He was in fifth grade, a young American kid in a small town on the east coast of Scotland. His father was a Presbyterian minister who had packed up the entire family and moved from the hills of north Georgia to the Scottish Lowlands to study theology at the University of Edinburgh, the educational high church of the Presbyterian faith. It was quite a move and full of big changes for the kid. For one, he had gone straight from being a third-grader in Georgia to fifth grade in Scotland. Something about Scottish schoolchildren starting school younger and keeping him with his age group. But he was tall for his age and a voracious reader so that helped. He sort of fit in. He definitely tried to. Every morning he would walk with his father down to the train station, where his dad would catch the Edinburgh train, into the city to theology class. And the kid would go to school and try to keep up with fifth-grade math. Then he started listening to music. And not just any music, but specifically a band named The Beatles. The Fab Four. John, Paul, George, and Ringo. And though he was only in fifth grade, he knew what he had to do. Let his hair grow out of this American crew cut. And somehow obtain a pair of Beatle boots. Pointy toed, ankle-high slip-ons, black. Just like the Beatles wore in all the pictures. First, he approached his mother. She was sympathetic in a distracted way, not really understanding the importance of The Beatles, much less their boots. And besides, there was no Beatle boot room in the clothes budget of a theology student with a wife and three children. The boots seemed unobtainable. And then one day on the playground a kid he barely knew spoke to him. “I’ve got a pair of Beatle boots. Brand new but they’re too small. Come over to my house and I’ll give them to you.” Free Beatle boots. He could barely believe it. His fortunes changed in an instant. And that afternoon he set out walking to the kid's house to get his boots. But Read more [...]

On a road trip back from New Orleans a couple of years ago I decided to drive along the Natchez Trace Parkway for a ways. The Parkway follows the original Natchez Trace, or trail, used by settlers, travelers, preachers, traders, and outlaws beginning in the 1700s and continuing up through the Civil War and beyond. It runs roughly five hundred miles from Natchez, Mississippi to present-day Nashville, Tennessee. In the day, travelers would float their wares down the mighty Mississippi River from Kentucky, Ohio, and the Eastern midwest, to New Orleans, then make the long trudge back by foot or horseback along the Trace. It was a dangerous road, roamed by highwaymen, bandits, and bad men of all sorts. An area rich in the history of early America. On one such journey up from New Orleans in 1809, Meriweather Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame, stopped for the night at Grinder’s Stand, a rough-hewn lodging house near Hohenwald, Tennessee. Before the night was over, in an apparent fit of drunkenness and depression, he shot himself in the abdomen. He did not die quickly or quietly, and it took a self-administered second shot to the head in the wee dawn hours to finally end it. He was 35 years old, and one of the brave, brilliant, and promising figures of his generation. Natchez is a beautiful old city about 170 miles above New Orleans, built right on the river. In its day, cotton was king here, and the city was the richest per capita in the United States. Old ornate antebellum mansions still stand, built mostly with slave labor. The slaves were brought here against their will to farm the massive cotton plantations that fueled the economy. It’s a grim legacy to this place and period of America’s past. I never met a historical marker I didn't like, and there are plenty along the Trace. At Emerald Mound, an eight-acre mound was built by the Mississippians, early Native Americans who first settled here in 500 AD. It is the second-largest in the country and housed Read more [...]

I grew up in the suburbs of a Major Metropolitan Area, as they say, all green leafy lanes and concrete. Plenty of shopping for things I can still never imagine wanting, and way too many cars to carry it all in. But I digress. Actually then there wasn’t nearly as much concrete or cars. Or shopping. And we spent a lot of time riding motorcycles, dirt bikes mainly. On the street. But not street legal. Nowadays such behavior is a sure ticket to a ticket, or worse. But then it was just what we did. We rode to each other’s houses, we rode to the store, we rode to the swimming hole. You get the picture. And I guess the police just had better things to do than pay any attention to a kid on a motorcycle, just riding around his neighborhood. But of course, it’s not like that anymore. And I understand why. Roads are more crowded, cell phones proliferate, and, well, people are just more distracted. Hurtling down the road in 5000 pound rolling SUV projectiles. Texting. Oblivious. Then, adults would wave at us from their cars, smile, maybe stop and roll down the window. “Saw your mama and she said time to get home for dinner.” And then to themselves: “Such a nice boy…” You’re laughing I see. Maybe you know me. But I swear these things actually happened. On a daily basis. And at the dinner table. From my Mom. “Mr. Davis said he saw you across town on your bike after school yesterday. He said you were riding pretty fast.” Me. “Yes ma’am.” My Mom. “You should slow down a little.” Me. “Yes ma’am.” True stories, all. I'm sure my parents worried about me. Don't all parents? But they never tried to stop me. Even then they were learning themselves about letting go. And teaching me to let go, and grow, and make good decisions. Sometimes I even did. Did anyone ever get hurt? Because, you know, motorcycling is dangerous. Yes, sometimes we got hurt. But we also got hurt falling out of trees, and getting Read more [...]

Bought a truck from a gentleman today, white GMC Sierra 1500. Work truck. His wife of 34 years is in the last stages of lung cancer and has already lived well beyond her doctor’s predictions. He was in ill health himself, busted up from 50 years in construction, falling off ladders, lifting more than his back was ever designed for. I went over early to help unload a lifetime of tools from the truck and toolbox. Drills, ladders, levels, sanders: it all had to come out. We unloaded it onto his apartment deck where she sat in the morning sun, reading a book. They offered me coffee and we sat together on the deck. I asked her what she was reading. She laughed and said, “Anything anyone brings me, but I like thrillers and mysteries, the bloodier the better. Nothing too sweet or sugar-coated.” “Reading’s really all I can do anymore,” she said. “Can’t walk, can’t work, can barely get to the bathroom.” We talked about her grandson, off at college freshman year. He liked to fish and they’d given him their bass boat. The gentleman was attentive the whole time, back and forth to the kitchen with his cane, filling coffee cups and the silent spaces with thoughts of his own. A lovely couple nearing the end of this road. We did the paperwork and I handed over the money in an envelope. Nobody bothered to count it. “What’re you going to do with that money?” I asked. “Head down to Mexico?” “I wish,” she said. “Would love more than anything to be sitting on a beach.” “That was always one of our favorite things, being at the beach. Maybe getting in some surf fishing. Just stick the rod in the sand and sit back, watching it, watching the water...” She pointed at her mouth, then at him. “Actually, he’s gotta get his teeth fixed,” she said. “Lost his insurance and hasn't been to the dentist in twenty years. That’s where the money’s going.” A pause. “Think if I knew then what I know now I would have spent Read more [...]