His funeral was in the dead of summer. It was graveside. Early morning. Muggy.

His skin looked powder-white, his face wore an artificial smile. Red, white, and blue draped over his casket.

They did him up good.

Seven riflemen fired at the sky. A lone trumpet played “Taps.” If there was a dry eye in the county, it was made of glass.

Once, I went to a ball game with him. I was a boy. The organ played “The Star Spangled Banner.”

He stood, saluted, and sang in a voice that was part tenor, part Andy Griffith.

I asked why he sang so loud.

“‘Cause,” he said. “That’s one hell of a flag flying up there.”

I asked where they shot him during the War.

He lifted his arm and pointed to his armpit. “Already showed you this a hundred times,” he said.

Make that one hundred and one.

He grew up on a dirt farm. He was as tough as the callouses on his

hands. He was a musician.

As a young man, he sang on a Thursday-evening gospel radio hour, flatpicking a guitar in a one-room radioshack.

He fell in love. She came from a poor family. They married before he shipped to Europe.

The night before their wedding, they slept in the same bed—on top the covers, with their clothes on.

“He was nothing if not decent,” was once said of him.

But he was more than decent. He was ten-foot tall. His heart was purple, his Case knife was sharp, his fishing rods were bamboo. He listened to the Opry, and Hit Parade. He believed in solid cars, and pretty music.

I liked to watch him play mandolin.

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I think about you sometimes. Especially during summer, when families get together for picnics and fireworks. When fathers wear T-shirts that read: “World’s Greatest Dad.”

I like those.

You’re the son I never had. You never existed, but I still think about you.

Mostly, I wonder what color your hair would have been. I have a feeling it would’ve been red—like your old man’s.

My daddy had red hair, too. And even though he died long ago, sharing his hair color makes me feel less alone.

I would’ve taught you baseball. Chances are, you would’ve been awful at it—just like me.

But I love the game. And I love what goes with it. The hot dogs, the twenty-five-dollar beers, screaming in the stands. Fathers and sons.

I’ve gone to many games alone. I would've made sure you didn’t.

I would’ve told you stories. That way, you could’ve had a million to tell your own redhead one day. I think all World’s Greatest Daddies need stories. Good ones. Tales that make their sons proud.

The few I have of my own father are precious.

Anyway, I’m not

a teacher, but I would’ve taught you. Things like: how to play “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” on a guitar, how to eat ice cream sandwiches, how to gig frogs, and how to speak slow when delivering a punchline.

I would’ve shown you how to bait a hook, clean a bream, and use words like, “I love you,” too much.

You would’ve learned to open doors for girls, and how to apologize to a woman with heart.

I would’ve learned from you. You would've discovered that I made a lot of mistakes.

But I would’ve told you that this world is not all Memorial-Day sunshine and flowers—even though I wish it were. That the problem is that people are selfish. Every last person. Even your old man.

But, there is also something in…

He is young. He is wearing a red shirt. A cap. He drives a Ford pickup that has seen better days. The roof is rusted, the wheel bearings are in bad shape.

The kid is on lunch break, parked in a grocery-store parking lot. He is eating bananas because fruit is cheap and he has a light wallet.

His windows are rolled down. He’s only got ten minutes before he’s expected back at a jobsite, to hang gutter on a three-story house.

It’s god-awful work. He’s not afraid of heights, but he certainly doesn’t love nine-hundred-foot ladders.

The kid finishes eating. He tosses a banana peel into his flatbed. He tries to start his truck. It makes a coughing noise. He tries again. The truck sputters. The kid cusses.

The old Ford has crossed the river.

These are the days before cellphones ruled the world, there’s no way to call the kid’s boss. His boss is already at work, probably glancing at his wristwatch.

The kid sits, wondering what happens after he gets fired.

He could always join the circus and clean up after the elephants.

Across the parking lot: a man. He’s short. Gray hair. He asks if the kid is having engine trouble. The kid hardly understands him beneath his thick Mexican accent.

The man pops the hood. He leans inward. He tells the kid, “Try it now!”

The kid turns the key.

