July 5 is on a Saturday for the first time since 2008. There have been a couple of interesting days when the day after America’s Independence falls on a Saturday.
The last time July 5 was on a Saturday, I was in northwest Arkansas visiting Elizabeth Rogers–Renetta’s mother–for a few days. I went to the Fayetteville Country Club on the Fourth with Liz and ate dinner with Renetta and John, Liz’s wife and Renetta’s father. The next night, Liz and I went to Ruth’s Chris in Rogers. Ran up a $200 tab, and I tipped $60.
I ate at Ruth’s Chris in Kansas City less than three weeks later, and haven’t visited again, because (a) all of my dress clothes don’t fit my fat ass and (b) going there would remind me too much of Renetta and Liz. Also, the Kansas City Ruth’s Chris closed in March, meaning the closest one is now in Denver anyway.
The second tale of July 5 on a Saturday goes way, way back to 1986. My brother and I piled into the back seat of our family’s 1978 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon and set out for Royal Oldsmobile on Veterans Boulevard in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, determined to replace the station wagon. After a test drive and a few hours in the showroom, my parents had a deal to buy a brand new Oldmsobile Delta 88 for a few dollars south of $13,000. My parents bought the station wagon when my brother was born in 1978, but by that time, they figured the station wagon guzzled too much gas, so they traded it in for a full-sized sedan, one which lasted almost 12 years and made some long trips, including two to Russell and one each to Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and St. Louis.
It was the third of four Oldsmobile vehicles my mother would drive from 1969 through the end of 2001. In January 2002, she bought the Toyota Camry she still drives and gave me the last of the Oldsmobiles, an Eighty-Eight which was a great car. Too bad I smacked a deer on US 183 north of Hays in October 2005. It could have lasted at least three more years I think, although getting it serviced was beginning to become a real pain in the ass, since General Motors discontinued the Oldsmobile marque in 2000, and more and more dealers didn’t know how to service them. I faced the same problem with my Pontiac Grand Prix at the end of its life in 2010 and 2011. I thought about a G8 really bad when it came time to replace the Grand Prix, but my dad said no way, and I ended up with the Impala. Good decision.
The most momentous July 5 was not a Saturday. It was a Sunday, and it ended with me spending almost four hours in the emergency room at St. Luke’s Northland hospital in Kansas City.
I went to Kansas City that Thursday. I should not have. I was already starting to see blood in my urine, and it got worse during the weekend at the Kansas City Airport Marriott. I also made visits to Buffalo Wild Wings on Missouri Highway 152 near Liberty–the location at Zona Rosa was still a year away–and ate my usual fare of wings, which didn’t help matters any.
By Sunday afternoon when I got back from B-Dubs, the pain began to become unbearable. I had not been in that much pain since the pneumonia and collapsed lung which put me in the hospital for two weeks in November 2004, and I finally decided enough was enough. I writhed in pain in the waiting area for an hour before a doctor finally saw me, and an MRI quickly got to the root of the problem, a urinary tract infection and kidney stones, which I had passed in the bathroom back at the hotel. I was scared at first it was prostate cancer or an inflamed prostate, but that checked out fine.
I was prescribed antibiotics to clear the UTI, and Hydrocodone for the pain I was experiencing. I was still hurting the next morning when I drove to the Walgreens in Liberty to get the prescription filled, but by that afternoon, all was right in my world again. I slept very well and drove back to Russell the next day. Thankfully, I have not been to the hospital since.
Foots Prints 