Sabbatical -- Day 12; Jonesing for the Extra Sharp

It's Monday. Mom goes to dialysis on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Every week. 4 1/2 hours at a time. Week after week. Dialysis makes her healthy. It also makes her sick. It is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways. Without she would die. With it she lives a bit.

When she went to dialysis I went to Tulsa to get my Weber's fix. 

Weber's Superior Root Beer and Hamburgers celebrated their 85th year a couple weeks ago. The owners Rick and Jennifer Bilby and their daughter, Michelle, run the place. It's a generational family business. Rick has been working there 41 years. It's one of my favorite places on earth. The food is always excellent and the root beer is even better. It's made from the same starter batch used 85 years ago. 

Dad's brother, Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Kathy came up to see Melissa today. They stayed through dinner. 

When we started planning what to eat we decided on a traditional Grandmother Maxine Dallas, my mom's mom, dinner. Pimento cheese sandwiches with sliced ham and bread and butter pickles. I went to the WalMart Neighborhood Market and perused the cheese aisle. The Extra Sharp cheese makes all the difference. Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Pimentos. No mayonnaise, ever. 

We visited well. Mom did OK. Not great, but OK. She stayed with us a long while before needing to get on her bed. When Ronnie and Kathy left we plugged up the BBC Comedy, Mrs. Brown's Boys (thanks Mike and Sonja). Dad and Melissa and I laughed hard. 

Melissa came out of her shell today. One of her high school friends retrieved her and they went shopping and eating. For Melissa her comfort place was Schlotzky's. To each their own. I am really glad she was able to get out and enjoy her friend.

Tulsa has changed a massive amount since I was a kid. Some of the changes are for the better and some are not. 

I went to Riverside Drive today to see what I could see of A Gathering Place. A Gathering Place is a 66 acre recreational and entertainment park being developed along the Arkansas River that runs next to downtown. You can, if you like, read a little about the project here A Gathering Place for Tulsa. The park received an initial $465 million dollar gift from the Kaiser Foundation -- the largest private donation to a public park in US history.

There wasn't much that could be seen. It will open in September, and God-willing I will be back at Christmas to see it. 

As Tulsa has grown, or as the subdivisions and suburbs have grown, the inner part of the city has lost some of its charm. The total population is higher but the number of public school students is down and has shifted geographically. Schools have closed. Crime is up. It's a mixed bag of good things and not so good things. And I guess all of life is like that. Each day, really. Highs and lows. Dark and light. Good and bad. We handle it as it comes at us. Sometimes we have to see the humor when things don't go the way we planned.

I went to Phillips Theological Seminary today to pick up the two hardbound copies of my Doctor Of Ministry Project. Finally, I would have in my hands, a book that I had published. Exciting. I went to the library. The copies were quickly found and placed in my hands. As I turned to walk out with them I noticed that something wasn't quite right. Sometimes. You just have to laugh.

Peace and Love,

Gerald R. JOHNS Jr.