Busman's Holiday

noun: busman's holiday

1. 1.

   a vacation or form of recreation that involves doing the same thing that one does at work.

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11th St. in Tulsa is not pretty. To be honest

 it's downright ugly. But it is also Route 66, the main

 alignment of the Mother Road through the city of Tulsa. It's charms are 

hidden -- very hidden. It is four blocks

 from my house and I drive it no less than five or six

 times a week, so naturally on my one day off I choose to take a 

busman's holiday and drive 11th St. 

once again. Behind, beneath, and around the multiple 

used car dealerships and auto body shops there are 

buildings which surely have been around long enough 

to see a majority of life on Route 66 -- born in the 40s 

and 50s, modified, desecrated, and yet the bones of those 

buildings are still there. But you have to look for them. 

There are even the bones of some old neon signs here

 and there. Somewhere along the way someone 

felt they were worth saving, but in the 60+ years they

 have existed they have been changed, probably not to 

ever be the same again. Amid the riffraffish landscape, 

I see motel swimming pools turned into gardens, cottage style 

gas stations morphed into tiny offices on

 used car lots, building walls embellished with mediocre 

murals which scream "This is Route 66, people! Come and see what 

I used to be!". It is hard

 -- very hard -- to imagine what it used to be. I spent my

 morning trying to do just that. Here is a fraction of what I found on 11th Street and within a block of it in either 

direction. 

Anyone who visits Facebook will be familiar with this summer's latest gardening

trick.  Cut the bottom off of a head of Romaine lettuce, eat the rest of it, and plunk the bottom into a cup of water and watch it grow. Of course I was skeptical but, by golly, it work Brand-new growth from grocery store produce!  Granted, 

there is not a ton of lettuce but there is enough to make a bed under the egg 

salad I'm having for lunch.  It's been way too long since I've "grown my own", so I feel ridiculously excited about this.