Coming Home (Part 2/3)

This post is part two of my story. Part one can be found here.

There are roughly 684 miles between my spot in upper lot and my parking spot on the road alongside the house across the street from my home. It's a journey I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years; I thought that I knew every last stretch of road I would come across. But as it turned out, God had plans for using that very same road to stretch me.

This story is all true.

***

Tulsa is a bizarre place. I suppose it's because of how incredibly Christian the whole city is, but you can't seem to do much of anything without dealing with folk who are in the ministry.

Even so, I'm still always a little wary of telling people I go to ORU. ORU is a really polarizing place, for anybody who's heard of it--which, in Tulsa is everybody; they seem to either love it or hate it, both with very valid reasons. Nobody is knowledgeably indifferent. So when I got the smiling "Oh yeah?" that's always the response from the tow truck driver as we were pullling out of the QT parking lot, I thought that I might just be beginning a very long and uncomfortable ride.

Then the driver (I hate me referring to him as "the driver" and "the tow truck driver," too; the truth is I just never caught his name, or if I did I didn't care enough to remember it. Either way is a strike against me, not him) said, "I used to--back when I was in high school here--I used to go up to 41st and Harvard, up at ...'s--" He paused.

"Oh yeah?" I responded, faking like I belong in Tulsa and can actually communicate with anyone who really knows the city. Apparently, he was in the middle of a sentence, as he just kept going.

"...and it seemed like every time I went up there Brother Roberts was in the chair next to me getting his hair cut." A longer pause.

"That's funny," I said, sounding every bit as clever as I'm capable, I'm sure.

It was at this awkward pause in the conversation that I first noticed that we were listening to the country-western-Christian radio station...a combination I've stumbled across only in the bizarre milieu of Tulsa's brackish waters of cowboy and charismatic.

And so then he asked me what I was studying. And I told him that I'm a youth ministry major.

An aside is necessary here: I have no shame about my major (I can hear Prof Spears doing his "I am not ashamed of the gospel!" pastor impersonation here, which, if you ever have the opportunity, is completely worth hearing), but I really do prefer to live in peace with people and not hear them tell me about how I'm wasting my life or hear them tell me how teenagers are just all going to hell or hear them patronize me with a "Well, I suppose somebody has to reach out to them, too." It's gotten to the point where I've seriously contemplated manufacturing semi-pseudo-majors to tell people, especially people who -gasp!- I know that aren't Christians. Like maybe I'll tell them that I'm an Ancient Near Eastern Lit major. Or something.

Anyway, it was here that he told me that he was in the ministry as well, something which I still don't really understand his meaning. But, regardless, I asked him how he'd gotten here. Or there. I guess it all depends on how gripped by my story you feel at this point.

He had grown up in Tulsa. He was born in Birmingham, but only because his dad had traveled down there on the thin hope of finding work. All of his extended family, on both sides, lived in Tulsa at the time and, before his memory began to record everything, his immediate family returned. He had gone to school at OU for a time before enlisting. He served some eight years in the military before he became a golf pro. Seriously. Somewhere in Tulsa, there is currently a tow truck being driven around by some guy who probably still could beat the crap out of you and anyone you actually know at golf. And probably miniature golf, too.

Anyway, he worked as a golf pro (which is not the same as a professional golfer) in Tulsa for twenty-five years or so before he felt like God had called him to give it all up to enter the ministry. He served basically as an intern or a disciple to some local Pentecostalish evangelistish guy, signing up for a year-long commitment. About halfway through the year, one of the guys who was supporting the ministry he was working for offered him a job working for him.

Another aside. I know lots of y'all probably watched Friends or Seinfeld or ER or something else hip and relevant in the 90s and early 00s, but while I was in junior high and high school I watched a lot of Matlock. It's a great show. You can actually game plan the show based on what time it is. "Oh, we're at 30 minutes in, there's about to be a red herring and a black dude (whether it's Tyler or Conrad) is about to get beat up." Recently, while it was still on the air, I was heavily addicted to The First 48, which is a documentary show about homicide investigations.

All this to say that I love trying to solve mysteries. So when the driver got to this point in his story, I assumed that the job was somehow going to be related to driving a tow truck. Maybe some of you made that same assumption. Maybe some of you have already skipped a couple of paragraphs down to see how this all ends.

