cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
You look up and see the vapor trails as a jet wanders across the azure sky, heading - doubtless - to some spot on earth where troubles melt like lemons drop, or castles rise into the clouds above a gently flowing river and hill-hugging vineyards. You yearn to be aboard and you think that in order to do that you just might take advantage of your military retirement package and fly SPACE A.
Ever wonder what the inside of a Space A passenger lounge looks like? Arrived at WPAFB, Wright - Pat in the local lingo, at 10 in the morning to find a soft white box, dark blue-gray commercial carpet - the kind you see advertised on local TV that comes in all the colors of the rainbow, with free installation, no money down, no money till the next millennium and we'll throw in three rooms of genuine wood furniture and a pony for the kids to ride - that kind of commercial carpet, and thirty matching dark blueish gray chairs that will magically turn to cement by the third hour of use. On one side sits a massive TV set pumping out countless repeats of NCIS, Law and Order and Miami CSI. By four o'clock I wanted to personally wound Mark Harmon and Sam Waterson in a mean spirited manner that would have marked me as a deeply troubled person with issues regarding genitalia.
In the background add a lone twenty something mother/brood mare with her two boys - four and two - and a female rug rat of undetermined age. Record the following messages:
"If you don't sit down you're not getting on that plane."
"If you don't stop yelling you're not going to Germany."
"Don't scream like that or I'll give you something to scream about!"
"If you don't stop hitting him/her/it you're not going home."
Now save to a DVD, select "random," select "repeat" and allow to run 24/7.
Oh, and don't forget the three plastic travel seats, the two-less-than-needed supply of Pampers, the toy cars, action figures and milk bottles, the 2 X 10 carry-on survivor bag, the three backpacks that none of the kids can carry and the eight, count 'em, eight suitcases filled with bricks and irons that she isn't going to be able to be taking care of 'cause she's got the little one in her arms and trying to grab one or the other of the other two who are set on "full scramble/wandering" mode
Ah, what a merry batch of pilgrims are we.
The phone at the manager's desk/barrier device keeps ringing and the departure time keeps moving back in two hour blocks, once, twice, and then our guide steps out from behind his protective barrier/desk device and greets us, "Now, theys called us to the flight line and I wanna give you your safety briefing: No hats on the flight line, no photos, no smoking, no loitering, no shoes, no shirt, no service, this offer void in Texas, Ohio California, New Mexico, all states east of the Alleghenies and for anyone born after 1927, this broadcast is the exclusive property of Major League Baseball and prohibited where offered, some users may experience symptoms such as nausea, explosive bowels, sore throat, testicular rash, vomiting, dizziness, PMS, drowsiness and or brief periods of something best described as unreasonable euphoria. You must solemnly swear to not repeat anything you are told, see or happen upon, for any reason. Violators will be prosecuted to the full measure of state statutes, the Universal Code of Military Justice and the whims of sordid people put in responsible places despite the fact that they are without a sense of humor, knowledge of law and possessed of any qualms about the unreasonable use of physical and/or psychological force, so help you God, your car will be towed and you will be fined up to $3000. Management reserves the right to increase the interest charge without notification, rational or regard for public interest. Now pick up your carry-ons and follow me out to the van."
So we pick up our carry-ons and our "checked in luggage" -- ever wonder what happened to your luggage between the little door it slips into behind the ticket counter and the metallic chute that spits it out at the other end of the flight (on good days only)? Big hulking brutes, the kids that scored in the bottom 10% of the standardized tests in your schooling process, pick them up and move them out to the flight line and gently toss them twenty, thirty, forty feet up or down or sideways, then push, shove, kick, slam and jam them into a dim space in the bowels of the aircraft, an area covered with sharp edges and with a floor made from used cheese graters.
Space A is different. In Space A you get to have one of your adult fantasies come to life. Here you get to toss, kick, slam, jam, wedge your bag, and at least one of the car seats and any two of the outsized, brick and iron filled suitcases of the traveling Madonna who's still got the snot machine in her arms and is chasing after one of the other two, straight as the butterfly flies.
