From Love Field in Dallas to Caddo Lake on the Louisiana Border – W and I first met in East Texas, so the afternoon is a trip through the mists of nostalgia as we flash past familiar landmarks on the ubiquitous interstates.
From DFW we pass familiar streets on the exit signs: Mockingbird Lane, Inwood Ave, Turtle Creek, Preston Road and University Park. The frontage road skirts neighborhoods full of the lovely brick and white-trimmed ranch-style houses of East Texas prosperity, set well back on impossibly wide and deep and green lawns.
After several mis-directions we make it onto the freeway, past fields of bluebonnets, paintbrush, godetia, and crimson clover. There are more familiar names on the exit signs: Athens, Terrell, Gladewater, Tyler, Kilgore, and finally Marshall, our turnoff. We stop at a Kroger’s, where W reveals that she had not glanced at her checklist before loading the car. Just in case, we pick up things we turn out not to need (tea, salt and pepper, bowls) and things we will be glad to have (fruit, crackers, tinned fish, yogurt, fixings for a one-dish skillet dinner, and most importantly, a cooler).
Fifteen miles later we are at the CCC stone-piled entrance to Caddo Lake State Park. We arrive at 4:45 at the check-in stand to discover that the office closes at 4:30. W’s computer pulls up Shelter 16 on the reservation.
It is dusk by the time we unpack, W is exhausted and wants to sit, and I am hungry. We have our snack lunch for dinner and save the skillet meal for later – a skillet is another thing W has forgotten. An application of Off! keeps the bugs at bay, W has a mini-lantern for the table, and we make our way through a tin of sardines, a half-box of crackers, and half the cherry tomatoes – Excellent, and easy!
We had planned a post- prandial fire sit, but the fire is short-lived, as we had not stopped for firewood on the way in. Still there is magic, as the stillness thickens, and fireflies begin to flicker in the trees. The humidity is so high that the evening dew is condensing in puddles INSIDE the shelter, but W has brought a tarp for the floor, and cots to raise us above it. A sheet is all I need for a cover as I snuggle on top of my sleeping bag, listening to the stillness until I fall asleep.
When forced to spend entirely too much time in airports, you have time to notice how things have changed. I don’t believe I had ever seen this convenience offered in a airport before:
If the print is too small for you, it reads “Privacy for pumping and breast-feeding.” Wow! There are times when that could have been really welcome to me and mine!
But it’s not only nursing mothers who might crave privacy, or at least a respite from the constant murmur of the airport crowd and announcements of their arrivals and departures. So here’s another accomodation which struck me as novel:
This pair of cubicles was nestled in an out-of the way corridor. One of them was already in use, and the other about to be.
If you think that the world of whimsy is far removed from the hard-edged world of airline travel, be assured that Austin, at least, has allowed its weirdness to seep into its Airport. Here’s Arrivals at Gate ∞ (see above for the entire installation):
You can even print a boarding pass to Narnia or Neverland or any of 118 other fantastical destinations.
But good luck looking for a post card at DFW, SFO, or PHX. The old-fashioned “Hello from [your state here]” way of letting folks know you are on the road is almost dead. You can still find them at AUS, though, another friendly form of Austin weirdness.
I spent quite a number of hours in four different airports last week.
San Francisco International (SFO) was my first and final. I have made many trips through this airport, but each one reveals a new aspect, as the airport is constantly re-inventing itself with new construction, new retail outlets and restaurants, and new airlines coming and old ones disappearing. I used to fly TWA and PanAm; now my flights are more likely to be United and Southwest. On departure day I am flying Southwest, and my departure is from one of the gates in one of the newer sections of Terminal One. SFO does its best to invoke the quirky sophistication of its namesake city, even though it is actually located thirty miles south of San Francisco, in San Mateo County. The shops offer authentic sourdough bread, See’s candy, and little packets of goodies wrapped in cable-car-shaped boxes, as well as t-shirts adorned with representation of the Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower. Restaurants invoke the Asian/European diversity of the City, with Vietnamese, Mexican, Filipino, Japanese, Vegan and Italian supplementing the standard Starbuck’s.
