Palatka sits on the Saint Johns River, the longest river in Florida. I’m sitting at the river’s edge, eating lunch, watching the seagulls beg for my bread crust.

“It’s not polite to beg,” I tell the gulls.

They simply stare at me with sad eyes because deep in their little bird hearts they know I’m right.

On the shore is an old guy, fishing. He has a white beard down to his navel. He is shirtless. He looks exactly like a Biblical prophet would look if that prophet had also been a founding member of ZZ Top.

The man waves at me. And even though I don’t know this man from Adam’s stepson, I wave back.

“How’re you today?” he says.

“Fine. You?”

“I’d be a lot better if they were biting!” he says.

Then he casts.

And basically, I’ve just described Palatka in a nutshell. Friendly. Small. Nice. Lots of fishing.

Palatka proper is behind me, brilliant in the noon sun, painted with the vivid pinks of a million azaleas. The brick edifices look the way they did 150 years ago.

The bell in the First Presbyterian church rings out a tune. And the town is overrun with walkers. Which I find absolutely wonderful.

You don’t see people walking much anymore. And yet that’s how America used to be. People walked everywhere. These days, however, if you walk as a means of transportation you take your life into your hands.

If you don’t believe me, just take a stroll to your local Walmart on foot. You’ll have to hop eight lanes of traffic, jog across 23 culverts, and dodge at least 450 sleep-deprived truck drivers. By the time you get to Wally World you will be out of breath, covered in mud, and suffering PTSD.

But in Palatka you still see people walking.

“You from around here?” asks ZZ Top, cranking his reel.

“No sir,” I say.

Back to…

The old man in the crowded hotel dining room was wearing dual hearing aids. He smiled and greeted me with a voice that was loud enough to change the migratory patterns of geese.

“You can sit by me!” he said, patting the seat.

Truthfully, I did not want to sit next to this loud guy—I didn’t want to sit next to anyone. But I had no choice. There were no available tables because the room was overrun with a girl’s soccer team.

Hell hath no fury like a girl’s soccer team attacking a continental breakfast bar.

The teenage girls were noisy, fidgety, and flinging complimentary fruit at one another, achieving incredible distances with their cantaloupe wedges.

The team’s adult chaperones wore weary looks on their faces, expressions which seemed to say: “Point me to the nearest liquor store, please?”

So I sat beside the old man. I was tired. I was uncaffeinated. I was not ready for a conversation with a stranger. I tried to send him a “leave me alone” message nonverbally. But the message was not received.

“Hey, pal, wanna hear something funny?” he said.

I looked at the man. I was definitely not in the mood for funny. Even so, I am the child of quiet evangelical fundamentalists; expressing disagreement is not in my repertoire.

“Sure,” I said.

He leaned in and said, “I have really bad gas.”

I stopped chewing. “I’m sorry?”

“Gas,” he said. “I have bad gas. I just had to tell someone.”

I looked around the room. This had to be a prank. Allen Funt and his camera crew must have been lurking around here somewhere.

But it was no joke. The old man told the entire story:

He was chaperoning his granddaughter to soccer camp. Last night, as soon as they checked into this hotel, he developed severe chest pains. He laid on his bed but the agony became worse so that…

I was late for a plane when I saw him. The freckled kid was in uniform. Operational camouflage combat fatigues. Reverse-flag patch on his right shoulder. High and tight haircut.

He was standing on the sidewalk outside the airport. His mother was beside him, straightening his collar. His little sister was there, too. So was his dad.

The young man was carrying a backpack the size of a Frigidare, the thing must have weighed a few metric tons. He was vaping from an e-cigarette nervously.

I could tell by everyone’s body language that this was farewell.

Mama stood three feet shorter than her boy. She stared upward into his young eyes and the expression on her face was mournful.

“You got everything, baby?” she said.

He might be on Uncle Sam’s payroll, but to her, he’s still “baby.”