Five minutes later we are faced with this dewey eyed, fuzzy cheeked youth in green-gray, flame retardant, zipper laden, Adult Doctor Denton flight suit, "We're going to have to send you back to the ready room. The nerfing bar bushings are prattled and it's causing her to give a false positive on the greenodometer phasimilizer. We should get it fixed in about an hour, restart our preflight, and call you forward again, so just grab your bags and all o' her shit" nodding in the direction of Saint Mary, who is running in various circles, babe with milk bottle in one arm and the other arm only a tantalizing yard away from grabbing the shirt of one of the two 'gone ballistic' kinder missiles.
It's while traveling in the van on the ten minute ride between the flight line and the waiting room that the driver gloomily reports, "Never seen it fail. They call you out to the flight line, tell you it'll be about an hour and the next thing you know, they scrub the whole mission." Talk about the wind going out of your sails.
If we thought the endless blood, gore, and maniacal mayhem on the boob tube was going to change while we endured the flight line so-near-but-oh-so-far-away disappointment, we were soon reminded that some things never change. Pretty boy Mark was now chasing down a pathological, serial killing, S and M, bondage rapist with a finger tip fetish and experience in acid tossing; all the while receiving important clues from a pig tailed, long legged, big titted Amazon with a spider web tattoo on her neck, dressed in a jumper and a tight T-Shirt with RESPECT in four inch block letters emblazoned across the front. For one whose TV seldom wanders from PBS, the Daily Show, Discovery, the Hitler Channel and college football, this view of regular TV was quite an experience. I leave it to you to determine whether it was a good or bad experience.
The kids are now tired, hungry, wound up and under full atomic steam. We leave them and the mom to the waiting room and TV set and step outside to mill about, swap war/travel stories, and think of scotch, gin, wine, beer and big bosomed fraulines who could be serving us, bitte und danke.
Moses appears once more, "We're back on, lets go!"
I eagerly grab my bag, a car seat and two of those brick and iron filled suitcases, cram them into a corner of the van and hop in for the ride to the flight line. We are not to be denied. While the banshee motor roars in the background, we grab the bags from the back of the van and proceed up the first set of stairs, then up a second set -- placed at an enticing angle strongly resembling 90 degrees. There we are face-to-face with a bare bones, no nonsense, one-step-up-from-combat-load passenger pit cozily facing backwards and just downwind from the four tornado grade jet engines. We are buckled in, advised of our Miranda rights and begin rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, across Ohio's hills.... and dales... and amber waves of grain, and past what was once Rike's downtown store, and past a mall, by a highway, past grandmother's house, by the little brown church in the dale... two miles later, just past East Jesus, we stop and the engines let loose. My teeth rattle, my ears start to ring despite my industrial strength head phones and Bob Dylan signing about "...inside the walls of Red Wing..." on my i-pod, but we're moving and the tastes of wurst and cold beer are dancing in the same space of my brain once reserved for candy and cold soda pop.
The C-5 dwarfs a 747 and as I look outside one of the only two windows in the passenger area I am amazed that anything so big can move so fast. We lift off the ground and I swear there will soon be Rhine castles in view.
15 minutes into the flight I see the crew chief sit up and listen intently. He comes forward and screams into the cacophony, "We've got a mechanical problem. We're turning back and heading for Wright - Pat."
Ugh. We unload all the kiddie crap. All three kids -- who had fallen asleep within minutes of boarding the plane -- are now wailing within a decibel or two of the four tornado grade jet engines. As the van once more makes the run from flight line to waiting area, our guide turns to me and says, "You know the mission completion rate on those damn C-5's is only 13 percent."
I quickly do the math. For every one hundred missions, eighty seven end up in the mechanic's shop. And we laughed at Soviet mechanical prowess.
We sit in the now-concrete seats, stomachs growl, hopes fade, pony-tailed RESPECT girl slices off the end of a finger belonging to a stiff in the morgue and places it in a solution of something, I guess. We wait, we fidget, we contemplate suicide and then we get the news. "They can't get 'er fixed in time for the crew to fly her, so we'll have show time at 12 tomorrow and a departure time of 16 hundred hours."
