I went for a walk with my niece, Lucy. Lucy is 5. We were in the forests of Equality, Alabama. Which isn’t the Middle of Nowhere, but you can see it from here.

The sun was low in the pines. The frogs were inheriting the earth. There were lightning bugs, which some Midwesterners call fireflies because—God love them—they’ve never been taught any better.

The only flowers in the ditches were black-eyed Susans. A few daisies. But not many.

“I want to pick flowers for my mama,” said Lucy.

Lucy’s Mama is my sister. My baby sister. She used to look just like Lucy.

My towheaded niece darted back and forth, grasping handfuls of wildflowers, reminding me of my kid sister.

My baby sister was impulsive. Hardheaded. Cocksure. I never worried about her when she dated boys. Because when my sister liked you she liked you. When she didn’t, you’d better be wearing a protective cup.

“Do brothers and sisters always love each other?” asked my niece.

“Yes. They do.”

“Do you love my mama?”

“Si.”

My sister and I grew up hard. It wasn’t the kind of childhood depicted in Hallmark Channel movies. Our father died by suicide. I dropped out of school in seventh grade. My sister quit attending class in Kindergarten. She finally learned to read in her mid-twenties.

But still, our childhood had its moments.

We watched a lot of TV together. We played games. We had our own short-hand language, which only we could interpret. She imitated me because there was nobody else to imitate.

I was a pitiful example. But what I lacked in fatherly behavior, I made up for in ice cream.

That’s right. Ice cream. My sister and I once worked at…

It was a classified ad in one of those nickel newspapers. It read:

"Gray Ford. Half-ton. Stick-shift. Some rust. Needs TLC. Sneads, Florida. $800."

My pal called about it. He needed a truck in a bad way. His old one had gone to be with Jesus, his wife was pregnant, and he'd just lost his job.

And in the days before texting, the only way to do business was to use the interstate.

Before we left, he went to the bank. He liquidated his account into a wallet full of eight hundred dollars.

I gave him a ride. We stopped at a gas station outside Cottondale. He filled my tank, then paid inside. He bought two sticks of beef jerky, two scratch-off lottos.

Thoughtful.

After a two-hour ride we hit a dirt road leading to a farmhouse that sat on several acres of green. Out front: an old man, smoking. He was bony, friendly, tall.

The truck was ugly, painted primer gray to hide rust. The bumpers were missing, the interior smelled like oyster

stew.

“Runs good,” the man said.

“I'll take it,” my buddy answered.

He reached for his wallet. And that's when it happened.

His pocket was empty.

My friend went ape. He retraced his steps. We tore apart my truck interior, dug through seats, and cussed. When he finally gave up, he sat cross-legged on the ground. He cried until his face looked raw. It was a lot of money to lose.

The elderly man sat beside him. He wrapped his arms around him. It had been a long time since a grown man had done that sort of thing to my pal. My friend was a fatherless orphan, like me.

When things calmed down, the…

Dear Random Dad in Walmart, who was smacking his little boy. You are my brother. And I’m disappointed in you, Brother. You weren’t spanking your child.

I saw you. And you know I saw you. You weren’t disciplining anyone. You were taking out your aggression on a little boy. And it broke me.

I was walking through the aisles when I happened upon you. You were wailing on your son, Dear Brother. You were smacking his face repeatedly. You were smacking the back of the head. You were shoving him. The boy lost his footing. He fell.

I started walking toward you, and you stopped. You whisked your child away and disappeared. But the damage was already done. Because when your son looked at me, he had that look in his eye.

I know that look.

I wanted to chase you down. I wanted to say things to you. Maybe ugly things. Maybe I would have cussed you out. I don’t know.

But, you see, I couldn’t.

Because, for one thing, you were rip-roaring

mad. For another thing: I’m a total wimp. And the reason I am a wimp is because I had a dad like you.

It took me a long time to admit that I was an abused child. Even now, writing these words makes me feel like a Grade-A idiot. Like a whiny baby.

The truth is, I didn’t know I was abused until my mid-thirties. A therapist told me, point-blank, that I came from an abusive family.

I didn’t believe him. This was news to me. I thought everyone’s dad hit them. I thought everyone’s mother hid her bruises with makeup before going to the supermarket. I thought every boy explained his busted lip by saying he “fell.”

But my story doesn’t matter,…

I watched Gary nearly get hit by a truck. That’s how I met him. Gary is a baby turtle. He fits in the palm of my hand. Smaller than a can of Skoal. Bigger than a silver dollar.