The gray-haired man winks. “I know what is thee problem,” he says. “We can buy part in town. Come. We take my car.”

“I can’t,” the kid says. “I’m supposed to be at work.”

“Work?

The man understands this word.

They pile into the man’s Honda, which looks like it’s rusting apart. The…

I'm at a jewelry store to get my watch repaired. It’s a cheap watch.

The jeweler is a white-haired man with a grandaddy face. He’s staring at my watch, squinting.

“It’s Italian,” I tell him. “El Timexo.”

He says the thing needs a new battery-o.

There is a kid browsing the glass cases behind me. He’s young, skinny built. He’s wearing a neon-orange reflective vest, work boots.

He asks the girl at the counter if he can see a ring. She unlocks the case.

He looks at it, frowns, then hands it back.

He asks, “Should ALL engagement rings have diamonds?”

She tells the kid that there’s no constitutional mandate, but that it’s strongly recommended by the American Jeweler's Association.

He asks about payment plans. She shows him a flyer and tells him about financing options.

The kid asks to see a cheaper ring.

He looks hard at it. “You sure this is the right size? It looks so big.”

“Yep. That’s a six.”

“If it’s too

big, can I bring it back?”

“We can resize it.”

He takes a few heavy breaths. He sighs. He says, “I just hope she says yes. I mean, I think she will. But what if she doesn’t?”

The woman smiles. She holds up her left hand for him, showing him a small ring. Then, she tells the story that goes with it.

She was at a swimming pool. Her boyfriend showed up unannounced. He climbed the high-dive. He screamed his proposal from the top of the world.

She hollered, “Yes!”

So, he attempted a backflip. He slipped. He skinned his backside and hit his head on the springboard. He had to visit the…

A church lawn. The middle of nowhere.

He’s old. He’s wearing high-waisted trousers, a pressed shirt, and a fedora. So help me, a fedora. Seeing him is like seeing nineteen hundred and fifty-two.

My dog, Ellie Mae, follows this man.

There aren't many folks here, maybe fifty. Kids are playing with fidget spinners. Girls wear summer dresses. Young men wear boots. Middle-aged men in khakis.

This is dinner on the church grounds.

Behind the building is a hayfield, recently scalped. A few boys hop the fence.

Tables are lined with casserole dishes. Plastic pitchers of tea. Behind the church is a grill. It’s the sturdy kind made from a two-ton iron pipe.

The smell of pecan smoke makes the world seem happy.

Abe is cooking ribs and chicken. His name isn’t really Abe, he admits. It’s Danny. He was the youngest of eight brothers and sisters. He was an incurable tattle-butt. His mother nicknamed him “Honest Abe” to cure him of his habit.

The name stuck.

“Any hotdogs?” asks a kid.

“You want HOTDOGS?” Abe remarks. “Instead of RIBS? What’s wrong with you, child?”

I’m

next in line. I ask for a little of everything.

Honest Abe tells me greediness is a vice worse than gluttony.

The evening kicks off with a gospel quartet. The high-tenor is outstanding. He sings notes only Gabriel could reach.

On our blanket: two adults and ten empty plates. My coonhound is nowhere in sight. She has made friends with the old man in the fedora. They are across the lawn.

The unfaithful animal.

The quartet sings “Moving Up To Gloryland.” The baritone is singing so low, it looks like he’s about to lose consciousness.

The adults finish eating. The sun is almost gone. Kids are in the hayfield. And it looks like—if my eyes are correct—they’re playing Red Rover.

As I live and breathe.

I haven’t played Red Rover since fourth grade. Greg…

Monroeville, Alabama—the sun is setting. One hundred and nine people wait outside the courthouse to see “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

You can hear crickets downtown.

In line, I meet a millworker from Milton, a mechanic from Montgomery, a Birmingham neurosurgeon, a football coach, a peanut farmer.

Behind me is a literature professor from New Hampshire. He’s a slender man. Polite. He has a big vocabulary. It takes two minutes to discover that “unparalleled” is his favorite word.

He’s driven a long way to see this play. He is a well-known author—I know this because he tells me.

Three times.

