Christmas Eve, 1978. It was late. The rural Pennsylvania highway was empty. All over America, stockings were hung by the carbon monoxide detectors with care. Children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of mortgage foreclosures danced through their parents’ heads.

And Todd was standing on the shoulder of a county highway, freezing his backside off.

The snow was falling like TV static. He was trembling.

Now his Honda Concerto was broken down, dead, parked on the rumble strip like a monument to Japanese auto engineering. And since this was an age before cellphones, he was up a well-known creek without the aid of an oar.

The snow fell harder. Todd pulled his coat tighter.

Headlights appeared behind him.

Todd waved his arms like a cast member on “Gilligan’s Island.”

The high beams illuminated the spindrifts of snow, the air brakes squealed, and the semi truck vibrated the Earth as it eased onto the shoulder. The tractor trailer was the size of a rural school district. There was a wreath on the grille.

Todd should have been glad someone stopped to help, but he wasn’t. His heart sank into his stomach because he recognized that wreath. He knew that truck.

Descending from the cab was a man dressed in plaid, wearing steel-toed ropers. It was Todd’s dad.

It was the last person he wanted to see.

Todd and his estranged father were enemies. His father had left home when Todd was six to drive an eighteen-wheeler across the U.S.. The man had been absent from his life until Todd hit his mid-thirties. Over the last few years, the old man had been trying to reconnect with his broken family, but as far as Todd was concerned, it was too late for reunions. Todd didn’t hold a grudge per se. He embraced it.

His father looked beneath the hood of Todd’s car. His old man had always been good…

Morning. The lobby of my hotel is crowded. It’s breakfast time. The lobby is decorated for Christmas.

This is the moment of day when guests emerge from rooms with messed-up hair, bedroom slippers, and wrinkled clothes. They shuffle through corridors toward Bunn coffee machines like the living dead.

I’m eating processed “scrambled-egg-like” matter, and sausage that has been labeled “100% real meat.”

There is an elderly man in line who uses a mechanical wheelchair. He wears a green ballcap with “Vietnam” printed on the front.

He cannot reach the buffet serving spoon because his wheelchair is too low.

Behind him in line is a boy. The kid has reddish hair and freckles. He is full-faced and friendly.

“Here,” says the boy, “allow me.”

The kid uses the serving spoon to dish the “eggish” abberation onto the old man’s plate. The old man thanks him.

“What else do you want on your plate?” Junior asks.

The old man says, “Oh, don’t worry about me, I can help myself.”

“I don’t mind. I’ll help you.”

The old man just smiles at the kid. This man is perfectly capable of fixing his own plate, but

sometimes an act of service isn’t about the servee.

“Okay,” says the old man.

The boy points to the sausage. “Would you like some of this stuff?”

“Yes, please.”

“How much would you like?”

“I’ll say ‘when.’”

The boy wrinkles his face. “When?”

“It’s what people say whenever they’ve had enough of a good thing.”

The boy still doesn’t understand. “They say ‘when’?”

“That’s right.”

The boy starts dishing up the faux-meat patties until the old man says, “When.”

“Would you like an apple or banana?” the boy says.

The old man shakes his head. “Only fruit I eat comes in a wine glass. But I’ll take some orange juice.”

The boy removes a plastic cup from a stack. He fills it from the Star-Trek-like juice dispenser.

“How…

“I’ve never met a blind dog before,” said the little boy.

He was a foster child, his foster mother was with him. We were all introduced by chance in a public park.

The boy watched my dog, Marigold, walking along, bumping into a nearby fence. We were out for a potty-break. Marigold was trying to find a suitable patch of grass to do what I call, “leaving constructive criticism.”

The boy watched us in rapt wonder. We are a team. Dog and man. Marigold and me.

I am Marigold’s “Seeing Eye” human. My job is to guide her through this world of woe. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m trying.

And at this particular moment, I was following Marigold closely with a plastic baggy over my hand, ready to do my duty.

“Why is she blind?” the boy asked.