Like Mac Arthur, I pledge to return, toss my bag into my car and retreat to Cincinnati. Tomorrow will be different, I tell myself.
Cincibuck
Ever wonder what the inside of a Space A passenger lounge looks like? Arrived at WPAFB, Wright - Pat in the local lingo, at 10 in the morning to find a soft white box, dark blue-gray commercial carpet - the kind you see advertised on local TV that comes in all the colors of the rainbow, with free installation, no money down, no money till the next millennium and we'll throw in three rooms of genuine wood furniture and a pony for the kids to ride - that kind of commercial carpet, and thirty matching dark blueish gray chairs that will magically turn to cement by the third hour of use. On one side sits a massive TV set pumping out countless repeats of NCIS, Law and Order and Miami CSI. By four o'clock I wanted to personally wound Mark Harmon and Sam Waterson in a mean spirited manner that would have marked me as a deeply troubled person with issues regarding genitalia.
In the background add a lone twenty something mother/brood mare with her two boys - four and two - and a female rug rat of undetermined age. Record the following messages:
"If you don't sit down you're not getting on that plane."
"If you don't stop yelling you're not going to Germany."
"Don't scream like that or I'll give you something to scream about!"
"If you don't stop hitting him/her/it you're not going home."
Now save to a DVD, select "random," select "repeat" and allow to run 24/7.
Oh, and don't forget the three plastic travel seats, the two-less-than-needed supply of Pampers, the toy cars, action figures and milk bottles, the 2 X 10 carry-on survivor bag, the three backpacks that none of the kids can carry and the eight, count 'em, eight suitcases filled with bricks and irons that she isn't going to be able to be taking care of 'cause she's got the little one in her arms and trying to grab one or the other of the other two who are set on "full scramble/wandering" mode
Ah, what a merry batch of pilgrims are we.
The phone at the manager's desk/barrier device keeps ringing and the departure time keeps moving back in two hour blocks, once, twice, and then our guide steps out from behind his protective barrier/desk device and greets us, "Now, theys called us to the flight line and I wanna give you your safety briefing: No hats on the flight line, no photos, no smoking, no loitering, no shoes, no shirt, no service, this offer void in Texas, Ohio California, New Mexico, all states east of the Alleghenies and for anyone born after 1927, this broadcast is the exclusive property of Major League Baseball and prohibited where offered, some users may experience symptoms such as nausea, explosive bowels, sore throat, testicular rash, vomiting, dizziness, PMS, drowsiness and or brief periods of something best described as unreasonable euphoria. You must solemnly swear to not repeat anything you are told, see or happen upon, for any reason. Violators will be prosecuted to the full measure of state statutes, the Universal Code of Military Justice and the whims of sordid people put in responsible places despite the fact that they are without a sense of humor, knowledge of law and possessed of any qualms about the unreasonable use of physical and/or psychological force, so help you God, your car will be towed and you will be fined up to $3000. Management reserves the right to increase the interest charge without notification, rational or regard for public interest. Now pick up your carry-ons and follow me out to the van."
So we pick up our carry-ons and our "checked in luggage" -- ever wonder what happened to your luggage between the little door it slips into behind the ticket counter and the metallic chute that spits it out at the other end of the flight (on good days only)? Big hulking brutes, the kids that scored in the bottom 10% of the standardized tests in your schooling process, pick them up and move them out to the flight line and gently toss them twenty, thirty, forty feet up or down or sideways, then push, shove, kick, slam and jam them into a dim space in the bowels of the aircraft, an area covered with sharp edges and with a floor made from used cheese graters.
Space A is different. In Space A you get to have one of your adult fantasies come to life. Here you get to toss, kick, slam, jam, wedge your bag, and at least one of the car seats and any two of the outsized, brick and iron filled suitcases of the traveling Madonna who's still got the snot machine in her arms and is chasing after one of the other two, straight as the butterfly flies.
