In 1972 a young couple embarked on a trip to Acapulco, Mexico. They left from the Pittsburgh International Airport, where a jet-assisted propelled plane waited for them on the tarmac. Everyone scheduled to depart on that plane was on it, with the exception of the couple, who had been delayed by airport security because of a simple dance of joy.
In September of 2001, the ways in which we travel, especially with regard to flying, were altered forever. We grumble about the inconvenience, but accept the intrusions into our privacy as the appropriate cost of safety. It is the new freedom, which is very old to me.
In 1972, Bride One and I, both recipients of two weeks of vacation, took a delayed honeymoon. I had passed the previous year in the employ of a small loan lender, having risen to branch manager in the expected amount of time; she had found a position with the Los Angeles school district as an elementary teacher. (She had the teacher’s vaunted “All That Time Off,” while I had two weeks.) Bride One was a frequent flyer, having gone away from Pittsburgh to attend college in Boston. My air travel to that point had been limited; I flew to Boston, one springtime.
We arrived at the airport excited about our coming adventure. We lined up with others to walk through the metal detector that was the staple of this country’s airports at that time. Our carry-on luggage was quite large and stuffed with our necessaries and unmentionables, and was scanned at a separate station. My Bride walked through the scanner without incident, but I triggered a signal when I crossed beneath the bridge. I was directed to back up and repeat the process.
Something happened to me then, something that I cannot explain in rational terms except to say that unfettered joy burst from me, a joy that was expressed in the slow, hands-upraised spin that I smilingly executed as I passed beneath the scanning bridge. The members of airport security met this dance performance with frowning disapproval.
After identifying our bags, the guardians of the air subjected them to a slow and contemptuous piece-by-piece hand search. Once they had made it abundantly clear that security was a humorless business, they let us go. We scampered across the tarmac — no, not a jet way — bags half-clamped and trailing bits of bras and briefs, and up the stairs into the waiting hands of the flight attendant. Grumpy passengers glared as we shuffled down the aisle to our seats.
I have flown a lot since then, and have never repeated that performance. My obeisance has not been beneficial, however. When I made frequent business trips from Indianapolis to High Point, NC I was pulled aside and subjected to a hand-search on every flight. The guardians knew me and would often comment on “Esmerelda,” my pool cue. But they searched me every time, every leg of every trip. On a trip to Washington DC, one guardian prodded my thigh with his beeping hand-wand, saying “there’s something in there.” I made rabbit ears of my pockets and a tiny bit of cigarette package foil fluttered to the ground beneath my out-stretched arm.
When I traveled to North Carolina before 9/11, I was slightly amused by the fact that I received so much personal attention though I did not look like the famous hijacker, DB Cooper. Now, when I travel, I wonder how much danger we might be in when the arbitrary exercise of out-sized authority is focused on a bit of foil, or a spontaneous dance of joy.