I chose my words carefully. Because how do you tell an innocent foster child that somebody took a blunt object to this puppy’s head and destroyed her eyes?

How do you tell a child there are humans out there who would use

a length of rebar as a weapon against a soft, floppy-eared puppy?

“Someone hurt her,” I said.

“Why?”

“Not everyone’s a nice person.”

The boy’s eyes grew serious. “Yeah. I know.”

He looked at Marigold prancing along and said nothing. He just observed.

The kid was maybe 6. He wore Levi’s and a striped shirt that showed his little belly. His hair was strawberry. Opie Taylor eat your heart out.

His foster mother said he’s had a rough life. And that is all I’m permitted to tell you about him.

He watched Marigold with great interest. Marigold walks with a cautious gait. Sometimes she high-steps like she’s hiking through tall grass. She does this so she won’t stumble on any sudden obstacles.

We’ve been working on things, every day. When we go for walks, off-leash, I…

You’re going to be okay. That’s not an opinion. It’s not a guess. This isn’t some trite little catchphrase from some crappy motivational book that reads like it was written by a greasy televangelist.

You’re going to be okay. It’s the plain truth. You really are going to make it through this junk you’re going through.

So relax. You don’t have to do anything to make everything okay. You don’t have to close your eyes extra tight, grit your teeth, use magic words, or clap for Tinkerbell.

Deep in your soul, you know it’s coming. You know everything will be all right, eventually.

Yes, things are bad. But you have a little, infinitesimal voice speaking to you right now. And this voice is reading these very words alongside you and saying to you, “This guy’s got a point. It really WILL be okay.”

This is not your voice. It’s a voice that comes from somewhere else. The problem is, you can’t always hear this faint voice talking. Namely, because you’re too busy freaking out.

But believe me, the voice is there. And every time you take a

few moments to breathe, you’ll hear the voice. It chatters softly, originating from somewhere near your chest area.

“You’ll be okay,” the gentle voice will say again. “It’s all going to be okay. You’ll see.”

Also, the voice says other things like: “You’re not fat. You’re not stupid. You’re a smart person. You’re good enough. You’re very fortunate. You’re a miracle. Everyone really likes you, with the possible exception of your mother-in-law.”

Yes, you’ve been through some tight scrapes. Yes, your body bears the scars of private wars you’ve waged. But you’ve survived each cataclysm. You have proven everyone wrong. You’ve always been okay.

So I know you’re sitting there scanning this paragraph, wondering why you’re still reading this drivel, when I obviously know nothing about you.

But you’re also thinking about how…

It’s not because of the gifts.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas presents. But to be truthful, I could take them or leave them.

I was raised by deepwater fundamentalists, children of Depression-era people. For holidays, we got a generous helping of Jack squat.

When I was 10 years old, for example, I received a pair of khakis, baseball cards, and a can of smoked oysters.

“I don’t care about gifts,” my grandmother would often say as we unwrapped presents. Then she would recount a childhood story about how she had no shoes at Christmastime.

Meantime, Granddaddy would be eating my oysters and speaking with a full mouth. “Speak for yourself,” he’d tell Granny. “Getting presents excites the hell out of me.”

It’s not because of snow. In my part of the world we don’t get much snow. Things are never bright white and snowy. Things are gray and soggy and everyone has seasonal affective disorder. So instead of making snow angels we just consume alcohol.

It’s not because of the food. My people eat

a diet consisting almost exclusively of various cheese products and refined sugar at Christmas. I usually gain, at minimum, 60 pounds every year.

It’s not because of Christmas parties. Although, I do miss parties. I read one study claiming that Christmas parties are down 87 percent from the 1970s.

“Americans just aren’t into Christmas parties…” one study said. Parties in general are becoming a thing of the past. The study even stated that fewer high-schoolers are partying now than ever before in history. “They’d rather play on their phones,” said the study.

It’s not because of Christmas music. Although I do love when the radio plays Bing and Old Blue Eyes. I love Gene Autry singing about what jerks Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen were.

