Maude and the Zippo Tybee Island can be a magnet for characters. I took off the recycles this morning. I drive by the campground and see this woman trying to attach her American flag to her camper. She is barely 5 feet tall and petite, stretching to reach. I stop and offer to assist. “Mighty nice of you to stop.” “Well, my Momma tried to bring me up right. Damsel is in distress and all.” “You are a Southern boy, aren’t ya? “And yes, she did. I can tell from your accent. Somewhere up around Tennessee.” I tell her Western Kentucky—Jackson Purchase area. She thanks me and smiles—a big smile. Straight yellowed teeth from years of smoking, I guess. She offers me a cup of coffee. I accept it and the seat. Maude sits down to roast her second Hebrew National’ dawg of the morning. She offers me one. I declined, having had my requisite BLT. She dollops French’s Yellow mustard on each bite. No bread. Gluten, something or another, bothers her. But not her breakfast ‘dawgs. She sports a mop of bright red hair, bright blue eyes, a complexion sprinkled with aging spots. Her hands show ordinary liver spots of age. She has manicured her nails patriotically, with an American flag design on each nail. Yellow muck boots faded, well-worn jeans, a cowboy shirt with pearl buttons, and a bright gold string necklace with a lacquered Ronald Reagan picture complete her ensemble. She pulls a pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes from her shirt pocket, lights it with a well-worn Zippo, and lays them on the table beside her coffee. She buys the cigarettes by the case when she visits Indian reservations. There are no federal or state taxes there, you know? “Excuse me.” She coughs some phlegm and spits. Ask a question and be quiet—the instructions of M/Sgt Wally Bryan. Imitating Jim Williams, the infamous Savannah antique dealer and historic preservationist featured in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, in my southern west Kentucky hillbilly drawl, “Tell me your life story, Miss Maude.” “Well, son, it’s my last trip around the sun. I just turned 90. Outlived my husband and four kids. I bought this camper and have traveled for four years, seeing everything on my bucket list. No one took away my keys. “ She belly laughs. “Not that the trooper in New Mexico didn’t threaten. Doc’s Bar on Tybee is last on the list. I met my husband there on a break from Wesleyan. He was a gun runner; she belly laughed again because that’s what he said on that first date. He always exaggerated. He ran a pawnshop and invested very, very well. I taught school until I couldn’t discipline the kids anymore. Kids need structure and order. I am headed back to my birthplace on Glastenbury Mountain in Vermont. After I left teaching, I was a fire lookout and walked five miles to work daily. I like Vermont, she says.” She smiles again. And I like Maude. As I got up, I noticed her lighter—an old gold-plated Zippo with an American Flag. “Live free or die, Maude.”