Five minutes later we are faced with this dewey eyed, fuzzy cheeked youth in green-gray, flame retardant, zipper laden, Adult Doctor Denton flight suit, "We're going to have to send you back to the ready room. The nerfing bar bushings are prattled and it's causing her to give a false positive on the greenodometer phasimilizer. We should get it fixed in about an hour, restart our preflight, and call you forward again, so just grab your bags and all o' her shit" nodding in the direction of Saint Mary, who is running in various circles, babe with milk bottle in one arm and the other arm only a tantalizing yard away from grabbing the shirt of one of the two 'gone ballistic' kinder missiles.
It's while traveling in the van on the ten minute ride between the flight line and the waiting room that the driver gloomily reports, "Never seen it fail. They call you out to the flight line, tell you it'll be about an hour and the next thing you know, they scrub the whole mission." Talk about the wind going out of your sails.
If we thought the endless blood, gore, and maniacal mayhem on the boob tube was going to change while we endured the flight line so-near-but-oh-so-far-away disappointment, we were soon reminded that some things never change. Pretty boy Mark was now chasing down a pathological, serial killing, S and M, bondage rapist with a finger tip fetish and experience in acid tossing; all the while receiving important clues from a pig tailed, long legged, big titted Amazon with a spider web tattoo on her neck, dressed in a jumper and a tight T-Shirt with RESPECT in four inch block letters emblazoned across the front. For one whose TV seldom wanders from PBS, the Daily Show, Discovery, the Hitler Channel and college football, this view of regular TV was quite an experience. I leave it to you to determine whether it was a good or bad experience.
The kids are now tired, hungry, wound up and under full atomic steam. We leave them and the mom to the waiting room and TV set and step outside to mill about, swap war/travel stories, and think of scotch, gin, wine, beer and big bosomed fraulines who could be serving us, bitte und danke.
Moses appears once more, "We're back on, lets go!"
I eagerly grab my bag, a car seat and two of those brick and iron filled suitcases, cram them into a corner of the van and hop in for the ride to the flight line. We are not to be denied. While the banshee motor roars in the background, we grab the bags from the back of the van and proceed up the first set of stairs, then up a second set -- placed at an enticing angle strongly resembling 90 degrees. There we are face-to-face with a bare bones, no nonsense, one-step-up-from-combat-load passenger pit cozily facing backwards and just downwind from the four tornado grade jet engines. We are buckled in, advised of our Miranda rights and begin rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, across Ohio's hills.... and dales... and amber waves of grain, and past what was once Rike's downtown store, and past a mall, by a highway, past grandmother's house, by the little brown church in the dale... two miles later, just past East Jesus, we stop and the engines let loose. My teeth rattle, my ears start to ring despite my industrial strength head phones and Bob Dylan signing about "...inside the walls of Red Wing..." on my i-pod, but we're moving and the tastes of wurst and cold beer are dancing in the same space of my brain once reserved for candy and cold soda pop.
The C-5 dwarfs a 747 and as I look outside one of the only two windows in the passenger area I am amazed that anything so big can move so fast. We lift off the ground and I swear there will soon be Rhine castles in view.
15 minutes into the flight I see the crew chief sit up and listen intently. He comes forward and screams into the cacophony, "We've got a mechanical problem. We're turning back and heading for Wright - Pat."
Ugh. We unload all the kiddie crap. All three kids -- who had fallen asleep within minutes of boarding the plane -- are now wailing within a decibel or two of the four tornado grade jet engines. As the van once more makes the run from flight line to waiting area, our guide turns to me and says, "You know the mission completion rate on those damn C-5's is only 13 percent."
I quickly do the math. For every one hundred missions, eighty seven end up in the mechanic's shop. And we laughed at Soviet mechanical prowess.
We sit in the now-concrete seats, stomachs growl, hopes fade, pony-tailed RESPECT girl slices off the end of a finger belonging to a stiff in the morgue and places it in a solution of something, I guess. We wait, we fidget, we contemplate suicide and then we get the news. "They can't get 'er fixed in time for the crew to fly her, so we'll have show time at 12 tomorrow and a departure time of 16 hundred hours."
Like Mac Arthur, I pledge to return, toss my bag into my car and retreat to Cincinnati. Tomorrow will be different, I tell myself.
Cincibuck
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