FRIED EGGS & THOSE THAT GOT ME TO THE RIGHT PLACE: Passion Week 2025 is done but I’m certain it will never be over. Perhaps because this Friday is my mom’s birthday & I’m not fond of the place where we’ll celebrate or today is the 23rd year I’ll celebrate my grandad’s 1909 birth without him, or maybe last Saturday between Good Friday & Easter Sunday, I found myself 4,473 days to the day I & my family chose triumph over tragedy or Easter morning’s 3rd cup of coffee as I watched previously unseen by my eyes University of Tennessee football highlights of 1973 & watched a man that influences me to this day sprint 40 late 4th quarter yards to paydirt & take down Georgia Tech or the real meaning of Easter & a man’s sprint through his last week, especially Thursday when He washed the feet & ate with 12 men that He knew would sell him out with sleep & silence & silver before He offered another man the ultimate second chance on Friday on a Holy Land hill gets more real every day or maybe, as I try to stay young while growing older, last weeks early mornings in a dark gym with the ringing “de-dah” solfege of a dribbled basketball bringing me closer to those that helped get me closer to the right place. Saturday night I found myself with my tribe at a little burger joint. As we all pondered the menu, I found myself in conversation with a black man who as our talk ended, asked if I’d ever been there before. I said no & as he told me I was in the right place, he extended a fist, & we exchanged, not a fist bump, but gave each other five with our fists like it was the ‘70s & he said, “brother, I know you’re in the right place”. A fact I confirmed when I ordered one of the house burgers that came topped by a fried egg & one of the options for the egg was “runny” as I considered last Wednesday when I told myself “you’re in the right place” as my father tapped me on the shoulder from beyond, after 40 years of wandering between virtue & vice, I discovered as most prodigals do, the departure point where the eggs are nothing but scrambled & the arrival point where they’re fried just right are the same port of call, 40 years after my Grandad lovingly threw his arm over my shoulder & stated as it was apparent I wouldn’t be a 3rd generation plasterer, “you can’t put in what the good Lord left out”, his way of telling me God had other trails for me to break, as I prepare to add faculty member & A.D. to a writing gig that’s getting runway clearance at about the same age my Grandad filed his retirement notice. And I thought about others that got me & still get me to the right place, from scrambled eggs to runny fried. Those I can only thank now by helping others handle their eggs, names not pictured like Farrow, Hoover, Pitts, Chapman, Vaughn  & those pictured along with my Dad & Grandad named Moser & Careathers that believed in me & some other boys in blue & orange long ago, that still pour over me like that egg over my Saturday burger, in just the right place…& if you have any fried egg types still around, thank ‘em while you can.