Neither is it because I love household decorations. I love a good balsam fir, and twinkly lights warm my…

Morning. I am seated on a bench in downtown Thomasville with the ghost of someone’s granny beside me. I can feel her spirit, whoever she is. This is her town, where life still ambles slowly. Being here is like taking a trip into the 1950s.

“Not a bad town, huh?” says the ghost.

She wears a bell hat, and a floral dress. Nobody can see her but me.

“It’s nice,” I say.

“City of Roses,” she tells me.

“How about that.”

“It’s changed some,” she says.

The flawless storefronts, getting decorated for Christmas, catch the morning sunlight. Markets and cafés are opening. And the ghost is right, it’s perfect. All that’s missing is Opie Taylor.

“You from around here?” I ask the ghost.

She doesn’t answer.

It’s as though time has overlooked the City of Roses and its elderly patron saint. I look around and immediately travel backward into an earlier age. Her era.

An era when Americans were a little more innocent, and the highest technology we possessed was the KitchenAid mixer. A period before 5G wireless networks, before Netflix, and

before the advent of thong underwear.

On cue, a restored Chevy Bel Air passes us, rolling by slowly. Baby blue. White-walled tires. And I’m three quarters of a century away.

Truman is in office. Flags still wing from every post, pole, and porch. Ninety-seven percent of Americans still read a physical newspaper (whereas today it’s only 4 percent). Hitler’s War is long since over, our boys are home from hell. There are new possibilities in the wind.

The old woman is smiling now. We are back in her heyday.

This is the generation that features both the birth of rock and roll and the “Grand Ole Opry.” A time when mankind will begin producing Fords and Chevys with tail fins tall enough to slice low hanging telephone wires.

This historical period will also include the Cold War. American…

Somewhere in Georgia. The gas station pump had a TV in it. All gas station pumps have TVs now.

If you buy gas in America, you have to watch loud commercials, selling everything from smartphone apps to foot powder. And in true TV-commercial fashion, the ads are roughly the same volume as a nuclear weapons field test.

So there I was, pumping gas, trying to ignore the ad for hemorrhoid cream, when I noticed a car pull beside me. It was an old-model Nissan. Lots of rust. Dings everywhere. The car made more noise than a tambourine salesman riding on railroad tracks.

A guy stepped out. He was big and portly. He wore a thick white beard. The tips of his mustache were waxed. He wore red, from his head to his foot. His eyes, how they twinkled. His dimples how merry. His radio was playing “Hotel California” by the Eagles.

He stood beside me, pumping gas, checking his phone, and he saw me looking at him.

“Hi,” he said.

I could not find the words. “Are you…?”

He nodded.

“You mean

the real…?” I said.

Nod.

He was on his way to Atlanta for a gig. He would be visiting a group foster home. I asked what it would be like, visiting all those kids.

He shrugged. “They’ll sit on my lap. They’ll tell me what they want. They’ll ask if they can pull my beard. I’ll give them a candy cane.”

“Is it real?”

“I don’t use fake candy canes.”

“I meant your beard.”

“One hundred percent Santa.”

I asked what sorts of things kids in orphangaes request for Christmas. He said it’s been the same wishlist every year. Only the names of the children change.

“Last year,” he said, “a little boy asked if I could ask God to let his mother into heaven after her overdose.

“I had a girl cry on my shoulder and beg…

The man in the nursing home began his story in a slow, weak voice. He was in his wheelchair. Facing the window.

I was 30, writing an assignment for a community college class. Creative writing. The nurse at the main desk said she knew of a man with a Christmas story worth telling.

And he told it well.

“It was a cold night,” he began. “The snow falling wasn’t snow-snow. It was more like white bricks. It wasn’t a ‘white Christmas.’ It was a hard one.”

The year was 1938. The place was Avondale, Alabama.

It was the apex of the Great Depression. Although that’s not what people called it back then. They simply called them “hard times.” And they were hard. Bone hard.

The family lived in a ratty apartment. There were four of them. A mom. A dad. Two kid brothers. They were hard up.