I was wrong, as it turns out. This man--not the driver, but the one offering the position--had invented the world's fastest workstation computer. "Wow," I said, pretty genuinely impressed.

"Yeah," he replied, smiling. "I was the only one who ever sold one. The guy fled the country before any of us could figure out that it was all just a scam. We had all invested, too; my wife and I had put in $200,000, our whole life's savings."

"Oh man," I tried to sound sympathetic. Don't get me wrong; I totally felt bad for the guy, it's just that that amount of money doesn't sound real to me. I can't remember the last time that I had $200 in my bank account.

"Yeah," he continued. "Once the money was gone, that just led to more problems, which led to the divorce." The ease with which he said this part was the really really troubling part. I didn't know how to respond. Divorce is awful for everyone involved, is about all I can figure. I tried to exhale.

"Look at that!" he half-shouted. His excitement was palpable. "That guy's lost his whole wheel!"

There was, in fact, a car stranded on the side of the highway with only three wheels and a distraught looking man standing outside of it. I guess when you're around this kind of stuff all the time, it just becomes a game to see the craziest stuff.

We never got back to talking about his life. I have no idea how this amazing golfer who had savings in the six figures ended up driving around in a diesel powered behemoth, running chain under cars and taking those who could pay from places of brokenness to somewhere where there was restoration, in some sense or another. Within minutes we were at the Saturn dealership.

The waiting room was long and narrow with a TV at one end, a row of windows along the long wall connecting the service area to this holding cell, a row of chairs opposite and facing the windows, and a dining-type table with chairs that rocked slightly in the other end of the room. The lights only worked on the TV half of the room and a woman was sitting, reading some romance novel at the table. Another college-aged looking guy was standing up close to the TV, his backpack in the chair closest to it. He was talking on his cell-phone to someone from church. Well, I don't know that he was talking to somebody from church, but he did call him brother a lot and use a bit of other Christianese, and I watched so much freaking Matlock that I'm pretty sure I'm right. Oh, and the TV was on TBN; this is Tulsa, after all.

And so I sat down, pretty near the center of the room and pulled out the other half of my sandwich and ate and watched them push in my so so sad car. This lasted precisely two minutes and 47 seconds, at which point I needed a new stimulus. I watched the TV for as long as I could before I thought my eyes would start bleeding. (That lasted not so long.) So I pulled out a book and began to read.

An interlude goes here. I want to put in a separate title, that would say something like "The Story of the Book," but I'm afraid that that will be too confusing. So just imagine that there's a big bold title here. Unless that confuses you. In which case, imagine a happy place, take four deep breaths, and continue reading.

It was wrapped in newspaper with some sort of marker writing scribbled onto it. I think it said "From: K.... To: Tim" but I'm not sure, I didn't actually read it. (PS, not really a fan of including names of other people on my blog. it kinda feels like i'm outing them or something. just kinda realized that just now.) I wonder what that says about me. I mean, I can't even emotionally invest enough in an interpersonal relationship that I read what the other person hands to me?

Anyway, it felt like a book...and I was confused. What book could it be? The irony in this moment is that this was one of those we've-had-conversations-about-you-getting-me-this-gift-and-I-still-am-surprised moments I seem to have frequently. It's a good thing that I enjoy surprises because otherwise my absentmindedness would get really annoying really quickly. I tore the paper off. I smiled. She smiled back. This was supposed to be my last night in Tulsa til August, and she tried one last time to persuade me to come partake of 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins with a large group of our closest friends. She was successful in this pursuit, though that's completely irrelevant to the story.

The book was Blue Like Jazz, and it was about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon when I started it. I kinda didn't want to like it...I don't like liking cool things. But it was just so freaking cool.

I couldn't put it down. Every minute it took the mechanics to figure out what was wrong with my car was just giving me more of a chance to read. When they finally came out, they had bad news. I needed two wheels, and they only had one. Another would be coming in the next morning. My RA came and picked me up, and I returned, a little defeated, to my now empty dorm room.

***

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Part 3/3 should be up by Monday. Oh, and it's probably going to be even longer. Sorry.