Roller coaster

What a roller coaster of a day.

I started the morning with a really fun interview for a story I am working on at the office. I got some decent photos and had a lot of fun talking to my sources and playing reporter again. (After they promoted me to assistant editor for my office last summer, my reporting duties ended, but one of the other zones is a bit short-handed at the moment, so I’m throwing together an extra story to help the editor over there.)

Somebody from Sapulpa called and wanted a couple of copies of a back issue of our section. I was in the mood for a stuffed tomato from Al’s Route 66 Cafe anyway, and I hadn’t poked my head in on that part of our coverage area lately, so I just took the papers over there on my lunch hour.

On the way back, I was coming down old 66 when I saw a bluebird alight on a fencepost. It was stunning — intense blue feathers on its back and wings, with bright coral feathers on its underside. Just breathtaking.

After lunch, I went to do another interview, which started off a little slow but ended up being a lot of fun once the source settled in and got comfortable with me.

Everything was great until this source divulged to me that one of my all-time favorite Route 66 businesses, the Country Store on 11th Street, was about to close.

I was just heartbroken. Once I finished my interview, I headed over there to see what was going on. I posted something about it on Ron’s blog; the upshot is that the store could close at any moment, and if you want to have the slightest chance of saving it, you’d better get in there NOW and buy as much stuff as you can afford. Take cash or your checkbook, because they’ve disconnected the phone line, so they can’t take credit cards any more.

I blew $188 in the span of about 15 minutes. I’ve spent more money in a shorter amount of time, but only once, and that incident involved a cantankerous but utterly adorable Arabian gelding.

If there is good news in of all this, it’s that I now have just about all the seeds I need for this year’s garden, enough flower bulbs to turn my back yard into a wild profusion of color (eight different kinds of tulips, two kinds of daffodils, four kinds of crocus, grape hyacinth, and allium), and I picked up a beautiful birdfeeder to put at the center of my labyrinth. I also bought out the rest of Bill’s black striped sunflower seeds, which I will feed to the cardinals (I have seen several pairs in my yard in the past couple of weeks), and I got a bar of lye soap and a pretty metal hook for hanging baskets of plants.

If the Country Store closes, I’ll have to figure out where to buy all the odds and ends that I’m going to need for my garden. I can probably find a lot of it at the Farmer’s Feed Store in Sapulpa, and the Tomato Man and Li’l Sprouts should have the rest. But it just won’t feel like spring in Tulsa without a trip to see Bill and Kathey.

One more reason to shop indie while you can.

Emily