The two boys were good kids. Obedient. Well-behaved. Freckled. Their paw worked at the textile mill. Their mother did too. In fact, in a few years, the

boys would be working at the mill also. Kids worked at mills in those days. Different times.

What the boys wanted that year were bicycles. But family Christmases were pretty lean. When you can hardly afford enough beans to feed two growing boys, you don’t buy bicycles.

The boys, for example, ate ketchup soup for dinner. The parents frequently ate oxygen casserole.

One year, for Christmas, the boys were out collecting scrap tin to raise money for their bikes.

As I said, different times.

When the boys finally raised enough gathering tin, they went directly into town to exchange their tin for cash. On the way home, something happened.

They found something. A roll of money. It was 10 one-dollar bills, wrapped in a rubber band. It was lying in the street. In the gutter.

In 1939, $10 was worth $200. At least. It was more…

There was a knock on the door.

At the time, I was helping my cousin erect his Christmas tree. His wife was lending moral support by playing on her phone, occasionally pausing to administrate.

“Can you answer the door?” asked my cousin.

I opened the door. There were five or six children on the porch. They were dressed in warm clothes. One girl wore a furry hand-warmer. Another boy wore an oversized stocking cap. One kid’s sweatshirt read, “Dear Santa, less junk from the Dollar Store this year, please?”

“Can I help you?” I said.

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” they sang. Their mothers were on the sidewalk, videoing with phones. The kids sang two verses, although technically, not at the same time.

“No Girl Scout cookies?” I said.

“Would you like to hear another song?” said the spokeschild.

“You know any Skynyrd?”

“How about ‘Angels We Have Heard On High?’”

They sang beautifully. Then, they followed it up with “Away in a Manger.” My cousin happened to have some leftover Halloween candy in a bowl. I

offered candy, but the kids refused, since their little brother can’t have any. He’s a diabetic. Although this was not his main illness.

Instead, they told me they were raising money for Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The youngest choral member presented a repurposed baby-wipe container—a plastic cylinder with a slot in the top labeled, “Donations.” You could put coins, cash, or checks inside. “And my mom takes Venmo,” he added.

My, but times have changed.

The kids are doing this on their own because one of their little brothers spent a long time in the hospital—he’s the one who can’t have sugar. His life was saved by doctors at Saint Jude.

In case your were wondering, Saint Jude sees 8,600 kids per year. From all 50 states. They have 77 beds for those needing hospitalization. They have 5000 employees and counting. It…

A small bar. The Christmas decorations were already up. Thanksgiving wasn’t but a few days deceased, but the halls were officially decked.

I got a burger and a tall beer. The beer came in a mug the size of a flowerpot. The burger was more breadcrumbs than beef. An old food service trick.

He was sitting at the bar. Young. Cleancut. The full face of youth. His head was peering into his glass. As though glass were going to talk back. It didn’t. Glasses rarely do.

“Last night, I asked Erin to marry me,” he said to the bartender.

The bartender, a woman comfortably in her 60s, leaned on the bar. Back in the days when you could smoke in Alabama establishments, this woman would’ve most certainly been doing so. They knew each other, apparently.

“You finally asked?” the barkeep said. “Oh, baby. What’d she say?”

“Well, that’s the thing. What I was thinking? I should’ve never asked her. What right do I have? We’ve only been dating five months. Erin could find a guy WAY better than me. There’s

no doubt. I don’t mean that I’m a bad guy, but she’s way out of my league, we both know that.

“She’s beautiful, she’s sweet. Every place I take her, all the guys are usually pretending to be looking at something in her direction. She’s smart, she just told me she wants to go to school to be a nurse someday. Did you know that? She doesn’t have any money to do school because her mom and dad kicked her out when she was eighteen.”

I prepared to take a bite of my burger when I noticed something unusual. My burger had a hair in it.

“She has two kids now,” he said. “Same daddy. I have no business taking on kids. Do I?

“I’m almost thirty. And I can’t believe I’m even considering it. I have no idea what…