I am staying at a cabin on Lake Martin. The weather was nice. I went for a walk on the empty, rural two-lane highways.

I saw Gary crawling across the vacant road. A speeding truck approached. Roaring its engine.

Now—believe me—I know what I’m about to say sounds insane, but I seriously believe the truck was trying to run Gary over.

I think this because Gary was on the yellow line, and clearly visible from a distance. And when the truck shot past me, the teenage driver was laughing wildly, evidently intentionally swerving toward Gary.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

“No!” I shouted.

It was one of those teenager trucks. Tires the size of kiddie pools. Tailpipes loud enough to change the migratory patterns of waterfowl.

The windows were down. The stereo was pumping “bro country”

music—songs about cutoff shorts, barefoot blondes, pickups, and beer. Pop music sung by grown men stuck in high school.

Thankfully, the truck missed Gary by nanometers. Then, the vehicle screeched away in a fog of blue exhaust.

I jogged across the highway and held up oncoming traffic, waving my hands. I lifted Gary into my hands. He was tucked tightly into his shell.

A lady in traffic stepped out of her car and started shouting at me. She was irate.

“Why are you stopping traffic?” she asked.

“It’s a baby turtle,” said I.

“Are you [cussword] kidding me?” she shouted. “You stopped traffic for some [cussword] turtle!?”

She sped around me. The…

A lot of important news has happened this Memorial Day weekend. A fraudulent company tried to foreclose on Elvis Presley’s Graceland home; tornadoes ripped across the West South Central U.S., leaving thousands without power; and the Indy 500 was delayed because of violent weather.

But instead, I’d like to talk about how I’ve been without a phone.

I feel guilty talking about my phoneless state while many Americans are suffering storm-related catastrophes. But something changed my mind on TV.

When I turned on the news, the first image I was confronted with was an eerie photo from the tornado aftermath. The image showed a Texas man sitting among rubble, and he was checking his phone.

“We check our phones 400 times per day,” said one researcher I talked to.

His name is Daryl, he attends the University of Alabama, and has been studying the ravaging effects of phones on human memory.

“Phones are making our memories worse.”

His name is Daryl, he attends the University of Alabama, and has been studying the ravaging effects of

phones on human memory.

“The worse our memory gets,” says Daryl, “the more we use the phone. The more we use, the worse our memory gets.

For years, research has been showing how phones affect the brain. Elizabeth Dunn and Ryan Dwyer, doctoral researchers from the University of British Columbia, have noticed a trend.

“You see people in restaurants… sitting across the table from each other, and instead of staring at each other, they’re staring at their phones. We were really curious: Is it having an impact on people…?”

The short answer is: Wait, what were we talking about again?

Oh, yes. Phones.

If you’ve been reading this column then, frankly, I’m surprised. But some of you might…

Lake Martin is busy, the rich scent of smoked meat fills the air, and my LDL cholesterol count is already rising. 

Pontoon boats are everywhere. Happy children ride in tubes, pulled behind fast outboards. The kids are screaming as they happily pee in the lake at high speeds. 

And all this reminds me that my childhood was severely different than theirs. 

Do you remember going back to school after a long summer? Remember how the first thing we always had to do was write an essay entitled “How I Spent My Summer.” 

Well, I never had anything good to write. Namely, because I was a chubby redhead from a strict fundamentalist family. 

During the summers, kids in my family did not go to lakes because we were not allowed to participate in “mixed bathing,” lest our carnal desires were awoken in third grade. 

We were not allowed to watch Disney movies. Such as “Pinnochio,” because whenever Pinnochio lies his nose grows in a “X-rated way.” 

Nor were we permitted to watch “Snow White.” 

“Snow White is

smut!” the preacher shouted to our un-air-conditioned church. “What kind of harlot lives with seven tiny unmarried men?!” 

That one really got the paper fans going. 

As sanctified children, our only form of entertainment was watching our grandfather play a Weltmeister accordion, watching Billy Graham crusades, or browsing the women’s undergarment section of the Sears catalog.  

The children in my world attended—at minimum—seven different summer VBS programs. Thus, while other kids were water skiing, eating Flintstone Push Ups, I was memorizing Revelation 13 for scripture drills: 

“​​And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the…

The 94-year-old woman gets a jumpstart on Decoration Day every year. The cemetery gets busy at her little church in Elmore County. She likes to be early to the party.

