It was 7:34 a.m. when I arrived in Alabaster for the annual Shelby County Senior Adults Picnic. The parking lot of Thompson High School was already swarmed with cars.

“Why are all these people here so early?” I asked one of the volunteers at the check-in booth, who was holding back the throngs of senior citizens.

The volunteer looked at me and said flatly, “You know how punctual senior citizens can be.”

It’s true. I don’t mean to generalize here, but the older generations are far more punctual than the younger ones.

Take my mother. Whenever we schedule lunch at a restaurant, I choose a reasonable time. Say, noon. I usually arrive a little early and tell the hostess I’m meeting someone. The hostess will inevitably point to a lone older woman in the corner. My mother will already be sitting there, finishing her lunch alone.

“How long has she been here?” I’ll ask the hostess.

“Since we opened,” she will reply.

So the picnic-going seniors were raring to go. They were ravenously ready for lunch, even

though—technically—it wasn’t yet breakfast.

“We woulda been here earlier,” said one senior woman in line, who was carrying a lawn chair. “But Harold wanted to change the oil in the truck.”

When the gates opened, it was like one of those old Beatles movies. The people flooded the grounds of the high school in a frenzy.

The entertainment was soon underway. Onstage, a local country band named Rose Colored Glasses played classic country from the golden era. Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, Hank Senior, Don Gibson. The whole place turned into the 1950s. The only thing missing were the “I Like Ike” stickers.

Nearly 1,000 elderly picnic goers meandered to and fro, laughing and carrying on. I mingled among them and made lots of friends.

Sometimes I’m afraid that our younger generations have forgotten our elders. I’m on a mission to change all that…

A side-of-the-road restaurant. Way out in the sticks. The young boy was seated at the table with his mother and father.

His mother had green hair. His father was bald, with tattoos on his face and on his scalp. The little boy was using a wheelchair.

I was eating lunch in Small Town, Alabama, USA. It was a crowded meat-and-three. I had just finished making a morning speech for a convention, and I needed to meet my saturated fat quota for the day.

I found this restaurant by chance. I pulled over because the sign advertised field peas.

I am a field-pea enthusiast. I would crawl across a sewage plant on my lips to eat a good field pea.

I appreciate field peas in much the same way I love, for example, mullet haircuts. I am a big fan of mullets, which were popular during my heyday.

The horrendous hairstyle has made a stylistic comeback among America’s youth. These days, I see all sorts of kids wearing “Tennessee Tophats,” “Camaro Cuts,” “Neck Warmers” and

“Achy-Breaky-Big-Mistakys.” And I think it’s wonderful. Why should my generation be the only generation who looked like dorks?

Anyway, field peas. I like them almost as much as I like homegrown tomatoes. Both of which were served at my wedding.

The heirloom tomatoes at my wedding came from my mother-in-law’s garden, and were served on a giant plate. Everyone in the wedding party ate slices. The best man received the highest honor by drinking the tomato water.

When it comes to field peas, I like them all: Crowder peas, purple hulls, lady peas, zipper peas, big red zippers, turkey craws, Hercules peas, Double-Ds, whippoorwills, rattlesnakes, slap-yo-mamas, homewreckers, foot-tappers, and tailshakers.

But getting back to the young boy I saw.

He was using surgical prosthetic implants to help him hear. His mom and dad both ordered the field peas and the fried chicken. So did the boy.

I don’t know why anyone would impersonate me. I’m not worth impersonating. I talk funny. I have horse teeth. I am pale. Redheaded. And I have unnaturally long legs, so that my wife says I look like a man riding a chicken.

Nevertheless, there are Sean Dietrich impersonators on social media. More impersonators than I ever believed. A whole army of them, actually. Can you imagine a whole army of me? I can’t. It would be like a whole bunch of malnourished men riding poultry, shouting, “Charge!”

But the phonies keep coming. These impersonators are pretending to be me, messaging people, even going so far as to share status updates.

