I'm riding with my dad in his truck. Any one of his trucks smelled like corn dust. There is a giant stick shift sticking out of the floor, and all I know is that I'm not supposed to touch it. I'm anywhere between 7 and 13 years old, and we've had breakfast on the road, or maybe lunch at a small town cafe where he has made countless friends and acquaintances (to this day, he doesn't not know anyone).
As we would rattle down the long stretches of road, I still remember listening to WIBC as my head banged against the window through which I watched cornfields, bean fields, and fields with circular hay bales standing watch. I would hear farm reports and then a bunch of words I didn't understand when they were strung together.
Somehow Paul Harvey's voice came through and felt like he was one of us. In fact, because he was on a station that gave the local hog prices, I assumed he was a Hoosier like me. He seemed to fit right in, even though he was--I could sense it in his voice--always wearing a coat and tie.
That "local boy" made the big time, after his death, in this Superbowl commercial from 2013, from a radio spot he wrote in 1978.
I am still thankful to Paul Harvey in 2017 for an ad that went public in 2013 that he wrote in 1978 which I probably heard in 1985 for the first time, because it takes me back to riding in the truck with my dad. Harvey died in 2009, just to throw another year in there.
I never knew why I was riding with my dad; all I knew is that I was. At most, I had the idea we were riding "to get a part". As far as I was concerned, it never mattered.
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