The Book
I slowly shuffled along the corridor to the Allreds office, fully expecting a really difficult monthly meeting. I had received several “your owner is mad” emails and I suppose why wouldn’t he be ? A 7-21 month doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence.
When I arrived at the Owners suite though only Brother Allred was there, apparently Sister Allred was out of state busy laying a foundation stone or something like that. That was strange in itself as I wasn’t aware that the Allreds had any plans to build anything, let alone be advanced far enough along on anything to actually lay a foundation stone? Brother Allred had talked in general terms about a new church, but that had apparently been supposedly in the car park of a baseball stadium. I had soon put him off that. Thomas Magnum Stadium might not sell out, but we had no available parking slots to turn into some grandiose church on his whim and anyway, surely the stadium owner laid the foundation stone. Not some franchise owner in the car park lol.
Brother Allred had a large map spread out over the conference table and was examining it and a large book. When he heard me enter, he looked up and smiled a lot warmly than I was expecting. Holding the book up to me he said ”This is a really great title, I’ve found out so much from it”. Peering at the book’s cover I was surprised to say the least to see the title was “Travels along Interstate 10”. This is a really great road you know, it’s the fourth longest interstate in the U.S., almost 4,000 Km long” he said triumphantly. ”There’s already two Frontier division BBA teams, Phoenix & San Antonio, along it’s route. Plenty of room to move into, we could have the whole division on one long road, save on all those plane trips”. I just stared blankly at him as he seemed lost in the supposed wonders of a bloody interstate road. I coughed, hoping to draw his attention to our meeting, but he just distractedly waived his hand and said “I haven’t got time to see you now, plenty of research of good cities, travel times and building laws & taxes to do. Come back some other time.”
Outside again, it was me that was distracted, were the Allreds planning on moving? Were they giving up on the Aviators already? Maybe a chain of I-10 churches? It sure had me puzzled.
