One man's home...

Inside my new office

My spring move into this incredibly large space forced me to consider once again so many artifacts I’d boxed and forgotten. Some revived precious memories, others moments of pain and remorse. Since I now have room to put most of them on display, let’s look at how I obtained a small fixture adorning my office.

In the fall of 2009, when I had nearly completed my fourth year as The Journal Record newspaper’s Tulsa Bureau Chief, I faced a rare column deadline – “rare” because I rarely wrote columns in those days. But I enjoyed the opportunities, for columns allowed me to get personal with my readers (like these blogs). Seizing the day, I jotted down (if typing on a laptop counts as “jotted”) an engaging encounter I’d just had in what was then my favorite restaurant (it probably still would be if I lived closer). This tale ran on Aug. 28, 2009 – just 13 days before my first Tulsa Area United Way benefit concert, which would make another fun blog ….

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It came over me as I savored those last bites from my Guinness BBQ Chicken Sandwich, my first home supper in two weeks.

Someone had stolen my pictures! Those favorite shots I’d kept right on that wall facing my dining table!

Stunned, I just sat there, chewing with ever-growing anger from staring at that foreign graffiti that wasn’t supposed to be there. A few of these images were kind of cool – two vintage Irish posters from The Big One, warning about how we had to watch the coasts, and that one good Irishman could take 10 Nazis with one beer tied behind his back – or something like that. But they weren’t supposed to be there!

Then a wave of fear ripped through me and I twisted around. Sure enough, someone had taken my back wall’s vintage “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” clipping on the amazing Ward Bond.

What a violation! Who did that notorious person think he was, messing with Ward Bond!

So I stopped my lovely friend with her priceless iced tea jug and said, in no uncertain terms, that someone had stolen my pictures.

She gave me the most puzzled look.

“What pictures?” she inquired, her eyes ever so innocent and ready to please.

“Those!” I stabbed with a finger. “Right there! They’re different!”

She stared for a second and then said, “Oh, yeah. Brett must have taken them down.”

I almost erupted in my fury then, but she wasn’t done.

“He’s probably just moved them somewhere,” she continued, looking around the corner. “He does that sometimes.”

“He does?” I nearly shouted, ready to seek this infamous Brett character out and throttle him good for messing up my dining room. But the mistress of the tea cut me off with the cutest, most disarming smile.

“He gets new ones in all the time,” she said. “Helps him keep his place fresh.”

His place?

Oh, yeah. This enchanting restaurant Kilkenny’s just seemed like home after my eating there some 100 times over the last three years. Filled with good food and friendly people, each one seeming to know each of my five different custom orders, right down to the no-lemon iced tea glass that never ran dry.

Someday I’ll have to track this Brett Rehorn down and thank him for providing this wonderful restaurant I could call home.

And find out where my – well, his – Ward Bond cartoon is.

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That’s pretty much how it ran. The next time I ate at Kilkenny’s, the server seated me once again at my corner table, its wall photos still changed. Me being me, I asked the waitress if anyone there had read my article about the Ward Bond cartoon. The question confused her, but she soon returned with the framed “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” feature as a gift, signed by Brett. She then explained her confusion: the clipping was about Victor McLaglen, not Ward Bond. But that seemed understandable, since the two had appeared together in some of John Wayne’s greatest films.