Playing Cards with Little Sister
My sister and I sit cross-legged on the front porch, playing cards. I am losing. Not that this matters.
We are really into the game right now, slapping cards on the porch floor.
Sean Dietrich
One Night in Lancaster, PA
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The windchill is negative four and I can no longer feel my unmentionables. I’m about to play my fiddle and tell funny stories to a room of people at the community center.
Attention Deficit Device
I am playing the fiddle near the swimming pool at my hotel in Dothan. I always play in the mornings. Routine. I’ve been on the road for 14 days, playing music and performing my one-man spasm in different states.
The View from Lincoln’s Steps
I am on the steps of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. The birth site of an American president. And it’s humbling.
No. Not just “humbling.” It’s humble. This humble cabin in which Lincoln was born is situated inside a proud Neoclassical memorial building made of both Tennessee marble and Connecticut granite. The cabin still has mud caked between the logs. The wood is rough and splintered. Just the way it was two hundred years ago.
One Afternoon at Winn Dixie
The kid was filling a shopping buggy. He was reaching for a bag of tortilla chips on the top shelf. I saw one of the older ladies in our aisle reach upward and remove a bag of Tostitos for him.
Whatever Happened to…?
Idiots complain. And I’m not a complete idiot. Idiocy is all about percentages. I’m only 40 percent idiot, the other 75 percent of me is bad at math.
The Illustrious Marigold
My granddaddy said you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat a dog. Someone who treats a dog badly, is a bad person. A person who treats a dog with regard and deference is a good egg.
Highway 30A
I came into town driving on Highway 331. The sun was setting. The sky was pink. The first thing I saw was the bay of my youth, and I almost started to cry tears of nostalgia.
Whereupon a motorist in a Range Rover traveling upwards of 190 mph tried to run me off the bridge and into the bay water.
Welcome home.
Pound Cake
The things I could write about pound cake. I could go on and on and bore you to death, so I think I will.
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.
Little Boy
The pediatric oncology ward is a scary place. I don’t care who you are, or how tough you think you are. You walk through this part of the hospital and you’re scared spitless.
People Watching
It was a crowded airport. I was between layovers. I sat at the airport bar.
The man beside me was nursing a cold beverage. I ordered a beverage, too, but I realized I had forgotten my wallet. It was in my checked bag. I had been fiscally castrated. I was penniless.
The waitress brought me ice water.
The Dropout and the Rail Splitter
Hodgenville, Kentucky, looks like your all-American postcard town. Brick storefronts. Flawless Colonial houses. No flamingos in the yards. The kind of place where you’d expect to find Jimmy Stewart working at the drugstore soda fountain, and kids playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.
Home of the Throwed Roll
Foley, Alabama. It’s an overcast day at the beach. Lambert’s Cafe is already busy this morning, and they aren’t even open yet.
There is a small line forming outside the front doors. Lambert’s opens at 11 a.m., but We the People are ready at 10:48. We stand outside among a small group of tourists, ready to eat ourselves into type II diabetes.
For the unbaptized, Lambert’s is home of the throwed roll.
People With Dogs
I took my dogs for a walk. It was sunny. High 80s. The blossoming trees made Crestwood smell like heaven.
The first person I met was an old man, sitting in his yard. He was beneath a massive oak. He ate from a hospital tray, sipped tea from a straw. He wore a Gilligan hat. His nurse was seated with him.
I was walking past his house and he spoke to me because everyone talks to you when you have dogs. It is a universal truth, unrefuted by science.
Opry
As a boy, my father used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry and drink beer in his garage.
We were Southern Baptists, and Baptists do not drink beer inside, only in the garage. Occasionally they smoke out there, too. But only when your mother is out of town visiting her aunt Cynthia.
The Hunt for Ink and Paper
It was a small town. Somewhere in the Southeast. Big shopping complex, off the interstate. Best Buy, Red Lobster, Ulta, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Target, and all other franchises that transform American towns into carbon copies, from Oil Slick to Shining Oil Slick.
Three Dog Night
In light of the critical world events taking place in the news, I know many of you are anxious to know more about my dogs.
The Kid Who Peed on Me Taught Me How to Live
It’s been years since I swam in the Gulf. And I mean really jogged into the surf, hurled myself into the breakers, and let other, much younger swimmers pee on me.
Ten Years
Sometimes, I don’t know how I’m going to produce another column. Sometimes I feel like a total impostor. But then, inevitably, something always happens to push me forward.
Bar Food
I am at a bar. It’s loud. There is live music. And cheeseburgers. I missed dinner tonight because I was making a speech at a dinner banquet. Which is ironic when you think about it.