May 30 – “The Road Home”

The tale today is not of my own experience.  The fact that it is second-hand, however, does not diminish its anecdotal significance in the grand scheme of history here on Galveston Island.  OK.  It happened to Chris and she told me about it.  I’ll try to be as exact in the details as I can.  No embellishment from this storyteller.  Just the facts, Jack.

Chris once again had a physical therapy appointment at the UTMB clinic building that used to be a shopping mall on the East End of the Island.  No further news on that front, by the way.  We are still waiting for a call from scheduling on an appointment with the neurosurgeon.  As she left the parking lot and approached the traffic light, she noticed a police car blocking traffic in a rather unusual way.  Dutifully slowing down, she glanced over to see several officers standing nearby with their attention focused on something on the side of the road.  But it wasn’t a “something” at all.  As she reached the stoplight she realized that it was a “someone.”  Though not approaching at all, they had their eyes on a man, and appeared to be engaging him in conversation.  The man himself was the “star” of the event.  Seems he was wearing a hospital gown with one of those blue plastic bed cover things around his waist.  An ambulance was approaching, so she assumed the poor fellow would be cared for very soon.  Interesting.

She headed home down Broadway, and turned left onto 61^st Street, two of the busiest streets in town, especially during tourist season.  As she completed the turn, traffic was moving quite slowly.  Now that in itself was not so unusual, but as she advanced a little further she saw the cause of the slow-down.   A man on a bicycle was riding in a figure-eight pattern, part of which brought him over onto the busy street.  And the whole time he was screaming - at cars, at people, at the sky.  Chris carefully gauged his pattern, and when he began the path that led him away from the busy street, she hurried on past, eager to avoid becoming an object of his fury.

A little further down the road she noticed another flurry of activity off to her right.  There near a small picnic area near a bait shop sat a person.  Chris couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, though I will use the grammatically correct non-gender specific version of “he” in my reference.  “He” was extremely dirty, from head to toe, one of the reason his gender was suspect.  His hair was dirty and stringy.  But the part that stood out the most was his movement.  His hands were in constant motion, waving in the air, forming shapes with his hands.  He also seemed to be talking, but no one was around him.  Now Galveston has quite the population of homeless people, especially during the summer months, so sadly, seeing a sight such as this is not so unusual.  It did seem to put a cap on Chris’ foray into the Twilight Zone that is the Road Home from PT.  Well, at least until she arrived at our house to find her husband waiting at the door for her.  And her dog.  Just waiting … waiting … waiting …

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Father, show your love and protection to all of our wacky wonderful characters here on the Island.  Amen.