“I packed sandwiches in your bag,” said Mama. “It’s a long trip, be sure to eat, need to keep your energy up.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Dad jumped in. “How long of a flight is it?”

“Six hours for the first half,” said the soldier.

Little Sister spoke up.

“I’ll miss you. I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you.”

He nodded solemnly, but offered nothing heartfelt in return. In fact, his side of the whole conversation was about as emotionally charged as a scoop of coleslaw.

Dad said, “Just keep your head down and your nose clean.”

Funny. American dads have been using this exact phrase since dads wore knee breeches and carried muskets to PTA meetings. Head down, nose clean. Here it is 2022, and dads are still saying it. Don’t tell me this isn’t a great country.

Dad clapped his son on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“We’re so proud’a you,” said Mama.

“I love you,” said Sister.

Once the soldier finished sucking on his vape pen, he gave Mama one final hug. Then he stooped to embrace Sister.…

I knocked on the manager’s office door. The voice said, “It’s open,” so I walked in.

I was a teenager, unattractive, and a little unkempt. I looked about as fitting in this franchise bookstore as a muddy goat at a wedding.

Also, I was an introvert, which made job interviews almost as hard as it was talking to girls. The only way to know if an introvert boy is romantically interested in you is whether he looks at your shoes instead of his.

“Yes?” the bookstore manager said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here about the, ah, job.”

The man put on his glasses and looked at me. “YOU?”

His exact words.

The manager gave me a belittling smirk. I could read his mind. In his eyes I was white trash. I could tell by the look on his face that this was going to be the interview from hell.

I handed him my application; that little sheet of paper that devalues your entire life into pathetic, one-word responses.

My application was garbage. At age

17 I was a dropout. I had only ever worked grunt jobs, swinging hammers or salting French fries. I had shaggy hair and wrinkled clothes. I was wearing a button-down shirt bought from a local thrift store.

In fact, I was such a regular at my local thrift store that store employees knew me by name and often gave me free stuff. Usually, they gave me free books. Mountains of free books. They knew I was a lover of the printed word. Books were all I had. Books were my closest friends.

“So why do YOU want to work in a bookstore?” the manager said.

“Um,” I began. “‘Cause I heard you give discounts on books.”

He tossed my application into a tray and laughed. “You must be really into comic books, huh?”

“No, sir.”

“Your application says you dropped out of school.”

The young woman in the supermarket was pushing the buggy lazily through Aisle Five. She was wearing extremely short shorts, flip flops, and she was extraordinarily pregnant. Her hair was piled atop her head, no makeup. She looked maybe 15.

A young man was with her. He, too, was young. He was built like a junior high-schooler, painted in billions of tattoos, wearing work boots.

“Can we get Pop Tarts, Gerald?” she said. “I love Pop Tarts, don’t you like them?”

“I don’t give a [bleep] about Pop Tarts, Nadeen,” Gerald said. “What the [bleep] do I care about Pop Tarts? I’m not wasting our [bleeping] money on Pop Tarts. We have more important stuff to buy.”

Thus it was, she returned the strawberry Pop Tarts to the shelf. And she pushed the buggy, following her young man through the aisles.

“Oh, Gerald, I don’t see what the big deal is, I love them, can’t we buy some?”

“Hell to the no,” said the great poet of our time. “What’choo think I am, made of cash?” He cussed again.

“All you do is spend, spend. Ain’t taking you shopping with me no more ‘cause you buy everything. Now push that cart over here, there’s a sale on peanut butter.”

I hate to be nosy, but it’s a gift. So I followed this couple. Whenever they looked in my direction, I pretended to be studying at the ingredients on a Marshmallow Fluff jar label.

The girl absently placed a hand on her belly and said, “Do you think we should name her April, since she’s gonna be born in April?”

“No [bleeping] way,” said the Bard. “We agreed on naming her Meredith, after my mom, don’t you like that name?”

She smiled. “I guess, but it sounds so… So old ladyish.”

“Don’t say that to my mom,” said Gerald. “She’s been depressed about getting old now that she’s 38.”

