Flying Poodles

Tulsa, OK

I spent five days in Tulsa last week. I had never been to Oklahoma before and I was thoroughly saturated with it.

I watched a huge thunderstorm out the hotel window while I listened to a tornado warning (“you should take shelter in a ground floor room without windows”). My hotel room overlooked the Wal Mart parking lot and at one point during the storm it was about two inches deep in water. The next morning it was blue skies and sunshine.

The TV had numerous stations broadcasting reruns of famous sermons by notable evangelists. An awful lot of people thought it was important to tell me they were “good Christians.” I got a lot of help from an organization that never claimed to be Christian but certainly walked the walk: the HOW Foundation. It’s an organization for recovering addicts (drugs and alcohol); they have coordinators who find them meaningful work. They came and cleared the trash from the condo I was cleaning out, took the usable stuff to the good will, and did the needed yard work. Reasonable rates, came when they said they would, did good and thorough work. The residents stay for six months, during which they work ten hours a day, all but one day a month. I asked one man what he did on his one day off and he said “I sleep.” Another one said “yeah, they keep us too tired to think about drinking any more.”

Steaks were from Kansas, and they were good. Veggies were from the freezer and were okay, at best.

I went to the Oklahoma Aquarium, which has a nice display that is a replica of an Ozark mountain stream, complete with beavers and otters. It is impossible to watch otters swimming and playing in the water and not feel cheered.