She has brown-flecked hands. Tissue-paper skin. She arrives at the cemetery accompanied by her grandson. They get there in the morning, before the heat of the day. When fog still hangs above the earth.

Her grandson helps her out of the car. She uses a four-pronged cane to walk. Her grandson carries a box of decorations.

“What was my grandfather like?” the kid asks.

“He was a good man,” she says, placing a black-and-white photo on her late husband’s grave. In the photo, a young man is wearing an Air Force uniform.

He was a pilot. He dropped bombs for a living.

“He never got over it,” she said. “It haunted him, killing all those people just by mashing a button.”

Southerners do not “press” a button. They “mash” it.

“After the war,” she went on, “he used to wake up at night sometimes, crying,

and I didn’t know what to do but rub his back.”

Memorial Day is what most people call it now. But it’s still called Decoration Day in many areas. Especially in the Appalachian portions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, north Georgia, northern and central Alabama, north Mississippi. Also, in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, the Rocky Mountain regions of Colorado Utah, and in parts of California.

It all started after the Civil War. Women and children would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers. By World War I’s end, some 120,000 Americans died in combat. By World War II, nearly 420,000 American soldiers were deceased.

In U.S. towns, from coast to coast, families placed framed photographs on graves. Stuffed animals. Little flags. Keepsakes. Notecards.

“I remember when you couldn’t visit a cemetery without seeing photographs everywhere,” says the old woman. “They don’t do…

I met her for coffee. She was middle-aged. Her hair was purple. On her arm was a tattoo which read “HOPE.”

Her story was simple. She was 14 and pregnant. The daughter of a rural preacher, in the mountains of North Alabama. She had never even cut her hair.

Hers was a tribe who wore long skirts, beat Bibles, and spoke in tongues. She was a good kid. But she made a mistake. A big one.

And they kicked her out.

The day the girl left her home, she walked out of her household carrying only a backpack. She had no phone. No money. No nothing. She wore a Walmart maternity dress. Her mother snuck her $100 in cash.

The girl met her best friend’s sister in a Dollar General parking lot. Her friend’s sister was 19, waiting in an idling Toyota Camry. And away they went. That was the last time the girl saw her immediate family.

The girl had her baby in Tennessee. Her best friend was around for the birthing

process. Her best friend held her hand and reminded her to breathe.

Our heroine got a job at a retail store. She had a crappy apartment with a window-unit A/C. She utilized free daycare. She used a cheap ride-sharing service to get to work.

In other words, she had nothing.

But her son was smart. One of the smartest, in fact. He was enrolled in programs for advanced students. Once upon a time, the school system would have called him gifted. But government funding decided that it wasn’t equitable to say some schoolkids were gifted/talented. This made parents mad.

Nevertheless, the gifted boy excelled in his studies. And as his mother continued to work double shifts in fast food joints, deep-frying ribbon-cut potatoes, her son studied into the wee hours.

He was dual enrolled. Which means that by the time he graduated high school, he had a…

How I dropped my phone into the depths of Lake Martin is still a great and confusing mystery which evidently involves beer.

My wife and I were at the lake for the week. We were getting ready to go kayaking. It was sunny. I wore an oversized life vest designed for someone roughly the size of Herman Munster. I wore SpongeBob swim trunks.

I had a thick layer of zinc on my nose because I am a redhead and will turn into a vine-ripened tomato after four minutes of UV exposure.

TRUE FACT: George Washington was a redhead, so was Thomas Jefferson. Also, Judas Iscariot.

So anyway, my wife and I deposited our two rental kayaks into the water. Which isn’t easy. Kayaks are heavy, especially with coolers strapped to the hull.

The correct way to launch a kayak requires a lot of attention. You must hold your kayak securely or else the current will suck your vessel out to sea and you run the very real risk of running out of

beer.

No sooner had we placed kayaks into the water that they began drifting away. “Help!” shouted my wife. “Don’t let it get away!”

I am male. When a woman cries for help, I must respond. This is basic male instinct. Just like the instinct to protect, to provide, and the instinct to discuss the importance of relief pitching.

So, drawing on my training as an English major, I dove into the lake. I didn’t realize, of course, that my iPhone was in my pocket. At least not until I saw my phone sinking to the bottom. I saw my glowing home screen, falling gently away from me, downward into the depths.

Thankfully, I was able to retrieve the phone from the lake floor, but by then it was too late, my phone was deader than soft rock.

And since our rental cabin is hundreds of miles from…