Fun at the Airport
Years ago I was on a TWA flight from LA to JFK. I was on business, travelling first class, having a whale of a time. We came into the TWA building at JFK, an amazing piece of modernism that you'll have seen if you watched Catch Me if You Can. It was a relic of a more civilized era of flying, but by modern standards it was far too small to cope with the number of passengers. To create space, they'd banned luggage trolleys.

Anyway, I swaggered out of the Fast Track to collect my luggage. The first few cases popped out, followed by a pair of underpants. "Ha!" I thought. "Someone's bag's burst. Here come some socks, and a shirt and... hey, I've got some trousers like that. God, that loser has the same kecks as me. And the same shirt.... Ahhhhh, fuck." And sure enough, with an audience of about 250 people, the contents of my bag appeared on the carousel, eventually to be joined by the shredded remains of my fancy suit bag which looked like it had been through a combine harvester.

Earlier, you may have been wondering why I went into so much detail about the trolleys. This is why. I had nowhere to load my stuff, I didn't want to leave it going around the conveyor belt while I went for help (in case it got blown up in a controlled explosion - that happened to a friend of mine. Well, his bag anyway). And suddenly all the TWA staff seemed to be doing an impersonation of their boss by disappearing mysteriously.

So I ended up piling everything up as best I could in my arms (this was a 6 week trip) and staggering through customs, through the airport, standing in the taxi queue with people running up to me going "You've dropped a sock."

I was staying at the Royalton in New York, a hotel (in the mid 90s anyway) where the staff are cooler than the guests. So I stagger out of the taxi, and this male model type comes up an says 'Do you have any bags?'. I say, "Hold out your arms." and load him up with my skiddy grundies.

God, I had to tip him big. The next day I went out and bought the kind of luggage they usually only use to move spent Uranium fuel rods in. And now I always launder before I get on the plane.
( littlebean, Tue 7 Mar 2006, 9:29, Reply)