When they…

I am sitting in our empty house. The movers have taken all our belongings and left us with a few chairs and a card table. I am remembering the first time my wife and I sat in this empty den, the day before we moved in.

We were young. Our new house was empty. We had both just gotten off work. She wore her teacher’s clothes. I wore a fast-food uniform. We were sitting cross-legged on the bare floor.

I was eating moo shu pork. She ordered the garlic broccoli, but she was stealing my pork one bite at a time. This was beginning to offend me.

“Can you believe this house is ours?” said my wife, stabbing her chopsticks into my container.

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

“This is our house. OUR house.”

“It’s a great house.”

Until now we had been living in a 700-square-foot apartment with a window unit AC that only worked during leap years. Our downstairs neighbors’ dogs had given the entire building a flea infestation.

Our new house was remote.

The property wasn’t located on the edge of the world, but you could see it from there.

Thousands of acres of longleafs surrounded us. Cell reception was a myth. Nobody owned GPSs back then. There were no streetlights, no markers on the dirt roads. Even with competent directions, most of our friends got lost looking for our house and ended up sleeping in their cars.

In recent decades, county fugitives have taken their chances in these woods. The escapees never make it against the elements. They always stagger out of the wilderness with copperheads and bobcats attached to their limbs, muttering, “I can’t do this anymore, take me to prison.”

My wife stole five more bites of my moo shu pork when I wasn’t looking.

“You think we’ll grow old in this house?” said my young wife. “You think this will be the place…

There are professional movers in my house. They are carrying my whole life through the front door in the form of furniture and boxes. And the memories are getting so thick you have to swat them like mosquitoes.

“Where’s this go, boss?” one of the movers asks.

He looks about 18 or 19. He is a walking tattoo exhibit. He is rolling a piano across the house. My piano.

You don’t know how special this instrument is to me. My mother bought me this upright when I was a young man. She had no money, she lived in a trailer, and yet she dug deep to buy me a Yamaha U1 because her baby boy wanted to be a pianist.

The first song I played on this piano was “Danny Boy,” in honor of my late father.

Over the years, I have played “Danny Boy” in beer joints, mildewed taverns, inside foggy VFW bars, and at Catholic funerals.

I have been playing piano in earnest since my 9th birthday. I’ve played at

civic meetings, school plays, Rotary Club fundraisers, hotel lobbies, tiki bars, and honky tonks.

Playing piano is also how I met my wife—sorta. I got a job working as a part-time pianist for our Baptist church.

Each Wednesday, this Baptist young woman would sit on the front row near the Mason & Hamlin to watch me accompany choir practice. She asked me to play a tune for her one evening after practice was over. I played “Danny Boy.”

My attention is diverted from the piano when I see another mover carrying a large cardboard box containing office supplies.

Inside this box is my Letera 32 manual typewriter. Sea foam green. The typewriter of my childhood, my adolescence, and my adult years.

Back in the days before computers were mainstream, there were only two things a writer was required to own. A copy of “The Elements of Style” by…

Get a map. Put your finger in the smack-dab center of Alabama. That’s Chilton County. Land of dreams, beauty queens, peaches that will ruin your shirt, and Stokes Chevrolet, Buick, & GMC.

I’m in the county seat today, the town of Clanton. I am giving a speech at an event the governor has attended, and I’m trying my level best not to sound like an idiot.

Everyone knows where Clanton is, of course, because there is a ginormous 500,000-gallon pedesphere water tower off I-65 shaped like an R-rated nectarine. You’ve probably purchased peaches near this tower. Everyone has.

Right now, I’m down the road from the tower, at Jefferson-State Community College, telling stories to educators and literacy advocates, causing my audience to nod off. Which isn’t difficult to do, inasmuch as most educators are sleep deprived. Although I might have set a new indoor speed record.

Meanwhile, the entire time I’m speaking, I am marveling at how I’m actually here in Clanton, of all places. I never thought I’d have a

reason visit this little town again.

