Screwball Tragedy

Category: Places

  • Welcome home

    People in 1960s boarding a plane.

    The essential problem with the modern airport is not congestion, unhealthy food or belligerent drunks. It is not eight-dollar coffee, inaudible updates or endless TSA roped stanchions. It is not the lack of a sign at pre-check specifying whether your laptop should be in or outside your carry-on.

    The essential problem with the modern airport is not the gate with seating for 40 passengers yet chosen for an overbooked flight carrying 100. Nor even the inevitable flyer who hasn’t heard — Like, dude, you serious? Since when? — that you haven’t been allowed to bring a Big Gulp through security since W was president.

    No, the essential problem with the modern airport is that, due to practical concerns and the sheer volume of passengers, it is now impossible for a traveler returning home from, let’s say, a visit with Midwestern relatives to deplane, get down on his knees and kiss the tarmac.

    Copilot (hilarious name, considering) suggested I had made a mistake, and the correct phrase should be: belligerent drinks. “But I didn’t punch nobody, officer! It was them belligerent drinks.”

  • Rhapsody on Blue

    CTA

    It’s just after midnight in Chicago, 1999, on a Blue Line elevated train headed outbound, and a nattily dressed older man is drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle. He’s upset, he explains to no one in particular, because “my baby cheated on me,” even though “I gave her 20 dollars and told her to splurge.”

    A younger guy teases the drunk, who then flashes something from a pocket and says, “I’ll cut off your ears!”

    “With that butter knife?” asks the younger man, who also offers this pearl, although I miss whatever prompted it: “Just because you pour syrup on shit don’t make it pancakes.”

    By Division Street the knife has been put away and the young man is trying to explain to the drunk – who thinks he is riding to Riverdale, which, outside the context of Archie and Jughead, I’ve never even heard of – that he is on the wrong train, the wrong transportation system, and headed in the wrong direction. He should be on Metra.

    At Wicker Park the older man takes another pull from his pint bottle and steps onto the platform. As the train doors close the other passengers whoop with laughter. “Gave his baby 20 dollars and told her to splurge,” says one. “Man, you can’t cross the street with 20 dollars.”