Dave Barry writes a lot of really silly stuff. Every now and then, though, he writes about something that's quite serious, and he typically does it in a way that gets into your head and lodges there for a season or two. Here's an example, from the year his column won the Pulitzer:
LOST IN AMERICA DAVE BARRY Sunday, November 29, 1987
My mother and I are driving through Hartford, Conn., on the way to a town called Essex. Neither of us has ever been to Essex, but we're both desperately hoping that my mother will want to live there.
She has been rootless for several months now, moving from son to son around the country, ever since she sold the house she had lived in for 40 years, the house she raised us in, the house my father built. The house where he died, April 4, 1984. She would note the date each year on the calender in the kitchen.
"Dave died, 1984," the note would say. "Come back, Dave."