These impersonators, however, aren’t exactly nuclear scientists. Case in point: I have been contacted by my OWN impersonator. Which was chilling, inasmuch as the person claiming to be not only used my personal voice, but he also used bad grammar.

“Hi ther,” the message began. “How is you’re day to be going?”

Jesus wept.

So there I was, private messaging someone in Mozambique, claiming to

be me, and I had this weird feeling I was on an episode of “Twilight Zone.”

“Your are such a very handsome women,” the impersonator began.

“Women is plural,” I write back.

“Whoops,” the impersonator replies. “I meant to say you are such a big handsome woman.”

These impersonators were very friendly, at least at first. They were polite. Courteous. And they expressed a strong desire to have an intimate relationship with me wherein we might lean on each other, support one another, and hopefully, exchange financial information.

Which is why I want to state, upfront: I will NEVER ask for your credit card information via private message. I will always do it in person.

I usually report these impersonators to the social-media powers that be, but the fakes just keep coming. Every time I report one phony account, 10 more crop up to take…

I had a video conference call with Mrs. Soto’s fourth-grade class this morning. I wore a tie for old times’ sake. Although I have always looked ridiculous in neckties.

I discussed the art of creative writing. I covered topics like essays, grammar, and how I learned to use a manual typewriter in Mister Edmund’s typing class back in 1807.

Eight-year-old Akin raised his hand and asked, “Wait. What’s a typewriter?”

I found myself smiling, loosening my necktie, because at this moment I felt about as old as the Giza Pyramids.

“You’ve never heard of a typewriter?” I asked the Future of America.

Most kids hadn’t.

I couldn’t believe this. Which got me thinking about all the other things Mrs. Soto’s kids probably never heard of, for instance, Garfunkel.

And what about Rand McNally maps? I’d like to know where those went. You can’t even buy them in gas stations anymore.

I believe maps are superior to GPS systems. Maps never recalculate, never screw up, there are no batteries, no connective errors, no robotic voices that sound like Jacques Cousteau on horse tranquilizers.

Sure with paper maps people often got lost in the wilderness, but only a small percentage of these people actually died.

So it was hard for the fourth-graders to believe that I still use an archaic device like a typewriter, but it’s true. And for anyone in Mrs. Soto’s class who is reading this column (for extra credit), I will tell you why.

For writers, the typewriter serves a sound professional purpose. And I’ll illustrate my point by telling you exactly how I wrote this column:

First, I sat down.

Next, I fired up my laptop, which is connected to the vastness of the internet.

I ate Fritos.

Then I cracked my knuckles. I started typing with greasy fingers.

Before I finished my first paragraph, I already had a problem because I knew I wanted to talk about…

We arrived at the little airport in Ashland, Alabama, at 9 am. Although it didn’t look much like an airport. Actually, it looked like a pole barn in the North Alabama woods. Somewhere nearby, you could hear banjos.

The Butlers arrived with Becca, their daughter. Becca is 11 years old and blind. She is a child with more raw energy output than a small municipal dam. She leapt out of the backseat, brandishing her white cane, vibrating with pure excitement.

“I’m gonna fly today!” she shouted as she began applauding herself. “I’m so STINKING excited!”

I first met Becca by email last September. I did not expect to become such good friends with an 11-year-old. But you can’t plan these things.

Our friendship officially happened when she first hugged me. Becca gives good hugs. At the time, we had just completed our first lunch date, eating at Bama Bucks, a steakhouse and wild game restaurant where they have a cage of wild deer grazing across the street, sort of like lobsters

at a seafood restaurant. Before I left the restaurant Becca hugged me tightly and said, “I really think we should be friends.”

And so it was. We became instant pals. We wear friendship bracelets and everything.

Fast forward. Several months ago, I was on a commercial airplane, about to go make a speech somewhere. I was flying livestock class where you have to ride with a chicken on your lap. My phone lit up while we were still taxiing on the runway. It was a text from Becca.

“What are you doing?” the text read.

I told her I was about to fly to Kansas City. She told me she had never flown before. “Would you like to fly someday?” I asked her. Her text came back as something akin to, “Does the Pope go in the woods?”