The first time I came to Clanton, I was a 16-year-old. I came with my friends to attend the annual Peach Festival, which is a big deal here. People in this town take peaches more seriously than, say, the threat of nuclear war.

My friends, however, were less interested in the festival and more fascinated with the beauty contest.

In this part of the world, Clanton’s pageant is legendary. The pageant dates back to 1947 when the Junior Chamber got together and decided to hold the first Chilton County Peach Queen beauty contest over in Thorsby.

Back then, the pageant was just a rural contest. The rules were simple and loose: Each contestant had to be (1) between ages 15 and 25, (2) unmarried, (3) the daughter of an actual peach farmer, and (4) have most of her original teeth.

The first winner…

In a few days we will be moving 260 miles north to Birmingham, Alabama. So I got my last Florida haircut.

I’m picky about who cuts my hair. There is nothing as traumatic as a bad haircut, and I’ve had some doozies.

As a kid my mother believed in saving money so she cut my hair at home using Briggs & Stratton clippers that predated the Second World War. She had two basic hairstyles in her repertoire. The “Marine,” and the “Uncle Fester.”

My yearbook pictures are unbearable to look at.

When I got older, I let my red hair grow longer since my hair had natural wave. At the time, I believed I looked debonair, but years later I realized that I looked more like Danny Partridge.

And there was the time before college graduation when I wanted to get my shabby hair cleaned up before the ceremony. So I went to a hairstylist that was recommended to me by a friend. The stylist’s name was—I’ll never forget this—Trixie.

Trixie’s one-woman salon was

in the back bedroom of a dilapidated doublewide trailer parked by the interstate cutoff. There was mildew on her ceiling, cigarette butts in old coffee mugs, and Trixie had a deep affection for gin.

When my haircut was finished, she spun me around to face the mirror and I looked like Billy Ray Cyrus after a very long night. The woman had given me a world-class mullet. I was horrified.

The next evening, at graduation, I accepted my college diploma before 900 people while sporting an Achy Breaky Big Mistakey. That year, my graduating classmates voted me most likely to own a Pontiac Firebird.

I bring all this up to say that when you find a good hairstylist/barber/beautician, you must hold onto this person with both claws because they are a precious gem.

My longtime hairstylist used to be a lady named Blanca. Blanca was from…

The two girls knocked on my door. They wore Kelly green berets and green vests. I greeted them.

The two Girl Scouts went through their spiel. “We’re selling cookies, sir,” they began.

“Do you have any identification?” said I.

They exchanged looks. “Wait, what?”

“Well,” I said amiably, “how do I know you’re really Girl Scouts? A little proof would be nice. Dangerous world out there.”

I have a deep appreciation for Girl Scouts, and each year I buy a LOT of Thin Mints, which has made me quasi-famous in local Girl Scout circles. Last year, for example, my salesgirl won a pink Cadillac.

So the tallest girl gave me her name, rank, and serial number. “And this is my new American flag badge,” she added. “We had to iron it on because my mom can’t sew.”

“How about you?” I said to the girl with pigtails. “Got any ID?”

Pigtails had no ID, but she did proudly display her proficiency badges, her Junior Leadership pin, her Junior Aide Award, her Daisy Safety Award pin, and her

Purple Heart.

Then Pigtails described in painstaking detail how she earned her Junior First Aid badge, a process wherein she not only learned how to care for injured persons, but she rode shotgun in an ambulance, toured an emergency room, and extinguished a three-story residential fire single handedly.

I pointed to another badge. “And what’s that badge for?”

“Oh, this one?” she said. “This is the Junior Inside Government badge.”

The Junior Inside Government merit badge requires Girl Scouts to explore the ethics of American government. To do this, girls are given faux countries and charged with the task of making up fun, nonsensical, whacky laws for their countries, sort of like Congress.

I asked what kinds of laws they came up with for their faux countries.

“Um,” said one girl. “Well, my country was called the United States of Amandica. I had…