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This is a big trip for me and my sister. We are visiting Pikes Peak to see my dad. And it’s going to be big.
The first thing you should know about my sister Sarah and me is that we like people. It’s just who we are. She and I are both what you’d call extreme “people people.” My father was a people person. And we definitely got his genes.
Columnist and musician, Sean Dietrich, aka Sean of the South, and his sister are setting out to climb Pikes Peak in honor of their father. The man became a runner overnight and frequently ran the Pikes Peak Marathon. His ashes are scattered atop this “fourteener,” as hikers call it, or mountain with an elevation over 14,000 feet. Sadly, the Dietrich patriarch died by his own hand when Sean was just 10. Sean writes eloquently and honestly about his struggles with with forgiving his father. We wish him and his sister a successful climb, good fellowship and peace and healing as they remember their father and his impact on their lives.
This morning, I took a drive through rural Kansas. I pulled over on a dirt road and played a song on the same ground where my father took his own life. I thought I’d share it with you.
Birmingham. I met the old woman for coffee. She was small and slight, with a mane of white. She spoke with a thick Latin accent.
“I have a story for you,” she said.
I arrive at the Opry House a few minutes before rehearsal. My guitar and fiddle cases trip the metal detector, so the security guard makes me open them.
The Soldier was standing on the sidewalk outside the airport, his mother beside him, straightening his collar. His little sister was there, too. So was his dad.
Welcome to Buc-ee’s, Greatest Toilets on Earth: by Sean Dietrich. Buc-ee’s convenience store sits outside Athens, Alabama, like a giant squatting beaver. This Texas-based gas station place is not a mere gas station. Buc-ee’s is a dwarf planet. You’re looking at Six Flags Over Circle K. And the place is packed today. “We’re packed every …
Sunrise in middle Tennessee. It was four in the morning. I left my hotel early to get on the road. I had a long way to go. There was a light dusting of frost on the Smoky Mountains. I could see my breath. I turned on the radio and found a station playing Hank Williams’ …