Thought For The Day
Travel, especially air travel, carries with it an implicit expectation of encounters with celebrities. Perhaps it is a louder expectation if you are in and around Los Angeles but it is always there. Airports equal adventure.
For much of my life I was a passenger on an airplane. The flying started in 1980. I took a job with Citigroup which required me to spend every other week on the west coast. It would go something like this: Monday morning at seven I would board a commuter in Flint and fly to Chicago. At O'hare I would connect with a flight to San Francisco or Los Angeles, usually San Francisco. I had an arrangement with the Mark Hopkins Hotel for a room that allowed me to leave things there so I didn't have to carry them back and forth to Michigan.
Once I was located in San Francisco there was often travel from there to other cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, OR, Seattle, WA and so on. It was a far cry from what I had been doing and stretched me in lots of ways. I liked what I was doing. It was interesting and exciting. The travel was a bonus and at the time it was fun. I always expected to see someone who was newsworthy but as you might guess rarely ever did.
Once in LA I saw Wilt Chamberlain while sitting in a seat next to Dinah Shore and across the aisle from John Garfield. That was fun because Dinah Shore was such a lady and very engaging. She had the most beautiful skin and soft brown eyes. She talked with me like we were old friends on a short flight between LA and San Francisco. But the most memorable encounter I had with celebrities was in Nashville.
I would see celebrities once in a while from a distance. I usually made no attempt to interact with them. But, when I saw Justin Wilson at the Delta information counter in Nashville and since I was going there myself it was just too much. He had made me laugh so hard, so many times I had to thank him for his funny stories. I promised myself to be brief and polite. Thirty minutes later I was laughing out loud and trying to catch my breath. In fact I had forgotten that I stopped to ask a question about the gate location. When I finally got around to asking the information attendant told me I had better go if I wanted to catch the plane.
I bolted from the desk, thanking Justin Wilson as I ran away. I was focused on the marquis when I knocked a man to the floor. I reached down to help him and saw Pat Boone all crumpled up and not a little bit annoyed. I apologized, brushed him off and ran to the gate. After all the miles I had flown and all of the dignitaries I thought I would see, most of it happened in a thirty minute span in Nashville while looking for a gate and trying to get there. But, that's not all.
About two weeks later I was in Orlando and forced to take a commuter from there to West Palm Beach. There was a terrible storm brewing that you often see during summer in Florida. A large bank of Cumulus Clouds black as night were on the edge of the airport. The flight had been delayed but the boarding crew seemed to think it would be a short wait until we were cleared to board. I wasn't all that sure I wanted to board the plane anyway, but I was looking forward to getting home. I had been away for over a week.
We eventually were allowed to board with assurance the storm was out of range and we could fly safely. Mixed feelings emerged but I walked out on the tarmac toward the stairway set up to board "the little plane that could." As I reached for the handrail a body bumped into me and pushed me away from the stairs. When I looked at the perpetrator, it was none other than, you guessed it, Pat Boone. We went to our seats. We sat side by side in tiny seats on the crowded plane and he said, "Do I know you?"
Haha! What a great story. I guess getting knocked down in an airport wasn't a memorable enough experience for Pat. You've got me thinking about my own brushes with fame.
ReplyDeleteBut how you handled all that traveling, I can't imagine. I think it would have been exhausting.