With all my obsession of someday moving to Toronto–that has changed and moved much closer… as in Denver.
I could see myself becoming a Denverite in the last decade of my life or so. I really could. Don’t get me wrong, Toronto is amazing, but Denver is pretty amazing as well.
On my flight home the other night the mayor of Oklahoma City David Holt sat in front of me with his two young children. We talked a bit. He seems like a nice young man, but he didn’t strike me as mayoral per se. He didn’t strike me as a person with a searing vision of what Oklahoma City should be five years from now.
We talked a little bit about the Sam Anderson book. Like me, he enjoyed the book and like me, he learned some new things about the history of Oklahoma City.
I asked him how people in his sphere took the book. He smiled and said, “Some people don’t have a sense of humor.”
I told him I never knew about Operation Bongo until I read the book. He said the same.
As I left that flight– I thought about David Holt and the future of his two children in Oklahoma City as they grow up.
I wonder if the city and the state for that matter can in a sense… grow up.
I know this…I won’t be alive to witness it.
But anyway, the Rockies’ series with the Brewers starts tonight and that’s where my sports heart is at currently. The Thunder aren’t really there. But that will change as we get cooler and deeper into October. Even if we moved to Denver the Thunder would be my basketball team for this reason…I love the audacity Aubrey McClendon and Clay Bennett had about Oklahoma City even if all of it didn’t pan out. Passion is a great thing, it really is. It’s what drives us as humans. The notion these two dudes pulled this off still amazes me given what a culturally and politically regressed city OKC is in some regards.
The notion OKC still has an NBA team still amazes me given that a beer league minor league hockey team called the Blazers, Brad Lund, and Katrina are in a sense what made the Thunder possible to a degree.
Anderson didn’t write this because he didn’t live it firsthand. I lived it.