by Sam Smart

Created on: April 09, 2009

Like Father, Like Son

Marion, Indiana. At approximately 7:20 a.m. in July of 2008, I brush my hair with a wooden, slightly hairy brush in my bedroom. After setting the thing aside on a shelf, I walk downstairs and set the dirty breakfast dishes aside in the kitchen sink, while my nine-year-old nephew, Jakari, who was spending a month's worth of summer vacation with his Uncle Sam (that's me) and family, is eating a bowl of Fruit Loops on the coffee table in the family room watching Cartoon Network. After I went back upstairs to straighten things in my bedroom, ten minutes struck already. Dad, sitting in his red 2005 Ford Blazer near the driveway, was all ready to go. "Let's go," I tell Jakari. "Okay," he says.

I leave my red brick two-story home, and climbed into the front seat beside Dad. The heater was blasting a small amount of heat, circulating around us. Even though the sun was starting to come out of the eastern horizon, the unseasonably cool air of nearly 50 degrees contributed to cranking up the heater. I talked with Dad sparingly. About two minutes later, Dad was beginning to lose patience. He had to get his spinal injection at the Ball Memorial Hospital in nearby Muncie. According to him, he needed to get to the hospital by 9:00 a.m. And days earlier, I volunteered to go with him to drive him back home because he wasn't allowed to drive after receiving the injection. Jakari, on the other hand, decided to tag along with us.

I went back into the house to see what was keeping Jakari. There he was in the kitchen dumping the bowl of leftover milk and several pieces of Fruit Loops into the kitchen sink. Then he rubbed some lotion on his ashy legs in a hallway. I headed back outside, and soon Jakari left too, with the door locked behind him. Once again, I sat beside my father, while Jakari climbed into the back seat of the Ford Blazer. Finally, all three seat belts were strapped on. We were on our way to Muncie.

Once Dad drove onto Interstate 69 at the rate of between 65 to 70 mph leaving Indiana State Road 18, I found that I-69 wasn't congested with traffic. But there was some traffic nevertheless, which moved steadily. Through the front-seat passenger window, I looked at tall gas station signs that were exposed in the cool, misty air, and some of those signs displayed ridiculously high gas prices in digital numbers, averaging $4.00 per gallon. They were just ridiculous, period. Those sky-high prices have been in the headlines all summer long.

In the meantime,

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>