A DAY IN THE AIR FLYING HOME
I spent the night in an inexpensive hotel on the cheaper French side of the airport that Mary had found for me. The hotel’s name was Premiere Class, first class, but I was put in a small room with a tiny store bought bathroom cubicle with a flimsy plastic toilet flush that didn’t work. But the room was clean and the bed comfortable and I was only there for seven hours. The hotel was $60 and the taxi ride to the hotel $42 by the meter, and the shuttle ride back to the airport, without a meter, not nearly as far, was $27.
I was up at 3:45 a.m., through check in and a very polite security line by 5 and ready for my last French breakfast of a raisin roll and coffee before boarding my flight to London and then after a very quick transfer on the flight to
Charlotte. A middle aged woman sat by the window on my right, a young woman on the aisle to my left. The space between the my row in the next was so narrow that it was difficult for me to get out to pee forcing the others to get out as well. We agreed that we would all go at the same time as often as needed.
Usually I am mute on flights. But this time I learned that the woman on the right had spent a very pleasant week and a half with her 80 year old mother (on a different flight to a different destination) touring Europe and next time is going to bring her husband. The young women on my left grew up Turkish, went to Alaska for on an exchange program, married an Alaskan, came with him to Charlotte, got a divorce and is now, speaking accent free English, an American citizen working for a non profit supporting the blind. She was visiting friends in London for a week. All of us were hooked on travel.
Something irritating happened which has happened to me before. In this case the American stewardess was simply rude when one of the women was brushed off when she wanted a drink. And in the airport going through passport control and again going through security the TSA workers were bossy, unfriendly and, as if it could help people understand better to be shouted at, very loud. The lines were also slow and inefficient. But just before this in Geneva and in London people guiding us through were considerate and friendly.
I don’t think it was just the particular Americans I was running into or the particular Europeans. I have the feeling that the Americans were overworked, under stress and were behaving naturally the way they would at home. It seemed to be a cultural problem or a sub cultural problem. There were signs saying that they needed more TSA workers, inviting people to apply. Are people quitting because of working conditions or is the pay so low that only entirely unskilled and uneducated people apply? Whatever it is it makes the United States appear to be an unfriendly and demeaning place to enter. There were signs saying that TSA workers were protected from any violent or angry responses with huge fines for crossing the line, but I wondered if it was TSA attitudes that were starting fights.
Or maybe everyone under pressure was doing the best that they could and I was simply a grumpy old man unhappy that his trip was over.
But as we were landing in Asheville the sun was out and there were the green hills welcoming me back.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 