(Note: The first leg of our "When Swing Was King" road trip to San Antonio and then Oklahoma City is described in this Vital Signs Blog post.)...Leaving Bryan and Janet was tough. We had such a good time with them and we so enjoyed ministering alongside them once again. It was like the old days...except better. Also, God answered our prayer that the time together would not merely rekindle our friendship, but even extend and intensify it. Thank You, Lord.
As we prepared to leave San Antonio, we were a little concerned about a low front tire, but Bryan topped it off with his own air compressor and we headed out. To make sure it was doing okay, we stopped in Blanco (about an hour north on 281) and had a fellow check it out. He could find no leaks and the pressure had stayed up, so we resumed our trip towards Oklahoma City. He didn't even charge us. More Texas hospitality. It was a very pleasant trip -- a beautifully sunny day with interesting scenery and towns like Marble Falls, Mineral Wells, and Wichita Falls. We talked, prayed, and listened to tapes of The Shadow radio programs we had got from our local library. We stopped once for gas, once for souvenirs and to write postcards, and ended up at John and Janine Lehman’s lovely house a bit before 7.
Saturday evening? Well, we talked about our trip this far, common friends from Omaha, church, family, their cats, and numerous Oklahoma-related topics including Route 66, tornadoes, the land rush, and the NBA Thunder. Janine had also laid out a pretty ambitious plan for the week and we went through that in order to prepare.
Sunday morning I accompanied John to the church to make coffee and hot water to go with the donuts that are offered in the fellowship hall before the worship service. The church building (including a school) is quite large and pretty and I was pleased to have John fill me in on a lot of the details. John is very involved in helping out there and not only in helping with the grounds, maintenance, and special projects, but also in men’s ministries and children’s ministries. That morning he also introduced me around to a bunch of the guys. Claire and Janine joined us later and we went into the worship service together. It was a fine sermon given by one of the associate pastors. The senior pastor was around and we talked a bit. He's actually from Omaha and I had played basketball with him a time or two back in the day. More interesting, his brother is our pastor here at Community Bible Church in Omaha.
Lunch after church included Chris and Jenny Friend and their family. Jenny is the Lehman’s daughter who we knew from back in the Omaha days. We were always impressed with the quality of her character and ministry so it was especially moving to see what a great wife and mom she has become too. Lunch included some delicious and inventive items that John whipped up including turkey burgers with bell peppers stuffed inside and “spiralized “ sweet potato and zucchini oiled up and baked to a nice turn. The rest of day was taken up with conversation and laughter, my regular walk (Claire joining me for 3.5 miles of it), and our first time playing a card game called Phase 10. Very fun.
After breakfast on Monday morning, the Lehmans took us to some of the must-see locations in Oklahoma City. That started with a drive down Route 66 to downtown where we spent a few hours at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and museum, the grounds outside, and the statue of Jesus weeping. It was a very sad, profound, and unforgettable visit. Then we drove further downtown and through some old neighborhoods for a really grand tour. The highlight? The massive sculptures depicting the Land Rush of 1889 in old Bricktown. I could have looked at them for hours. An afternoon walk and an evening baseball game with a Lehman grandson playing right field took the rest of Monday.
Tuesday started with another interesting drive through town, breakfast at a retro diner, and a quick peek at one of Route 66's most unusual attractions, an historic and truly round barn. We then had our first “When Swing Was King” presentation at a nursing home. We got there super early and was able to spend a lot of time with the residents. For instance, I talked to Norris quite a long time about the house he had built by himself in Berthoud, Colorado. My interest and probing questions really got him going and he explained in detail how he built the kitchen island, how he impressed the inspectors, how he made a mistake with the shingles, and so on. His wife told me later how thrilled she was because he hadn’t opened up and talked like that for a long, long time. Thank You, Lord. And while I was talking to Norris and Peggy and Erline, Claire and Janine were busy visiting with everyone else. Also, the show went great with a lot of help from the staff. Our audience was almost 30 people.
From that show we went right to the next one, this time an independent living group where about 30 more people were on hand. The show was very well-received and there were good visits here too, including a talk with a dapper fellow named Jim who was delighted to meet someone he could talk to about some of the wonderful but lesser-known bands like Jan Garber and Russ Morgan. Walking, a delicious dinner, uplifting conversation, and watching the Thunder vs Nuggets game on TV took care of Tuesday.
A breakfast which included Earl Campbell sausage started Wednesday. (If you don't know who Earl Campbell is, the delight of that menu item would escape you.) I then headed to a nearby Panera restaurant to catch up on some work, mainly the Sunday school series I’m teaching back here in Omaha. But before long, it was time for the next “When Swing Was King” presentation. When we got there, however, we learned it had been unexpectedly cancelled. Bummer. We never learned why, but it must have come from somewhere up top because the activities director was so upset and embarrassed that she was crying as she apologized to us. We tried to encourage her and we again thanked her for the excellent help she had given us at the show the day before, but she was still pretty shook up. Poor thing. Anyway, I used the time otherwise slotted to take the girls shopping while I washed the car. The wind was so strong that day that I got just about as “washed” as the car. But the positive thing was that it didn't take long to dry off again!
