The Boys From Mombasa

Some days the jealousy was more than Sam H. Kent could handle. Every time Sam caught a glimpse of Barack H. Obama on his TV screen, he could see in his mind’s eye the gangly 9-year-old boy with the dazzling smile in the encampment outside Mombasa. Once Sam’s life was guided by the final words from the Guardians as all the boys (each with the middle initial “H”) were put on that big jet for America: “We will guide your way. You will rule the world — if you obey. Defy us — and you will decay.”

Okay, now it all sounds like a bad science-fiction movie. But the Guardians did keep up their end of the deal … for a while. There was a new family, Ma and Pa Kent. A girl friend named Lois. At the University of Iowa, Sam kept finding the answers to his exams in the freezer … the night before the tests were given. Ma and Pa Kent’s tragic car accident left him enough money to buy the Chrysler dealership as a springboard to politics. And a big-name political consultant from Chicago suddenly arrived to run his 1996 campaign for the Iowa state senate.