You can also pick up the usual sports-themed offerings from the Golden State Warriors and the 49ers (who actually play home games fifty miles south in Santa Clara, but hey, who’s picky!) Unfortunately, the airport has none of the Victorian charm of historic San Francisco, but I guess a Victorian airport would be oxymoronic.
Dallas-Love Field (DAL) was my next stop. I had expected to be picked up right away, and had my carryon with me, but my friend was unexpectedly two hours delayed, so I had plenty of time to explore DAL.
Love Field is the former major airport into Dallas, but has been supplanted by the much larger Dallas/Fort Worth Intenational positioned exactly on the county line between the two rival cities. Dallas, I am afraid, lacks a civic personality, and this shows in its secondary airport. The shops offer vanilla t-shirts that say, basically, “I was in Dallas and I bought this t-shirt.” The restaurants include Dunkin Donuts, Maggiano’s, Baskin-Robbins, Chick-fil-A, and Chili’s. One Texas staple, Whataburger, is also available, and there is a Dallas Cowboys store, but in general one could as well be in St. Louis. I hunted in vain throughout the terminal for either a Dallas post card or a local newspaper.
I was aiming next to fly out of Austin-Bergstrom International on an American flight to DFW. The flight I had intended to exit on was cancelled, so I had plenty of time to check AUS out while waiting around on standby and then for an airport pickup from a friend.
Sophistication is not a word one associates with Austin, but quirkiness certainly is. Somehow I always seem to arrive or leave Austin around the time of Willie Nelson’ s birthday – or maybe they just celebrate this prominent citizen year round. Plenty of post cards here, celebrating the SWSX music festival, the Congress street bats, the mud-colored State Capitol, and the scenic downtown poised along the Colorado River. There are at least eight venues and stages where live music is presented during the week.
And plenty of local businesses are represented, including Book People (“the largest independently owned book store in Texas” now that Archer City’s Booked Up went belly-up), Earl Campbell’s Taco Truck (intact), East Side Pies, Haymaker and others. Not a sign of a chain restaurant anywhere. Nor any sports-related gear – Austin is blessedly free of major leaguery.
I never made it to DFW but was rescheduled on a flight to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX), with a two-hour layover. So, I went from the Barbara Jordan terminal, named for a firebrand Democratic governor in a state since turned GOP, to the Barry Goldwater terminal, named for a firebrand Republican governor in a state edging toward Democratic. Such is history.
A strange feeling of deja vu in the Phoenix Airport – it was just like the Dallas airport, only with mountains around. I’d swear the T-shirts were identical, except for the city name – same diamond-shape logo behind the name, same dusky blues, pinks, and lavenders. Phoenix, of course, is even shorter on history than Dallas. Flying out, the inhabited city looks like something blue (swimming pools) and green (golf courses) that spilled accidentally on the sere gray desert.
And finally back to SFO and the Harvey Milk terminal. American flights come into much less convenient gates than Southwest flights, and there is a lamentable lack of moving sidewalks for the weary returning traveler. The route to baggage claim is also poorly signed – a gentleman stationed at the end of the seeming blank corridor directed me around a kink in the hallway to the escalator down. But I was home.
When my previous post “New Year for China” was published in the LATC, I hoped to get a letter or two of appreciation for my positive write-up of the the local celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year and for my regrets about the deterioration of relations between China and the US over the past 20 years.
Here are the letters that came in.
And here was my published response :
Was my original writing really that muddled? Perhaps some readers had earlier bad experiences of Sinophobia, which made them sensitive to possible slights, implications, and innuendoes.
My granddaughter, as a toddler, was knocked over by an unleashed dog, and has been afraid of dogs ever since. Not unreasonable. But, I hope, overcomeable. No one should have to live on the alert for danger.
Allyson Johnson 