“We’re excited about the show,” says the professor. “We hear it’s unparalleled.”

He’s right. This is the quintessential hometown play, in the world’s most famous hometown—second only to Mayberry.

This production has all my favorite stuff. Clapboard porches, antique automobiles, linen suits, ladies in cotton dresses.

The professor sits a few seats from me. He tells me he's memorized parts of the famous novel. He demonstrates this. He's pleased with himself.

“What brings you here tonight?” he asks.

“My cousin, Robert,” I say. “He plays

the farmer.”

The play starts. It's fast paced. The second act is a clencher, taking place inside the old courtroom. It's a majestic building with heart-pine floors made from trees which were once cut from a forest up the road.

The cast’s delivery is heartfelt. Close your eyes. You can hear sniffles from the audience. Most of those are mine.

Afterward, the professor remarks, “I can NOT articulate how this UNPARALLELED story and its cupidity absolutely ingressed me.”

Gazoontite.

Well, my vocabulary might be small, but I’m inclined to agree with him. This play is some kind of special. The soft accents, the down-home morals, the women wearing nylons thick enough to stop bullets.

This classic story is about community—one so small you need a magnifying glass to see it. It’s about small-town living. The good,…

One year ago—Atlanta, Georgia. Willie Nelson stood on stage and sang my childhood. He sang: “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.”

I rose to my feet in honor of Mama—who expressly failed in this regard.

While Willie played for thousands, my wife handed me her glowing cellphone. There were photos of a pink newborn baby on it.

“That’s your niece!” yelled my wife.

I cried, then smiled for three hundred days.

Though it bears mentioning, life hasn’t always been worth smiling about. Take, for instance, the day we scattered my father’s ashes. That was a particularly bad day.

I had hoped his remains would catch the wind and fly away like angel dust. They dropped like a brick.

That following year, I wore out Daddy’s vinyl record collection, trying to remember him.

One of my favorite records: an album bearing portraits of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings on the cover.

I listened to “Mama’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” until I half-hated the melody.

But, of course, I never could hate that song. I sang it on my very first gig.

And I was god-awful.

At the end of the night, the owner paid me fifteen bucks and said, “Learn some new songs, kid. If I hear that damn Willie song one more time, I’m gonna go crazy.”

I tried to learn as many new songs as I could. After swinging a hammer during the afternoons, I’d practice music until the wee hours.

I peddled my unimpressive songs to rundown places and earned next-to-nothing for my mediocre performances.

They were joints Mama would’ve been ashamed of, with neon signs in windows and sad people at tables.

In one such…

Not far from the water tower in Grove Hill, Alabama, sits Bertile’s. It's an old burger joint with hand-patted burgers and homemade biscuits.

Miss Liza stands behind the counter. She looks much younger than she is. There is gray in her hair.

She’s worked at this fast-food hole-in-the-wall for thirty years.

Thirty.

“She needs a day off,” one young employee tells me. “Miss Liza, she works EVERY day.”

Even Sundays.

“But I only work AFTER church,” Miss Liza says. “My husband is a preacher, we can't skip church.”

Miss Liza and her husband have managed to muscle through thirty-five years of marriage, raising two boys—working overtime. He's an electrician and preacher. She manages this burger joint.

She is a faceless working-class woman you'll probably never hear about—there's no reason you would, unless some fool were to write about her.

She's having a rough time. Her mother is dying. She has dementia. Liza makes the long drive to Meridian as often as she can to visit, but there's not much

time left.

“Visited last week,” she says. “When Mama saw me, she throwed her arms out and say, ‘Come here, Liza.’ My mama don't always remember me, so that was a blessing.”

Liza wipes her eye.

So do I.

“But, I ain't complaining,” she says. “We poor, but my children turned out to be good adults, God blessed me.”

Blessed. For a woman who has spent her life working her fingers into nubs, Miss Liza has the disposition of a ten-dollar Hallmark card.

I ask when she took her last vacation.

She laughs. “My last WHAT? No sir. Ain’t got time. My husband, he got the asthma, and health problems. I don't do vacations.”

There…