The Tip Nobody Left wasn’t money. The table was cleared. The check was paid. The dollar bills were there under the edge of the coffee mug right where they were supposed to be. The tip nobody left was something else entirely and it didn’t cost a thing.

I watched a table clear out one morning. Four people. Long breakfast. Lots of refills. The kind of table that spreads out and settles in and keeps the waitress moving for the better part of an hour. They laughed a lot. They were having a good time. When they finally got up and gathered their things and headed for the door not one of them looked back at her. Not a word. Not a nod. Not a thank you.

She came over and cleared the table the way she always cleared it. Efficient. Quiet. She’d been doing this long enough to not need the acknowledgment to get through the shift. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have mattered. That’s the tip nobody left. The look back. The thank you said like it meant something. The thirty seconds it costs a person to acknowledge that another human being just spent an hour taking care of them. This week’s Roadside Notes is about that tip. The free one. The one that follows somebody home.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/10/22/the-tip-nobody-left/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

More Than a Thursday is something I’ve been wanting to say for a while now. A year in, fifty two episodes behind us, and somewhere along the way this counter stool became more than a weekly stop. It became a place I keep coming back to because the writing won’t stay in one lane and the road keeps handing me more than one journal can hold.

So I opened a few more doors. Same diner. Same voice. Just more seats at the table.

Grace To Go lands every Sunday morning before most people are fully awake. A short scripture rooted reflection written the way I’d say it if we were sitting across from each other over coffee that’s still hot. No church background required. Grace on the Ground is the Wednesday companion. One small act of kindness tied to Matthew 25 Lives. Something real. Something anybody can do. And Still Pouring is me stepping behind the counter and telling you what I see from this side of the coffee pot. My story. My road. The things chaplain work teaches you that don’t show up in any training manual.

All of it lives at roadsidenotes.substack.com. All of it is free. All of it is yours. The counter is bigger than it used to be but the coffee is always on. Pull up a stool anytime.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/10/15/more-than-a-thursday/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #GraceToGo #GraceOnTheGround #StillPouring #KindnessForTheRoad #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Loop Ends When You Do. I didn't come up with that. I heard it years ago from someone who said it the way people say things when they've lived it rather than read it. It stayed with me the quiet way the useful ones do. Until the right moment pulled it forward.

That moment showed up at a diner counter on Route 66 sitting next to a truck driver named Frank. Same dispatcher. Same reassigned load. Same promotion that went sideways fifteen years ago. Same slow burn that hadn't cooled one degree in all the time I'd known him. Frank wasn't a bitter man by nature. Funny. Sharp. The kind of road veteran who could read weather and traffic and people with equal accuracy. But he had this one loop he couldn't find his way out of and every time I saw him he was still in it.

A friend had once tried to help by pulling out the definition of insanity. Frank didn't receive that well. He told me the whole story with the same energy he told the dispatcher story, which was a pretty good illustration of the very point the friend was trying to make. Truth delivered like a judgment closes doors. That's not the quote's fault. That's just how people work. This week's Roadside Notes is about the version that lands different. And the day the loop finally ends.

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Man Who Collected Happy didn't call it that. That's just what it was. He traveled for work but somewhere along the way he had made a decision that a few extra days and a road worth taking was worth the longer itinerary. So he took the long way. Every time. And every diner he stopped in, every counter stool he climbed onto, he asked the same question.

What makes you happy.

Not as small talk. Not as a conversation starter he'd forget before the coffee arrived. He actually wanted to know. He listened, filed it away, and when he got home he went through what he'd collected and looked for things he could apply to his own life. Happiness as field research. Joy as something worth studying in the people who had found it. Then he sat down next to me and asked me the question.

I didn't have to think about it long. Helping others is my inner peace. That's the whole answer. He wrote it down. Then he asked what that looked like in practice. So I told him about Matthew 25 Lives. About thirty years in radio and television doing public giving with cameras and headcounts and dollar values. And about the moments that actually stayed with me. The quiet ones. The note left at a counter. The conversation that went longer than planned. No camera. No broadcast. Just a smile given and one received and neither one of us will ever forget it.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: [URL TO COME]

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Empty Stool was the last seat in the house. Every other spot at the counter was taken and the booths were full and the lunch crowd was moving fast and not paying much attention to the young man who slid onto that last stool like he was trying to take up as little space as possible.

