Sometimes I just like to go back.

You know. You’ve been going back with me for a dozen years now. There’s nothing like that trip to those red clay memories and to some of you who rubbed that red clay on me back in the day.

Never mind that some of you probably rubbed my nose in it, but that’s not the point. Only one fella did it the good old-fashioned way, strapping on the gloves and putting on a show for Coach Sanders’ seventh-grade P.E. class. I am glad Mike Cosper and I both walked away with a shred of dignity that day.

Oh, there’s another Cosper. Sonny, I think of you, too, sometimes, and I remember those days you’d walk casually into the gym from your office at the Y and swish a 30-footer like it was nothing more than a lay-up. I wonder if you can even throw the ball that far now, seeing that you’re about 60. (Sorry, Sonny, couldn’t resist.)

Of course, we never go back without glancing over at Co-cola Mike. By the way, he and Glory just got back from Gatlinburg again. Man, that makes me mad. The amazing blonde and I wanted to go this time. I called him while they were there, and he was standing outside the old grist mill. I have a picture of the old mill on my living room wall, so when I hung up I just stood and looked at the picture most of the evening and cried. Okay, I didn’t cry, but I probably could’ve.

I think back to when all of our kids were young. As my kids grew up, almost all of our vacations were down to Georgia to see Grandma. After a couple of days at Grandma’s, we’d often head off on vacation with Co-cola’s family sometime between Wednesday and Sunday then be back at Grandma’s and La Grange for church on Lord’s Day. Co-cola always drove their van, Glory sat in the back seat with the amazing blonde, hollering “Watch it, Mike!” every quarter of a mile, and I’d ride shot gun and soak in the sight of the mountains through the window. Rachel, Mal, LeAnn and little Stevie - later to be known as Bathtub Stevie - would be further in the back causing trouble if they weren’t sleeping.

Years have passed, and now Rachel - the Amazing Blonde, Part 2 - has furnished me with two grandkids.

Mal - who once threw up all over Co-cola Mike’s living room floor in the middle of the night and tried to clean the carpet with bug spray - is in California trying to make his mark on the world.

LeAnn is married and is doing the backseat driving for a good man named Ryan. Their first baby is due this summer, so she’ll finally have her own backseat driver before long.

And Bathtub Stevie has finished high school and is still flashing his million-dollar smile around over at Parmers.

But those aren’t the only ones I think of when I go back: There’s my crazy Uncle Raymond and Barbara. I sure miss them and those steaks he cooks for me at their place just across the Alabama line. And I can’t forget the other folks at church, either, including a lady I know as Mary who sends me little notes in the mail bragging about the Crimson Tide or any team from the south that beats a team from Texas. She doesn’t write all that often, though.

Then there are the boys down at the Y, and Andrea Lovejoy who now reads our column from retirement, and the “Heralds” - a gospel singing group once led by Co-cola’s brother Larry - and a sweet lady named Faye Co-cola Mike and I always called “Flip,” and my Uncle Bobby’s wife Eulene and their family, and Uncle Bud and Gloria, and Muscles, and Frog, and Boatwright, and Cool Hand Luke, and a nice church girl I used to know named Sue Brown, and Emily, and Phyliss, and Dixie, and Chase Freeman, and a little six-year-old Georgia girl from church named Kaitlyn who’s dying to move out here to Texas with us, and Preacher Miller, and Mama and Grandma …

All of those, and you, just 15 miles east of the Georgia line …