The first day of autumn is almost here, and Tennessee is experiencing the birth pangs of fall. The colors are changing, the air is crisp, the natural scenery has become purely college football paraphernalia.

It’s a fine morning to drive across the Volunteer State. The sun is bright, the sky is cloudless. The Smoky Mountains have never looked so smoky.

Last night, I sang to a theater of people in Cookeville with a banjo on my knee. The audience suffered through my rendition of “Rocky Top.” They were nice enough to whoop and holler in all the right spots.

It’s difficult to sing the official fight song of the University of Tennessee when you’re an ardent University of Alabama fan. This isn’t because I carry old football grudges. I don’t. I let bygones alone. Truthfully, I barely remember the last time Tennessee played Alabama and beat us with a final score of 54 to 49 on October 15, 2022.

Even so, I like “Rocky

Top.” Namely, because there is something about Tennessee that enchants me.

I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the highland terrain. Could be, it’s all the winding highways which never seem to know which way they’re going.

The roads wander upways, downways, sideways, backways, past railroad crossings, across Purple Mountains Majesty, over the river and through the woods. Or directly past roadside vegetable stands.

Consequently, I just visited a little vegetable stand on a secluded highway, where an old man was sitting beneath a tent, selling produce put of plastic crates.

It was the handmade cardboard sign on the highway that attracted my attention first. The sign was made from a Sony flatscreen television carton, staked into the earth with a single two-by-four. “Homegrown Appels,” the large sign read.

The old man had a few varieties of “appels,” sitting…

If you’re going to drive in rural Arkansas, you must gamble with your own life.

Namely, because the Ozark mountains are home to dangerously twisting highways, with abrupt hairpin turns occuring every four to six inches. If you drive too fast you will have a collision and die. If you drive too slow you will die of old age.

I see frequent skidmarks on the pavement which lead directly into mangled guardrails. I see bits of wreckage on the roadway, which is a sobering reminder not to shop on Amazon while I drive.

There is a heavy, heavy fog obscuring the highway, clinging to the Ozarks like a wet dishrag. You’re almost totally blind in this dense, impenetrable wall of gray. It’s a wonder anyone survives backing out of their own driveways.

“We’re used to dangerous road conditions,” says my waitress at a local cafe. “I can drive these roads with my knees while nursing my youngest.”

There is a table of old men beside me, wearing seed caps,

nursing coffees.

One old guy asks where I’m from. I am a suspicious foreigner in a cafe tucked in the hinterlands of The Natural State. Everyone is staring at me.

“I’m from Birmingham,” I say.

The old guys nod at each other as though I have just informed them I am with the IRS.

“What brings you here?” one guy asks.

“I’m a banjo player,” I say.

I have immediately won their favor. Their guards drop. They are now smiling, aware that I have—at some point in my life—lived in a trailer park. I am smiling back at them. We are all grinning. Among us there are maybe nine teeth.

Soon I am driving through the Ozarks. Windows down. Sun peeking through the fog. The sky is ultramarine. The mountains are perfect.

The billboard signs along my route are uniquely…

Whenever I get sad, I think about the arrivals and departures gates of any airport. Popular opinion says our society is eaten up with hatred, anger, and senseless acts of politics. But you don’t see those things in an airport.

I am at the Dallas airport right now, Love Field, watching hundreds of people hug, kiss, take selfies, hold hands, smile at each other, give tearful farewells, or carry on with sobbing reunions. You see nearly every emotion in an airport.

Arriving passengers deboard escalators, rejoin with loved ones, shed tears, filling the airport with sounds of joy. Others are departing, about to check their baggage, about to leave for parts unknown, fitting in their final acts of affection before their flight is, ultimately, delayed.

A man hugs a girl who is maybe 12. The girl is squeezing the man so tightly that she has knocked off his glasses and ball cap. But he doesn't seem to care. He is weeping openly. She is sobbing too.

They are laughing through their own tears, which is my favorite emotion.

“The house is going to be so empty now,” the man keeps saying.

“I’ll miss you, Dad.”

An older woman is embracing three of her grandchildren who have just arrived in Dallas. She is on her knees, in the middle of baggage claim. Everyone is smiling. The kids are speaking Spanish as Granny kisses their faces, one at a time.

And although I can’t understand their words, it doesn’t take a linguistic expert to know what they’re saying.

A young mother, holding an infant on her hip, embracing a young man in a combat uniform. They are all crying tears of joy. Except for, of course, the baby, who is gaily picking his nose.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” the young mother is saying to the guy in the uniform.

There is another…

I’m in the airport. There is a tiny robot cruising around, delivering food to customers. Kids are following the robot, laughing. People are taking pictures.

It seems like everyone is talking about AI. It’s on the news. It’s in every newspaper. “AI is taking over the world,” the media headlines declare. “AI replaces 12 million jobs.” “AI wins Miss America Pageant.” AI might be writing this right now. There’s no way to know.

It’s gotten to the point where you don’t even notice artificial intelligence in everyday life anymore. It’s in your phone, your car, it ships Amazon packages, manages warehouses, cleans households, and correcks grammer.

And recently, Simone Giertz, a female Swedish inventor even designed a robot specifically developed to wipe your hindquarters. I’m not joking.

When I first heard about this cavity-sanitizing robot, I didn’t believe it was true, but then I Googled “AI wipe butt.”

