The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire and the world watched it burn. The only word that comes to mind is “tragedy.” A real tragedy.

I never got to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Though, I had a chance once when I was nineteen. A girl I was dating from Dothan was going to France on scholarship. She asked me to go with her.

It was a bad idea. I am a small-town American who has never traveled overseas. The idea of leaving U.S. soil makes me break out in hives—I wouldn’t survive the Turkish toilets.

I told her to send me a postcard. I never saw her again.

But I always wanted to go. In fact, there are only a few things I’d like to see in person before I die:

The World Series. The Dixie Belle Riverboat. And the spires of Notre Dame de Paris.

I guess I missed my chance.

Today, my wife and I were riding through the Arizona wilderness after spending

a weekend at the Grand Canyon. The local radio station interrupted George Strait to announce that Notre Dame was on fire.

My wife turned up the volume. A reporter with a heavy French accent said:

“Ze greatest relic of our civilization is engulfed in flames.” The announcer’s voice broke with emotion. “It is a tragedy, people, a true tragedy…”

My wife covered her mouth.

We pulled over at a burger joint outside Flagstaff, not far from historic Route 66. And in the all-American diner we watched the corner television broadcast a scene from Hell.

A flaming cathedral roof, falling to pieces. Dante’s Inferno.

“I been there once,” said our waitress, filling my coffee mug. “My family’s Italian Catholic, we saw the cathedral last year and my grandpa was holding my hand all along the tour, crying at the relics.”

“We’ve been there,…

Tallahassee—The hospital volunteers luncheon was well attended. In the dining room were white-haired beauties who donate their time to suffering strangers without expecting anything in return.

These are saints. They visit those undergoing chemo. They smile at the downtrodden. They hold the hands of the infirm.

And they are always on the job.

The buffet was fried chicken, potato salad, and string beans. Flower arrangements lined the tables. The entertainment was me.

I had been running ahead of schedule. So, before the luncheon I found myself wandering Tallahassee, admiring the local sites.

I had forgotten how pretty it was. The Spanish moss in the oaks is like something from a postcard. It’s hard to believe I used to dislike this town.

It’s a long story. I’ll give you the short version.

I lived in Tally for a hot minute. And by this I mean for a couple weeks. I rented an apartment not far from Florida State University, and I planned to attend.

A little

about my boyhood education:

I was a high-school dropout. I quit school because of reasons that don’t make much sense now. Later in life, I completed my education as a grown man.

I felt pretty ashamed about this for a long time.

After I finished community college, I applied and got accepted to FSU, and I was over the moon. I bought curtains for my new apartment. Scented candles. Throw rugs.

But my excitement was short lived. As it happened, I had not been accepted. A clerical error had been made.

I was formally rejected a few days before classes started. And on that disappointing day, I sat in my truck watching teenagers scurry to class, and I felt like the world’s biggest flunky.

I’ll never forget seeing a teenage boy on a skateboard who wore pajamas. He was on his way…

I remember going to see the Grand Ole Opry as a boy. My father drove through the busy city of Nashville. I was five, he was thirty-six.

“Daddy,” I said, “Do you think that there will be anyone famous there?”

“Do I?” he said. “You better know it. There’s always famous people at the Opry, and famous ghosts, too.”

“Ghosts? Really?”

My daddy was good with a ghost story.

“Why sure,” he said. “The ghost of Hank Williams, for one thing. And Hank Snow, and Lefty Frizzell... There’s always ghosts at the Opry.”

“Are they nice ghosts?”

“Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On if you’re a nice little boy or not.”

“What happens if I’m not a nice little boy?”

“A ghost will swoop down from the rafters and rip your face off, suck out your soul, and send you to Hell and make you listen to classical music for eternity.”

“Really?”

Then he would laugh. My father had a laugh that sounded like Mister Ed.

My father and I walked into the amphitheater

and were greeted by the smell of hotdogs and popcorn. I had the greatest evening of my life.

Men in ten-gallon hats. Women in rhinestones. Steel guitars, dueling fiddles, the sound of Keith Bilbrey's silky announcing voice.

We were suspended from the real world for a while. It was a star-studded dream, wrapped in a beehive hairdo, with a guitar strapped to its chest. Onstage we saw Jerry Clower, telling jokes.

My father laughed, slapping his armrest. And there was that Mister Ed laugh again. His odd laugh was funnier than any joke that ever inspired it.

But the height of our evening was not the music, nor the laughs, nor the sparkling rhinestones. The apex of this memory happened after the show.

We made our way to the lobby. There was a horde of people waiting in line. We…

The things I could write about pound cake. I could go on and on and bore you to death, but I won’t.

After my father died, I remember visiting a Methodist church with my boyhood friend, and he was introducing me to people. He was raised Methodist, I was not. My people were Baptist.

The Methodists were cheerful. My people didn’t believe in cheer. Our pastor preached hard against alcoholism, promiscuity, and narcotics because these things could lead to cigarette smoking.

My friend pointed to one lady in the congregation. She was slight, with gray hair, and a blue skirt suit.

There are some people you don’t forget. She was one of those people.

She had a heavenly glow. People smiled when they passed by her like she was unique.

“Who’s that woman?” I asked.

“That is the Pound Cake Lady,” my pal said in reverence.

After the Methodist service, my friend led me to a downstairs fellowship hall. The Methodists put out a bigger

spread than any I’d ever seen. There was even a special table dedicated to cornbread and biscuits.

It was too much. Overwhelming. I even saw people standing outside the fellowship hall, smoking cigarettes after their meal. It was as though they were unwinding after sin.

The woman in the blue skirt suit placed something on the end of the table. It was golden, fat, hulking, sacred pound cake.

“Hurry and get some,” said my friend, “before it’s all gone.”

He was right. The cake didn’t last four seconds among those chain-smoking Methodists. But when it disappeared, the old woman replaced it with another.

People blessed her name forevermore. Hallelujah. And so did I.

So every church has a pound cake lady. They are young, middle-aged, or elderly, and they are holy. These ladies are messengers, sent to humanity as proof that God is…

This house. I will never forget the first night my wife and I spent in this house. We were still newlyweds. We had just left our apartment. This place was our first real house. Ours. All ours.

We sat on a cold floor, watching a portable TV, we ate take-out Mexican food. We were on top of the world.

We've been gone a long time. I've missed it.

Some background information is in order here. A few years ago, we moved out of our place and started renting it out. We moved into a camper I bought off Craigslist.

I parked the trailer across the road, on our land, in a swamp. It was twenty-eight feet long and smelled like a pot of collards.

We left our house because we were traveling a lot, due to my accidental career as a storyteller—if that’s what you’d call me. We were never in town. Our house often sat vacant while we gallivanted through the Southeast. So we rented it out.

I don't

know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

But anyway, back to the camper. It’s funny how you end up living a life opposite from the the one you always dreamed of. Growing up, one of my main dreams was to not go to prison.

Living in a camper feels like doing hard time in San Quentin.

Our living room was about the size of a gas chamber. And it smelled like one, too. I'm not kidding. Several times, our dog Otis (alleged Labrador) would leap onto our counters looking for food. His paws would flip the gas knobs to the propane stove. Nobody would notice.

One night, the trailer filled with noxious fumes while we slept. Early the next morning, I was dizzy. I awoke to find the ghost of Dale Earnhardt nosing through my refrigerator.

Dale greeted me. “Sean, wake up or…