Flying the unfriendly skies

JOSEPH N. BELL

Travel used to be a respite from stress -- a blissful chance to read,

have a quiet drink or two, rediscover one’s navel, that sort of

thing. I can actually remember a time when I looked forward to

climbing on a commercial aircraft and cutting my umbilical to the

working world and its demands. Travel, then, could free the soul as

much as the pleasures at the destination.

No more.

Commercial travel today is divided into two distinct parts: First,

getting there and back, which is tolerated as a means to an end, and,

second, having enough time at the destination to enjoy it after

recovering from the travel. Given the state of the world today, it

may be ever thus.

These reflections follow a thoroughly enjoyable visit with old

friends in North Carolina last week. But getting there was something

else.

Our flight was scheduled to leave John Wayne at 7:40 a.m., and we

arrived a little before 6 to be faced with a line that snaked the

length of the terminal before it bent back to the agents at Delta

Airlines.

We stood in that line to check luggage and pick up boarding passes

for almost an hour-and-a-half, building stress and anxiety by the

minute. If the security line that followed had been longer, we would

have missed our flight. As it was, we barely made it.

This, of course, was without time for a fast-food breakfast -- or

even coffee. We were in the air for an hour before either was

offered. Then breakfast came in the form of a menu with price tags --

the first time I’ve encountered this. My wife got a decent fruit

plate for five bucks, but I invested $3 in an ice cold, inedible

cinnamon bagel. The only other nourishment before we arrived in

Asheville was a tiny bag of pretzels. And consistent with the rest of

our day, our luggage didn’t arrive with us. It turned up, we were

told, in Panama City, Fla., and was delivered to us on the third day,

when our host was running out of underwear to loan me.

But enough of this. I’ve spent too much space on the grim

realities of commercial travel in these parlous times when what we

brought home with us were memories of a delightful week. My birthday

is the Fourth of July, and we’ve been spending it for several years

in Brevard, N.C., with friends I’ve been close to for more than 50

years, and Sherry for almost half that time.

Our hosts, Clifford and Rae Hicks, are out of Marshalltown, Iowa,

and Chicago. He was the former editor of Popular Mechanics and the

author of a series of children’s books, two of which were turned into

movies by Walt Disney. We don’t have to be careful with them. We say

what we think and feel, not because we always agree but because we

know it goes into an open mind. And we talk from so much shared

background and experience.

We have established routines for this annual visit. One is a drive

into South Carolina where there is an open market on fireworks.

Several years ago, we found a fireworks stand in a deserted filling

station where we could prowl through the merchandise. The proprietor

became our supplier. This year he greeted us puffing on a cigarette

under a large “No Smoking” sign. But he can be forgiven much because

he remembered it was my birthday and -- after we bought our fireworks

-- gave me a present: a splendid eight-shot rocket display that

lighted up the lake below the house of our friends and provided our

finale.

Brevard is a lovely town of 6,200, too young to be antebellum but

old enough to offer the small-town charm that seems to go so well

with Independence Day. There was a street fair featuring all sorts of

crafts and old cars and unhealthy food and country music and visiting

fire engines and a baseball throw that dropped a local lady into the

drink. There’s a large Wal-Mart and a single-screen movie house and

an elderly brick Court House.

But best of all, there is the music. Brevard College is noted for

its music department, and every summer the Brevard Music Center

attracts hundreds of talented young musicians who come to study and

offer six weeks of nightly performances in a magnificent old band

shell. The high point of our visit was a rousing and moving band

concert on the Fourth that pulled out all the stops. There was

symphonic music and show music, but the last section was devoted

solely to Sousa marches, patriotic songs and Tchaikovsky’s 1812

Overture -- complete with cannon fire.

One of these final numbers was a medley of the songs associated

with each branch of our military service -- the Army, Navy, Air

Force, Marines and Coast Guard. As each song was played, members and

veterans of that service in the audience were asked to stand, and so

we did: Clifford for the Marine Hymn, me for Anchors Aweigh. I looked

about, and we were mostly a grizzled bunch, probably three-fourths of

us from World War II. And I wondered how many of the veterans

standing with me in that auditorium were feeling the same disquieting

sense I was feeling -- that this country we had once served was

somehow losing its way.

Clifford and I talked about this afterward. He is a decorated

Marine infantry captain who led landing assaults on Guam and

Bougainville in World War II. “We’ve lost our compass,” he said, and

I agree.

Terrorism can win only when it turns a society against its own

strengths. And one of the most powerful of our strengths is the

freedom to take strong issue with the directions our government is

taking us, a strength the Bush administration is trying to stifle by

claiming it is unpatriotic.

When and if that strength is ever stifled, the men and women who

stood proudly on that concert day in Brevard will weep instead.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.