My Father's Gift

(My father, Jay Brandt, on the Playboy Jazz Cruise in 2009)

Like a lot of children, I loved to be told stories when I was growing up. Honestly, stories, both fictional and true, still play a large part in my life, as I am an English major and aspiring poet. 

Unlike most children, however, my father never regaled me with stories about fairies and princesses and castles. I grew up hearing about Krishna and Ganesha, Parvati and Durga.

When he didn't feel like recalling a classic Hindu or Buddhist story, he would tell me one of his own. In his younger years, my father traveled through India and Iran, Russia and France, Afghanistan and Tibet. He tells me that he left the USA with a backpack and $2,000. Mind you, this was in the early 70s. One my favorite stories involves that fact that, while traveling through Afghanistan, he saw "a line of trucks and jeeps, miles long". Apparently, he had no idea what was going on until many years later, when he realized that that was the Russians invading the country.

(My father riding a donkey with children in Iran)

To this day, my habit of living vicariously through my father has not changed. 

This summer, my father, stepmother (affectionately known as 'Smom'), and my two younger siblings traveled to Myrtle Beach on a family vacation.

When they told me where they were planning on going, I nearly started drooling. "Myrtle Beach as in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina?" I said over the phone to my father.

Don't mistake my intentions. I have no interest in beaches or lengthy periods of exposure to the sun and shirtless people who really should be wearing shirts. My drool-reflex was inspired by something else residing in Myrtle Beach, specifically something residing less than two miles from the condo in which my family would be staying: Low Country Pipe & Cigar, the physical location of Smokingpipes.com.

(Image courtesy of Smokingpipes) 

Needless to say, I attempted to rearrange my schedule, to no avail. College does not let you reschedule your classes so easily as one might like. 

So, while my family was enjoying the sunshine of the beach and I would have been whiling away the hours eyeballing extremely expensive pipes, I was forced to learn about basic Political Theory and the writings of Daniel Dennett, which, for the most part, I enjoyed.

A couple of days into their vacation, I received a phone call from my father. "Do you have the Mark Twain pipes from Peterson?"

He's there, I thought to myself, he is standing in my Mecca.