One thing led to another. And here we were. At the…

A beer joint. In the sticks. A cinderblock building. There were beat-up trucks parked in a dusty parking lot. No sign. Only a small Pabst Blue Ribbon marquee indicated this was a place where a man could break a dry spell.

My companions were old enough to be my grandfathers. I accepted their invitations to attend their private waterhole.

“We don’t want anyone to know it’s here,” said one old man whom I will call Billy. Although that is not his name. It is Ted Carter.

“Otherwise, people will ruin it,” said his cohort.

It was a dank place. A lot like the place where Miss Wanda sold me my very first beer when I was 14.

Yes, I realize 14 is way too young to consume libation. I also realize that if Wanda had done such a thing today, she would be rotting beneath Tutwiler Prison. But those were different times.

Wanda gave me an ice-cold Miller High Life in exchange for a song played on my guitar. She asked me to sing to the barroom

because—how’s this for irony?— her mother heard me sing in church once.

I sang “Hello Walls.” I tried to make my voice do like Faron Young’s voice did.

We opened the door. The old men assumed their barstools. The place smelled like someone’s crawl space.

There was a tiny plywood stage in the corner. An old guy with a ponytail was picking and singing Vern Gosdin’s “Set’em Up Joe.”

I ordered a Miller High Life, just to see if the spirit of Wanda lived on.

“We don’t carry High Life,” said the bartender. She was young and full-faced. But in a pleasing way.

My two partners ordered Bud Lights. I ordered a Budweiser. The girl called out. “I need two Bud Lights and one beer!”

The other bartender was nicknamed “Tiny.” He weighed roughly 250 lbs., and his arms were the size of…

I was a pitiful child. When I graduated fourth grade, I was the only student voted most likely to enter the field of manual culvert excavation. I was a total loser.

“But Sean,” I can hear you saying, “we were all total losers when we were kids.”

Thank you for trying to make me feel better, but no, we were not all total losers. Some kids were actually attractive and popular and brilliant.

Case in point. Yesterday, a 14-year-old from Florida won the National Spelling Bee. The kid’s name was Dev Shah. His winning word was “psammophile,” which is an extremely rare noun used to describe organisms that prefer sandy soil environments.

I, for one, am impressed inasmuch as I once lost the elementary spelling bee to the word “potato.”

“T-A-T-E-R?” I spelled over the microphone.

The auditorium erupted in laughter.

I never won anything when I was a kid. I was unimpressive in every way. My Little League team never won a single baseball game.

This is because my Little League team was composed

of Deepwater Baptist boys. Our parents did not believe in winning. We believed in the doctrine of suffering. We believed in being of service to others.

So whenever other teams were undergoing batting slumps, they played us and felt much better about themselves. That was our team’s role.

We were not taught to win. My team was named the “Submergers.” We were servants. If my team had won a gold medal, our mothers would have just had it bronzed.

Spelling bees? No way. I come from country people. My people did not emphasize spelling.

When I was a kid, for instance, I remember when my aunt Jospehine died.

My uncle Jerry Lee called the funeral home, in tears. Jerry Lee gave the funeral-home driver directions to his home address, which was at the end of Eucalyptus Drive. To which the funeral home operator replied, “Can…

I am in a hospital waiting room. My wife is having cataract surgery right now. For the last four hours I’ve been in this crowded holding pen of optical patients where we have been exposed to dangerous quantities of daytime television.

Currently, there is a TV mounted overhead with volume set to “deafen.” We are prisoners, all forced to watch “Live with Kelly and Mark,” where the banter between co-hosts goes like this:

“I’m so glad it’s June.”

“Me too. Does June have 31 or 32 days?”

“It only has 28.”

My wife was nervous about getting surgery this morning. I could tell by the way she was chewing her fingernails when we arrived at the hospital.

My wife is a feisty individual who, aside from being a dedicated fingernail chewer, is not afraid to use strong language during appropriate situations, such as, traffic, national championship games, Bible study, etc.

