First Posted: 9/3/2013
I arrived back in the country last Sunday after nine days of knocking around Italy and marveling at how much is still standing from the times when the gladiators people cared most about performed not at The Horseshoe but at the Coliseum.
And, while there were so many thoughts I had about how life must have been a thousand or so autumns ago as I nosed around in the Coliseum and the Sistine Chapel in Rome and the Galleria dell ‘Accademia in Florence, where Michelangelo’s David made of a single piece of Carrara marble stands a resplendent 20 feet high, it didn’t take me all that long once I landed on American soil again to remember what life has become for us now.
Of course, the worst part of any travel adventure is the last day when it’s time to return home to wash clothes, balance the checkbook, pay the bills and engage in a dozen other seemingly mundane but wonderful routines that make up our day-to-day existence.
So, when I left Rome on Sunday morning with my travel partner Jane, I was hoping that the eight or so hours in a plane wouldn’t seem as long as when I left a week ago Saturday and that my re-entry at Washington’s Dulles Airport would go smoothly as we awaited a connecting flight to Columbus.
And, with apologies to Andy Dufresne of “Shawshank Redemption” fame and his glowing assessment of hope, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things,” I’m here to tell you that hope is often more like Langsdon Hughes’ poetic rhetorical questions, as in “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
Even with in-flight movies and some pretty decent food, which may surprise many of you who have taken such delight in bashing airline, school and hospital food, my early-morning dream of a pleasant flight, of course, never materialized.
Unless you’re like my pal Gil Torres, who sits in the pilot’s seat to earn his living, spending eight or so hours at 40,000 feet is really no way to live, whether you’re in first-class with the fat cats or back in coach with the rest of us poor schmucks.
So, after a couple of eternities in the air, I entered into the concourse at Dulles on my way to customs, hoping I could at least bat .500 with my pre-dawn Roman hopes. When I entered the area and heard the peremptory mandate by the first customs official, “U.S. citizens to the right; non-U.S. citizens and green card holders to the left” and saw the line that in serpentine fashion went back and forth a dozen times as if it were an amusement park ride, I had a sneaking suspicion that both dreams were destined to be raisins.
At that point, little did I know how shriveled that second raisin would become. Now, if you’ve never flown internationally, despite the fact that both you and your luggage have already been scrutinized and scanned in the country you left, you and your bags will be again once you return home. Please don’t think your checked large bag will be automatically transferred to your connecting plane. You need to claim it and go through the whole process again.
Following the millennium it took me to queue back and forth to get up to an open booth to give the agent my passport and paperwork on the rosaries and chocolate and fridge magnets and such that I was declaring, Jane and I then had to find our big suitcases before proceeding through another customs checkpoint to yet another snake line to then recheck the large suitcases and proceed to a third snake line to scan the carry-on and remove your shoes and belt, yada yada, and then hope the arch we would go through didn’t inexplicably beep. All the while, of course, the internal clock is ticking on getting to the gate in time to catch what I always promise is the last flight of my life.
Just as I was picking up my large bag with my carry-on slung over my shoulder, another customs agent magically appeared with a canine partner. He was pleasant enough, making football small talk after seeing my Miami University hat and telling me of his love for my fellow Miami alum Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers, but he was also insistent that his partner sniff around in my carry-on after I unzipped it to give him my passport and customs declaration, both of which he scrutinized thoroughly.
Without ever talking to McGruff, he asked me if there was any citrus fruit in my carry-on. I answered truthfully, “no,” before he pursed his lips and asked if there ever was. I thought it would go easier for me to admit that I, indeed, did have a couple of oranges in the bag when I left for the airport in Columbus nine days ago, ones I ate before going through the scanning procedure to start my adventure. He gave me that, “Just-as-I- expected” look as if I may be hiding something about my fruit consumption.
When Lady Jane with the curly blond hair realized the agent had no interest in her, she joined the several other women who at various times in my life have left me, so I guess I wasn’t all that surprised when she wordlessly slipped away and down the corridor to the next security check.
From there, I was funneled to another bullpen area and a third agent, whose specialty, I guess, was citrus fruit and the men who eat it. The bag was scanned again, and after some final disapproving looks, I was released to try to catch up to Jane in the next snake line to have the same bag scanned for the third time that day
To add a nice cherry on top of my aggravation Sunday sundae, when I did catch up to her, the aforementioned curly-locked blonde accused me of dawdling by talking football with McGruff’s partner. Have you ever been so mad that you find yourself incapable of replying to someone with anything that didn’t include a lengthy string of profanity?
Listen, if a couple of oranges eaten a week earlier can cause this much commotion, imagine what’s in store for the more nefarious types, so I guess it’s comforting to know the fruit patrol was at the ready.
Bet you never guessed that the cost of America’s safety is the same as the cost of a couple of oranges. I wouldn’t have believed it myself before last Sunday!
