There’s no free lunch, but some real good values

Afew weeks ago my parents came down to visit. They live maybe an hour away, so their visiting is not what this story is about.

Before they left, my father gave the kids some money and told them to tell me to take them to Stone Mountain before school started back up.

I won’t say how much money he gave them because I am fairly certain on two things. 1) My brothers read my articles and 2) I have to be my parents’ favorite child. Surely it was double, or even triple, any money he may have given them for a day trip.

We didn’t go to Stone Mountain, so that is not what this story is about, either. I try to avoid climbing mountains when heatstroke and an ambulance are my most likely method of getting back down.

He just wanted them to have a nice day before the new school year started. Summertime has gone by way too fast, as it usually does.

Yesterday, we were going to ride up to town and have lunch somewhere. I love living where I have to ride to town to do anything. But that’s not what this story is about, either.

The kids called and asked my parents if they wanted to meet us for lunch. The added bonus of meeting my parents for a meal is they usually race to pay for all the food.

Don’t tell my brothers that, though. I doubt my parents would buy any meals for their nonfavorite children.

I asked my children if they would rather us just run to the grocery store and bring some food up to my parents’ house and cook out for them there, to which they both preferred that over a restaurant.

We stopped by a grocery store and stocked up on steak, shrimp, charcoal and all the fixings, then headed up to my parents’ house and cooked lunch.

I may or may not have cooked the steaks a minute longer than I should have. When Pop orders a steak in a restaurant, he always tells the server to tell the chef he wants his steak cooked “where a really good veterinarian still has a chance.” No vet was bringing my steaks back. But they were still good.

Other than the steaks being closer to well-done than rare, it was a great lunch. We stayed well into the evening, then left to come home. Every time we leave, we tell them they need to move on down here to God’s Country. Hopefully someday they will.

I didn’t think much about what we spent at the grocery store. If I did the grocery shopping for the family on a regular basis, we would stay broke. I’m not a smart shopper at all.

But, as I was standing outside in the sweltering summertime Georgia heat, over a grill making it much hotter, I realized that we spent pretty close to the same amount of money on lunch that my parents had given the kids to go somewhere before school started back.

That’s when I realized that I had taken the kids to a place better than Stone Mountain, or Six Flags, or any other park the state has to offer.

I was able to take them to their grandparents’ house. I don’t think there was anywhere else they would have rather been that day. There was nowhere else I would have rather been.

You can tell my brothers to read that last part. It will probably get me some more “favorite son” points. TOBY NIX John Cole, PoliticalCartoons.com