There it was on YouTube. A demonstration of a robot helpfully participating in the Morning Ritual.

Giertz was posing with her robot. Arms crossed, proudly, wearing the same expression you might expect to see on the portrait of a bank president, except that she was positioned next to a mannequin on a toilet with its pants around its ankles.

The AI developments continue. In Atlanta a new service called Waymo is about to offer robotaxi service. “Robotaxi” means self-driving cab. These vehicles are capable of great distances and are driverless.

Robotaxis are still new, but they already operate in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, and LA, where AI taxis currently give upwards of 100,000 rides per week.

I actually tried one of these driverless cabs when I was in Arizona. It was nerve wracking inasmuch as the car was full of screaming passengers. And I was the only human being in the vehicle.

We were speeding down the highway, the steering wheel spinning…

Thirty years ago it happened. 30 years ago today. Thirty years ago my whole life changed, and I thought I’d never be okay again.

It was a serene, late-summer day. I was a kid, playing outside, when the sheriff’s department cruiser pulled up to our house to deliver the news.

I remember my mother collapsing on the floor, sobbing. I remember, personally, going into shock when the preacher told me, “Your father took his own life.”

I remember feeling that upon this day, 30 years ago, nothing would be okay. Not ever again. I remember thinking that I would not survive my own childhood.

As I write this, I sit on a wide lake, watching autumn seize the world. The trees of Lake Martin are experiencing the first pangs of fall. There is a slight chill in the air. A woodpecker nearby is seriously attempting to give himself a concussion.

Sitting on the lake is a good place to think. Namely, because

you don’t hear much of anything except the ringing in your own ears.

You only hear black billed cuckoos, northern flickers, American kestrels, or a humble American crow. You hear the soprano section of starlings, or the flapping of a heron’s wings.

Right now I see a few ducks in the faroff, swimming. Mallards, with brilliant green heads. A male and female. The female duck is, evidently, trying to drown the male. They are quacking and clacking for their lives. Although, it just occurred to me that these ducks are not trying to kill one another. I think they are mating.

And I’m wondering what the next 30 years of my life is going to look like.

This life hasn’t turned out at all like I thought it would. It has been a most wonderful adventure. It has confused me. It has moved me. It has entertained me. It…

Her husband left her with two kids and a Honda. She didn’t even have a place to stay. She moved in with her sister. She worked thankless jobs.

And she hardly ever smiled. Not only because she was unhappy, but mostly because she was missing teeth.

“Lost these two teeth in middle school,” she says, touching her mouth. “My dad got in a car wreck. My brother and I were in his passenger seat.”

Teeth or not, the woman is tough. It's in her blood. She raised three kids single-handed. She fought off rowdy teenage boys who wanted to date her daughter. She taught her sons how to be men.

The day after her youngest left for the military, she marched into a local lender’s office. She only had one hour before work.

“I had good credit,” she said. “I knew they couldn’t turn me down. Never had any debt.”

She could have used the loan money to buy a house. She could’ve invested in dental work. She could’ve replaced her rusted Honda.

She enrolled in community college.

She

was a forty-seven-year-old, taking Algebra One. But she was no stranger to hard work. Schoolwork was nothing compared to pulling double shifts and feeding hungry mouths.

“I’ve always been a quick learner.”

She enjoyed each class, each lecture, each teacher, each test. But more than anything, she liked being on campus.

During her first summer semester, she met a woman. The woman had salt-and-pepper hair and wore white scrubs. She took nursing classes. They both talked about life. About their families.

“I looked at her,” she said. “And I was like, 'Hell, this lady’s my age. If she can be a nurse, so can I.'"

She enrolled in the nursing program. Seven years, she worked. Seven years of math tests, lectures, and clinicals. She completed mountains of homework. She borrowed more money.

“Wouldn’t believe how much education costs,” she said.…

The emailer was irate. “When are you finally going to address the lies being told RIGHT NOW to the American people?” the emailer wrote. “You are A COWARD!”

For the purposes of this article, I will call this emailer “Fran,” not only to conceal her identity but also because Fran is her legal name. In the interest of anonymity, however, I will not tell you that Fran lives in Huntington, West Virginia.

To be fair, Fran is absolutely right. There ARE many lies told to Americans. And I’d like to address the biggest ones which are currently impacting our cherished way of life.

The first lie—and maybe the biggest—is that we must wait one hour after eating to go swimming.

False.

When will the misinformation stop? This myth has been perpetrated on the American People for centuries. Primarily, by Our Mothers who sought to keep We The People out of the public pool so they could hurry home and attend special-interest Tupperware parties.

Long ago, mothers would allow children to swim happily, shortly before telling their children it was “time for a snack.”

Whereupon mothers would deceptively administer to their children Fig Newtons, only to declare, after the Newton was consumed, that we were not allowed to swim until we were well into our mid-forties.

The truth is, a meal eaten before swimming will not cause cramping, says Doctor Boniface, an emergency room physician in Birmingham. “I think mothers came up with this because they were just ready to go home.”

So you are free to eat before swimming. You are also free to be a critical thinker.

Which leads me to the second lie, and one of the most profoundly disturbing, which states that we humans only use 10 percent of our brains.

I’ve heard this one for years. I specifically remember my Little League coach spreading this misinformation…