He didn't want to be there. Not in the diner, not in the conversation, not in whatever day he was having. He ordered coffee. Didn't look at the menu. Didn't look at me. Stared at the counter the way people stare at things when they're not actually seeing them. I didn't push. I never push. But I did what I've learned to do in those moments. I paid attention and I stayed present and before I left I wrote something down on a piece of paper and left it where he'd find it after I was gone.

I didn't know if it would land. You never do. You just leave the note and trust the road. A few weeks later I came back to that diner and a waitress came around the counter and said she needed to tell me something. The young man on the empty stool was her nephew. She had watched the whole thing. She said something shifted in him after that day. Then she went behind the counter and came back with a slice of pie and said she owed me pie for a lifetime and she intended to make good on it.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/24/the-empty-stool/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

Mile Zero doesn't look like much. It's just a driveway. A cup of coffee going cold in the cupholder. A map you've already looked at three times even though you don't really need it. The engine running. The garage door still open behind you like it's giving you one last chance to change your mind.

That's Mile Zero. And it's the most honest moment of any journey.

I met a woman at a gas station just outside of Kingman who was standing next to her car with both hands wrapped around a paper coffee cup staring at the highway like it owed her an answer. She wasn't lost. She wasn't broken down. She was just at Mile Zero and taking her time about leaving it. I asked her where she was headed. She smiled and said she wasn't completely sure yet. Said she figured the road would sort out the specifics once she got moving. I told her that was about the smartest thing I'd heard all week.

This week's Roadside Notes is about the moment before the first turn. The wide open unwritten nature of a morning that hasn't made up its mind. You don't need the whole map. You don't need every answer. You just need enough courage to back out of the driveway and point it forward. The road takes care of the rest. It always has.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/17/mile-zero/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Regular doesn't always have a name on the sign out front. But everybody inside knows who he is. He's the one who comes in at the same time, sits in the same spot, orders the same thing, and tips the same way every single time. Not because he's a creature of habit. Because he's a creature of commitment. There's a difference and the people behind the counter know it even if they've never put words to it.

Every diner on Route 66 has one. The man in the corner booth every Tuesday morning at seven. The woman who always gets the soup and always stays for a second cup. The truck driver who hits the same stop every westbound run and always asks about the cook's grandkids by name. They're not famous. They're not trying to be. They just keep coming back and that turns out to be everything.

This is episode fifty three. One year of showing up every Thursday without a paywall, without a pitch, without asking anything except a few minutes of your time and whatever the road put in front of both of us that week. This week's Roadside Notes is about what it means to be The Regular. For a diner. For a person. For anything worth returning to. And why reliable turns out to be one of the most remarkable things a person can be.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/10/the-regular/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Man Who Was the Building didn't introduce himself. He didn't need to. You understood who he was the moment you walked through the door at Hackberry General Store and saw him moving behind the counter with the quiet ease of someone who had been doing this long enough that the place and the person had become the same thing.

Mary and I had stopped in on one of those Route 66 afternoons where the plan is loose and the road is doing the deciding. While we were there a group came in from somewhere far enough away that English wasn't the first thing they reached for. He didn't hesitate. Didn't look for someone else to handle it. He just moved toward them the way he moved toward everyone else and started doing what he did. Pointing. Nodding. Smiling the specific smile of a man who has learned that kindness doesn't actually require words to travel. They understood him perfectly. Because genuine welcome doesn't have an accent.

The towns that refused to die didn't survive on their own. They survived because somebody inside them refused to leave. Refused to stop caring. Refused to let the bypass have the last word. He was that somebody for Hackberry. This week's Roadside Notes is about what it looks like when a person and a place become the same thing. And what the counter looks like from both sides.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/03/the-man-who-was-the-building/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives #Route66Centennial