Well, you know I’ve been through it
When I set my watch back to it
Livin’ on Tulsa time— Daniel Flowers
August 7: After my nearly 7,000-mile road trip, I arrived back in Tulsa late Saturday afternoon after being caught in a rain storm near Sallisaw. It was the only really bad weather I’ve had on the trip — and it wasn’t all that bad.
So now I’m back at Marlon and Jeri’s, where I always feel at home. They are fun and welcoming and their home is beautiful and filled with love. Annie can run free in the backyard, though she tends to stay close to me, and I don’t have to think about packing and loading the car for a few more days.
And Annie has a playmate:
Marlon and I met Derek, Kelly and kids at Yokozuna for dinner on Saturday night. I had the same excellent grilled salmon as last time and a bite of Marlon’s Hot Mess sushi — and a got the same fortune cookie message “Eat more, you’ll be harder to kidnap.”
Jeri had spent the weekend at Disney World with Darci and her family. She got home Sunday evening, and we went to Tijuana’s, a neighborhood Mexican restaurant that had the best Mexican food since Alejandro’s two months ago and maybe the best since Texas. Two other outstanding dinners were at Red Rock Grill and Ti Amo, where Darci joined us. As always, with Marlon and Jeri, there is excellent red wine.
Earlier that morning I drove to my old neighborhood on South Cheyenne where Joyce and I lived in a garage apartment after high school. While a lot of the houses had been razed and replaced by high rises, the house at 1614 South Cheyenne was still intact.
Through the trees I caught a glimpse of the garage apartment where Joyce and I had lived. I had to get a closer look so I drove down the alley, and there it was, looking exactly as it did in 1960, even to the color of the paint.
The apartment had a small living room with a sofa bed, a bedroom just big enough to push a bed against one wall and a wardrobe closet against another, a tiny kitchen, and a miniscule bathroom. Tears welled in my eyes as I thought of Joyce, wishing she were alive to share memories with me.
. . . Joyce grabbing the trash can and heading downstairs to introduce herself to the cute boy in the apartment below us who was washing his black sports car in the alley. I was too shy to go with her, so I watched from the small window on the kitchen door. A few minutes later she came back with a frown on her face. Seems he had a steady girlfriend and even Joyce’s considerable charm didn’t tempt him.
. . . our landlady coming into our apartment one day while we were at work and rearranging our furniture. We moved it back to the way it was. After all, we were each paying $30 a month for rent. The place was ours.
. . . turning a photo of my grandmother face-down on a table because I could feel her disapproving stare as boys came and went in the apartment. The coming and going was all very innocent — that was 1960, barely removed from the prudish Fifties, and while we flirted like crazy, the boys didn’t get much more than a few kisses when they came to see us.
. . . the ex-captain of the Bristow football team, asking me to marry him as we sat on the sofa one night. I laughed because I thought he was joking. Someone as popular as Joe would never want to marry me. When I ran into him two decades later, he told me he had been devastated that I’d laughed at him. I felt bad then, but at age 18 I hadn’t yet realized that high school was not real life.
. . . standing in the tiny kitchen with my future husband and feeling let down by his goodnight kiss. After just a few weeks of dating, the thrill was gone. Should’ve listened to that feeling.
. . . coming back from the laundromat with a basket of clothes under my arm when a kid whizzed by on a bicycle and reached out to pinch my breast. His aim was good and he managed to give it a firm tweak. I was mortified. Later I thought it was funny. Now I think of the arrogance of the little shit to think he had the right to do that.
Strange what sticks in your mind.
I tried to remember where and what we ate, Joyce and I . . . we couldn’t afford to go out unless we had a date, so I guess we cooked, but I can’t remember ever cooking a meal. I longed to talk to Joyce. She always remembered more details than I did about our past.
Neither Joyce nor I had a car so we either walked or took the bus everywhere. We both worked downtown and in good weather we walked the mile or so to work; in bad weather we waited at the bus stop.
Today, many decades later, I walked around the neighborhood, Annie in tow, and tried to remember my 18-year-old self walking these same streets.
Moving back to Tulsa would be like going back in time, without Joyce to help create new memories to overlay the old ones.
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