We soon joined up and headed to our next presentation. The room was packed to overflowing and the residents (including both nursing home and memory care) absolutely loved the show. One gal in particular I had a good time with. Her name was Joan and she was a little grumpy at first, but as I got her talking about her family, she warmed up a lot. Then when the show got underway, she really got animated – laughing, singing, tapping her toes, swinging her arms, and pointing out details in the photographs to the people sitting beside her. She told me afterwards that she hadn’t had so much fun in years. She was also quite impressed that we had come all the way from Nebraska to throw this great party for them.
That evening I was scheduled to speak to a group of primary school children for the Lehman’s church. I told them a real life story of an encounter I had many years ago with a witch doctor in Africa and then connected it to 2 Thessalonians 3:3. The kids (and the adults too) really zeroed in on the story and the applications. Wonderful. Afterward, Claire joined Janine and I went with John to check the kids in their respective groups on their memorization of the verses from the week before. We had some terrific conversations with the kids and with some of the adult helpers too. In fact, I met a fellow graduate of Bear Creek High School way out in Morrison, Colorado. But it turned out we didn't know anyone in common. No surprise; I graduated the year he was born!
Thursday morning I shifted things around by walking in the morning – 6:30 to 8:30. That made John’s breakfast even more tantalizing. Claire had joined me for an hour of my prayer walk and that’s always a treat. The highlight of the morning (indeed, one of the highlights of the whole trip) was a visit to The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. It was a stunning experience and I could easily have spent the day there. There were a remarkable number of drawings and paintings by such masters as Frederic Remington and C. M. Russell, and an Albert Bierstadt that I'd never seen, Emigrants Crossing the Plains. There were whole sections devoted to cattle drives, Native Americans, a realistic western town, rodeo, firearms, barbed wire, TV and movie westerns, and more; a huge plaster cast of End of the Trail; large bronze sculptures of Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston…and that’s just what we managed to zip through. There was a lot more. We made a few quick purchases at the gift shop and then took off for the next “When Swing Was King” show.
And what a time that was! We set up in the largest room we have ever had to deal with. But we managed well because the staff was overwhelming in their enthusiasm for the program. For instance, they had blocked off all the windows with black curtains, including the windows that were 20 feet off the floor! Very impressive. Then they started bringing in residents. We ended up with 45-50 residents – the largest audience of nursing home residents we have ever had. There were a few guests too and all four of us had a ball working the room and talking to them. John and I took down pictures so we could shoot the projector images on the wall. And that worked perfectly. The images were sharp and really large, so large that everyone had a great spot to see and hear the show no matter where they were. The activities director was more delighted than we were. She said they had never had so many people in that room and had it be so quiet. “They were really into your show! It was really great. Will you come back to Oklahoma City sometime soon?” It was indeed a grand finish to our road trip, one that we are still thanking God for.
But the excitement wasn’t over just yet for us, for that night Claire and I were generously treated by the Lehmans to a local production of The Fantasticks, a play I had longed to see since my days of high school drama. It was a wonderful performance of what ranks as the longest run of any musical – over 50 years. It was in a nifty little theater called the Lyric set in an old neighborhood that's trying to become upscale again. The actors were superb, the set quite fetching, and the play was everything I could have wished for -- touching, romantic, and with profound moral themes. We absolutely loved it. Thank you so much, John and Janine.
I walked again early Friday morning and saw the sun (and a hot air balloon) come up on the Oklahoma plains. Then a last breakfast together and we were off. We were headed to Wichita to visit my sister Sherry and her husband John.
On the way, we stopped at an Oklahoma Information Center for a few more postcards and souvenirs to use as gifts. We even bought each other T-shirts to remind us of the good times we had in OKC. It’s not a long drive and so with a few more episodes of The Shadow, we were in Wichita. We visited a bit with Sherry; went to a coffee, tea, and spice shop with her; and had dinner with Sherry and John at a local steakhouse. Claire made Paleo brownies for dessert back at the Whissen house. In the morning, we had breakfast out with them before taking off for Omaha, arriving mid-afternoon.
Our “When Swing Was King” road trip turned out to be a lot more ambitious an adventure than we had imagined in those first planning stages. And so we returned home tired and feeling pretty far behind other tasks. However, the trip also proved to be more of a blessing to us (and, we pray, through us) than we had imagined as well. The presentations to seniors, the speaking engagements, the deepening of friendships, the sightseeing, even the long hours of driving – all served to inspire as well as stretch us. We will be forever grateful to Bryan and Janet (and Polo and Katie and their children) and John and Janine (and Chris and Jenny and their children) for their phenomenal generosity as hosts and guides and facilitators. And we will be forever grateful to all of you who support Vital Signs Ministries with the prayers, encouragement, and finances which make such enlivening outreaches. Thank you so much.
