Travel By Train With Albert
We had, Bernadette and I, I think it was two years ago, taken her father to the Air and Space museum out by Dulles airport in Virginia. There he had seen, and I photographed him in front of, the very same version, or a very similar version of, the Russian Mig that had shot holes in the PBM Mariner aircraft of which he was a crew member, during the Korean conflict. Well, he survived, married his love, had wonderful children, and that's all that matters, if that's the way you want to look at it.
This past weekend we—Bernadette, her younger sister the Restauranteur, me, and her father, whom I am going to name Albert, and not because it could be considered short for Albatross—flew out from LaGuardia to a little place in Arkansas to hunt for quartz crystals, in what I think is a continuing effort to reap the power of said crystals to somehow cleanse this man of his less than stellar luck when he is thousands of feet in the air inside metal tubes with wings flown by men, as Albert said—he has neck-ties older than, and which contain all of us, the faithful and the faithless, the annoying, the fat, the skinny, the sleepers, and on our return trip not one, but two, crying babies.
From point to point on the way out, from the Lower East Side of New York to the Hot Springs motel run by that reluctant pair of Scottish moteliers, the seconds and minutes added up to 17 hours. After a weather related bump from the first flight out of LaGuardia we were back in NY eating breakfast on Clinton St. just after seven a.m., but when the second attempt got us out of what was a really spiffy small airport above Scarsdale by 2 p.m., we figured things were looking up.
After landing on the runway in a cloudy, somewhat tumultuous lighting streaked Atlanta, the pilot informed us that the airport was shut down and it was a lucky thing we had been allowed to land at all. We were stopped still on the tarmac for an amount of time that while unfortunate, did not really extend into a length that could be considered unbearable. Of course, after you've been on the runway for awhile you have no way of knowing just how long you will remain so certainly the idea of unbearable is within reach.
When the plane, with brakes on and engine idle low, began shuddering violently in the wind, we felt pretty certain we were going to miss our connecting flight and so started thinking about what we would do in Atlanta for one night (the stewardess suggested we not stay in any hotel near the airport as the entire area was patrolled by evil hooligans who intended only harm upon the innocent), or whether or not renting a car and driving to Arkansas was feasible. After checking the distance we determined driving was not a great idea, and also, if we had driven out of New York at five that morning and headed for Arkansas we would still be about five hours behind where we were now. So we figured we would stick with this flying thing for a bit longer, the sooner we got to Arkansas and dug up a Golden Healer for Albert, the better.
The ribbing directed towards Albert was intended and taken as good natured but this idea of his bad airplane related mojo was starting to grow on me. There were other recent bad experiences in his flying past, which Bernadette reminded him of. Out loud or to ourselves we all conjured up that specific Twilight Zone we thought best applied to our situation. For my part, despite his believable talent in getting us better seats at better prices, I was just glad William Shatner was not on our flight.
All was well though, for all flights were delayed and thus we caught our connector to Little Rock and got to the car rental counter at least forty-five minutes before they shut down. We drove that night into Hot Springs to end one long travel day.
The rock digging experience is another story. I have a long history of digging in the dirt so that benefitted me. It was hot as hell in Arkansas though. And if you want a clearer picture of a depressed economy, just go to one that was fairly depressed prior to the most recent economic downturn and it becomes clearer still, clear as a Male Crystal, not that the cloudy Female doesn't tell her own story. The economic story in Mt. Ida, Arkansas is communicated through the nearly vacant or shut down motels that you see, and there is little need for the communicative assistance one might achieve from a Double Terminated Crystal to get that point across. There were times during the trip though that a Double Terminated Female might have been useful in aiding us with its mythic properties. If I had dug one up I might have asked it should I fly from Little Rock to Memphis to LaGuardia on Tuesday. It might have said, I will give three of you but not the fourth one opportunity to not only postpone the Memphis to LaGuardia leg, but to profit from it.
Oh come on, like we were going to leave Albert to fly by himself back into New York. I mean, I did not have fortune telling assistance, so when the offer came for three of us to fly later, get 400 Delta Dollars a piece and lodging for our trouble, I only half seriously considered it.
Later, in the air, the crying babies are not really that bad, and besides we were apparently going to miss all weather and come in smoothly on schedule. And, if I may just give Albert one last good natured ribbing, I think perhaps had he been on a different flight (although maybe albatross is a little harsh) we would have come in smoothly. As it was we were coming in on time and with no apparent trouble until right at the last minute, out of the clouds—I swear this is true although I did not tell anyone about it until now—came that Mig from Albert's past, I would say for one last haunt but really who can be sure it will be the last we see of it. I saw it only briefly, its wingtip picking up the only speck of sunlight in the dark sky. It glinted right at me, like a Herkimer Diamond (which is by the way a crystal that can only be found in upstate New York.) Long before the plane starting bouncing and then climbing erratically, straining, I mean you could feel it trying to accelerate faster than it was truly able, I had noticed that we were not descending like we had started to but in fact were angled upward. No big deal, how often do you actually get into a New York airport without at least one extra pass? And I remember how quiet it had gotten there at the end, just before the thought of dying had pervaded my thinking. It had taken the jostling of the plane to lull the babies. The babies did not really know that planes are not supposed to jostle like a big ole riveted metal grandpa. I think they were just happy for the distraction and possibly the beneficial change in air pressure, so that their inner eardrums quit hurting so horribly.
All this excitement aside I had not really seriously considered that this was to be the last hurrah of any of us. I mean who knows, maybe that Mig I saw out the window was just in the area for an airshow. That is possible.
No, it took the comforting words of the steward to calm me into a state of terror. His wording, that if the pilot were not now so importantly busy he would be on the speaker himself telling us what was happening, that as soon as he got a break from getting over the shock that he had to actually fly this plane instead of just letting it coast in on auto-pilot, ok the last bit is my words, but he did say, this steward, I kid you not, that we should not panic. Which looking now at the word on the page it seems to me evocative of nothing like the definition of the word. Yet, hearing it spoken by an airline employee, on an airplane that is acting even a little bit erratically, really punched the word up with a refreshing literalness. The Restauranteur said later she remembered him using the words “wind shear,” which are also words I would add to the short list of things not to say on an airplane while it is struggling a bit to stay a float, ok, maybe I would add a float to the list as well since we were probably at least briefly over the Atlantic. Eh, you know, I'm here writing about it so how bad could it have been? Not really that bad. Not Terror at 20,000 Feet bad. Maybe I'll do one quick Google search for Migs in US airspace, but then I'll be done with it.
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