What We Learn from Air Travel

politico.com

I grew up among Christian people in the Midwest, polite, soft-spoken, avoiding outbursts of anger, we only raged inwardly. We weren’t complainers. We knew we weren’t a great civilization like Greece, but their god Zeus was often violent, a god of thunder and lightning, liable to wreak destruction at any moment. We were gentle, as our God told us to be. We believed in an orderly world.

This all came crashing down last Monday night at JFK when I boarded a Delta flight to Seattle around 5 p.m. I consider JFK to be as close to a prison camp as I care to get. The Delta terminal is vast and crowded and ugly, endless lines at Ticketing, TSA agents whose badge entitles them to freely express hostility and contempt, miles of concourses lined with souvenir shops, the smell of bad food. Naming the airport for our late lamented president did him no service.

We boarded the plane and sat at the gate for a while, then pulled out and sat on the tarmac. A massive storm was moving east. The pilot came on the horn every 15 minutes to apologize for the delay and say that Air Traffic Control had no idea when, if ever, we might leave. Five became six p.m. and then almost seven when suddenly he said we were clear to go and the plane sprinted toward the runway but something changed, we were too late, and we returned to the gate canceled.

We spilled out onto Concourse B and got into a mighty river of canceled people heading for a Delta service desk and got into line. The line seemed to stretch a half mile and move about a quarter mile an hour or less. Complex negotiations were taking place far ahead. Word was passed down the line that Tuesday flights were selling out, that I might not reach Seattle until Wednesday. News passed that it might take hours to retrieve checked luggage. I saw some families with little kids looking for a friendly area to bed down for the night. Some older kids seemed to see it as an adventure. The parents did not.

I felt for them. You’ve taken the kiddos on a trip to the Big Apple to visit Grampa and Gaga and you saw Coney Island and the zoo and picnicked in the Park and now you’ve exhausted their hospitality and your credit cards are worn thin and you must face a night sleeping on the floor. The allure of travel ended a day ago and now you are in Alcatraz. Your children will grow up wanting never to leave their rooms.

I headed for Baggage Claim and here was a scene of emotional turmoil, a long line had turned into a mob facing three uniformed Delta ladies who had no idea where or when or if your luggage might appear. “It might be two or three hours,” one of them said. “If you’re rebooked, your luggage will be automatically routed to the new flight,” she said, but most of the mobsters had not been rebooked, they were New Yorkers who wanted to grab their bags and go home. “Give us your claim checks and we’ll have people look for them,” she said. Again, she said: two or three hours.

The New Yorkers could not accept this. She tried to explain that dozens of planeloads of people were in the same boat. It was a huge storm. You can’t fly into thunder and lightning. They didn’t buy any of this. It was a Greek drama before my eyes: women drawn to a career in travel and the prestige of a nice uniform facing a horde of murderous barbarians demanding the release of hostage luggage.

I am 82, a college graduate, an Episcopalian, a former radio broadcaster, the author of novels, essays, sonnets, and limericks, and my days of standing in long lines for hours ended long ago. If when I die I face a long line at the gates of heaven, I will consider alternatives. I left the terminal, got a cab, rode back to Manhattan, took an elevator to the 12th floor, opened the door, and crawled into bed next to my wife who recognized me right away as the love of her life. A man can ask for no more. Luggage became the last thing on my mind. Let God and my travel agent Camille find a way. I closed my eyes. There is no place like home. Think hard before you leave it.

Garrison Keillor © 07.21.25