Dad would dream of all the different ways to die.

While driving in that car to the shore -- the shore on the banks of eastern New Jersey –- we smelled the night. The Turnpike night.

Its a smell that you can only smell in New Jersey. A smell that all the foreigners and visitors of this state swear smells like shit, but to us, us locals, it smelled like something else -- home.

And while that swampy, musty, shitty smell of New Jersey seeped in through the cracks between the windows the melodies of “The King of Carrot Flowers” rushed out through the cracks between the windows and out, into the night.

And we all sang.

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