So when the male nurse, for example, inserted a needle into my wife’s arm, she implied loudly that he had been born to unmarried

parents.

After that, we waited for several hours while medical staffers took her vitals, made sure her heart worked properly, examined her blood pressure, and asked vitally important medical history questions, such as, “Will this be a co-pay?”

Then they wheeled her back. I waved goodbye to her.

And now here I am. Waiting alongside other eye surgery candidates. All of whom wear looks of dread on their faces.

I don’t know how anyone could be anything but nervous. So far, we have watched dozens of patients get wheeled into the mysterious back room, then re-emerge after a few hours with bandages, eye patches, groggy looks on their faces, and wearing butt-revealing gowns.

These surgery patients are usually accompanied by escorts who roll them along in wheelchairs. And you can tell the patients are still loopy from medication by the way they affectionately grope their escorts,…

Knoxville. Last year. I am walking into a Waffle House to get supper because everywhere else is closed at this hour. The sidewalks are rolled up. The lights are off. Knoxville is asleep.

I should be asleep, too, of course. But I’m not. Because I had to make a speech earlier tonight. It was one of those long nights where I drove straight to Knoxville and came right back.

I had to wear a tux. Have you ever been to a Waffle House while wearing a tuxedo? You get a lot of funny looks.

“Did you just finish with senior prom?” the waitress asks.

“No,” I say. “It was much worse. I had to make a speech to drunk rich people.”

She leans on the counter. “You wanna cry about it?”

“No. I’m past that.”

“So. What’re we drinking, Prom King?”

“Anything that’s hot and black.”

“One cup of tar, coming up.”

There is a guy at the counter who is dressed in a service uniform of some kind. He is old. There are tattoos all over his arms. Tattoos on his knuckles. Piercings all

over his face. A ring in his nose.

He is a little long in the tooth to have a ring in his nose, but there you are. The tattoos on his knuckles let me know that he has no problem using those babies.

He gazes into his coffee cup.

Here is a man who is not playing with his phone. Which is a rarity in our world. He’s not reading anything. He’s not talking to anyone. He’s just gazing.

“Evening,” I say to him.

He glances up from his coffee. “Hi ya, buddy.”

He’s country, with an accent like your favorite uncle. Country people always call you “buddy.”

The waitress stops by the old man’s mug.

“Get you a refill?” she says.

“Yes, please,” he says as she pours. “Thank you, baby.”

Country people also…

The Alabama mountains look good today. The evening sun is cresting over the hillsides. I’m watching an Appalachian spring overtake the foothills beneath me.

Beside me is Otis. Otis is an athletic dog. He hikes faster than me. He is smarter than me. He can hike farther distances, too. Otis probably even knows how to do algebra.

I, on the other hand, am no athlete. I come out here and I hike in a style that would make athletes cringe. I hike slow. And I mean R-E-A-L-L-Y slow. I am DMV slow.

In my backpack, I carry all the nutrition anyone could need. I have chicken salad from Chicken Salad Chick. I have a Payday. And I have two beers. One for me. One for Otis.

You will not find any gluten-free energy bars or trail mix in my bag. You will not find lifegiving food that nourishes the arteries and feeds the limbic system. You will find food which contains bacon, and Budweiser.

Whenever I stop for lunch, I sit on

a tall rock and dangle my legs off the edge, and I watch the world below me.

Otis never wants his beer. Which means that, once again, I am forced to drink it. The things I do for this dog.

And after a brief moment of repose, we are back to hiking again. We move steadily upward. My pale, shaky thighs are weak. I have unusually scrawny legs. My mother used to say I looked like a guy riding a chicken across the backyard.

But eventually, we reach the top. Whereupon I will pause to catch my breath while Otis looks at me as if to say, “You shouldn’t have drank my beer.”

And the view is arresting.

My father was a mountain lover. He was an ironworker. Local Number 10. He was a stick welder. Stick welders are real men.

My old man could climb things. Anything.…