{"id":169,"date":"2006-05-30T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2006-05-30T05:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=169"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:39:47","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:39:47","slug":"the-road-from-malibu-to-searcy-runs-through-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"The Road From Malibu to Searcy Runs Through Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pepperdine.jpg\"I didn’t graduate from Pepperdine University<\/a>. In fact, I’ve never set foot on the beautiful Malibu campus nestled by the jagged shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. But thanks to our youth minister, Jason<\/a>, who recently attended the annual lectureship there, I am the proud owner of a bright orange Pepperdine t-shirt with arched, blue letters and a school seal with motto that reads “Freely ye received, freely give.” It was the first shirt that I pulled out of my drawer last Friday as I prepared to travel to Ozark, Alabama to spend Memorial Day weekend with my younger sister and her family. But before the day was over, that shirt had led me to yet another “chance” encounter with an old aquaintance from times past.<\/p>\n

We had stopped for lunch just south of Birmingham and were standing in line to order at Wendy’s when a women about my age walked up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “I’m a Wave.”<\/p>\n

Okay<\/em>, I thought, what have we here?<\/em> I’m a little slow sometimes and I must have looked a little confused (I was) because she pointed to my shirt and repeated, “You know, a Wave.”<\/p>\n

Ah, a Pepperdine<\/em> Wave<\/a>. “No kidding,” I exclaimed. “I didn’t graduate from there, but a friend of mine visited there recently and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.”<\/p>\n

She laughed, obviously impressed with my elephantine wit. I asked her the inevitable question, “Are you Church of Christ?”<\/a> When she replied, “Yes,” I went on to explain that I had graduated from Harding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Really,” she said excitedly, “you may know my husband then. He’s gone to get gas for the van, but he’ll be back in a moment. His name is Hubie Smith.”<\/p>\n

I did indeed know her husband, or least I knew who he was. Hubie Smith had played point guard for the Harding University basketball team in the early 1980s and had been a year ahead of me in school. He was also a golfer as well, and as I recall, won All-Conference honors in both sports. When he walked in the restaurant a few minutes later, I introduced myself, and although he probably didn’t remember who I was (nerdy psychology majors typically don’t have quite the face recognition on campus that jocks do), we had a pleasant chat and a few laughs at our “random” rendezvous far from Searcy, Arkansas and even farther from the California coast.<\/p>\n

Having just written a story that morning about our unlikely meeting with an old friend on the streets of New York a year prior, the irony of yet another such encounter struck me full force up side the head, like a mailbox-bashing Louisville Slugger on Halloween night. Why is it that whenever I travel, I run into someone from my past? Maybe I have a little bit of Forrest Gump<\/a> in me, possessing that certain serendipity for always being in the right place at the right time. My friends and family have noted on many occasions, after all, that I am not<\/em> a “smahutt” man.<\/p>\n

As I left the restaurant and continued on my way, it occured to me that once again the Rand McNally Road Atlas<\/a> was wrong. It’s true that in order to get from Malibu to Searcy you’ve got to drive over to Barstow and pick up Interstate 40 for 1500 miles, all the way to Little Rock, and, from there, you follow U.S. 67N for 47 miles to Searcy. What the map doesn’t say is that the road from Malibu to Searcy runs through Birmingham as well, a fact I recently learned as I stood in line to order my Roasted Turkey & Basil Pesto sandwich, side salad with honey mustard dressing and Diet Coke.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t graduate from Pepperdine University. In fact, I’ve never set foot on the beautiful Malibu campus nestled by the jagged shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. But thanks to our youth minister, Jason, who recently attended…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,32,46,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-harding-university","category-holidays","category-pepperdine-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9690,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/9690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}