Literature is not an instruction manual.
What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight.
Savor the imminent weirdness of the day.
Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make.
When blame has been assigned, the story is over.
It's my feeling that any writer can get an emotion into a story without being sentimental as long as the emotion is dealt with honestly, with sufficient clarity, and detail.