest decisions I ever made. Even worse than the time I was dared to eat a lizard.

My family’s personal life was in shambles. My mother was a mess. Everything was

upside down in our world. I just quit. And nobody even noticed.

Those were different times. We were different people. But I never quit reading.

It was a summer day when I first walked into a tiny library to remedy my own mistake. I was a teenager. The library was an old converted one-story house. White clapboards. Shutters. Tin roof. Hanging ferns. The whole deal.

The woman behind the counter looked like Aunt Bea, only more so. She said, “Why aren’t you in school today?”

“I don’t go.”

She just looked at me from over her glasses. This painfully ridiculous boy before her.

“You don’t go?” she said.

“No, ma’am. I dropped out.”

She removed her glasses and looked at me. It was maybe the first time anyone her age had really looked at me. Not just glanced.

Looking back,…

I hope you have a good day. The entire day. Start to finish. Not the Best Day Ever. No, that’s too much excitement crammed into twenty-four hours. I’m talking about a plain-old, ordinary, run-of-the-mill good day.

I hope you wake up to smells you love. Like donuts, bacon, coffee, or halitosis from a kitty-litter-eating bloodhound.

I hope you have nothing pressing to do. No schedule. No appointments.

We do too much, you know. Long ago, our ancestors practiced the noble art of being worthless. A lot of folks won't do that anymore. I’m doing my best to bring it back.

So today, I hope you’re as worthless as a waterproof dishrag.

I hope you remember your ancestors. Your grandparents, and their grandparents—even if you’ve never met them.

I hope you think about the simple things they passed down to us. A hamburger with pickles. Whittling. Hydrangeas. Will Rogers. Baseball games. Pajamas. Smacking ketchup bottles with the butt of your hand. Hank Williams music playing on kitchen radios.

Childhood porches. The smell of peach cobbler in the oven.

The faded family photo album. The ancient Betty Crocker cookbook that once belonged to your mother.

I hope you close your eyes and recall the best pieces of childhood. The days when you played hard, and the best games only happened in backyards.

I hope your smartphone quits working—just for a few hours. I hope the absence of a digital screen takes you outdoors. I hope you hear the sounds of the earth all at once. I hope you see lots of trees.

I hope you sit for hours with nothing but a cold drink and your best ideas.

I hope you meet someone who inspires you. A kid who’s had kidney cancer. A girl who got pregnant too young, who just finished nursing school. The single father who lost his wife to suicide, but is still raising his four kids.

A woman…

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…