A Momentary Meeting That Spans a Lifetime

It's usually enough to walk into a casino on the Strip, see crowds of people, and know that the world's big enough. But sometimes, that's not enough of the world. Sometimes you need another person in front of you, asking for directions, to truly see the sheer width of the world, someone you'll never see again. Not that I planned it that way. It was a brief exchange, completely unexpected, which makes for life's most interesting moments.

Yesterday, my family and I went to a consignment store directly across from two runways and various taxiways at McCarran International, which meant that most of the time they were inside, save for when I was needed to give my opinion on a bookcase Meridith wanted for her room (much better than the one she had found at another consignment store, made up of alternating shelves, one above another, one on the right, one slightly above on the left, one slightly above on the right, and so on) or to see a lamp Mom thought appropriate for my room (A three-bookcase set from Macy's Home Store is being delivered on Thursday, and my new, and first, reading chair, from Big's Furniture, is being delivered on Friday), I was outside, watching Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Westjet, Allegiant, Volaris, and other commercial jets take off, as well as many private jets. I was in heaven. My heaven. If the owner of this consignment store would hire me to simply sit on one of his padded, stylish stools outside the store, bringing in people simply by my presence, I would be happy. And in fact, I brought two people in, or at least I think I did. One woman, for example, parked, looked at the store, and asked me if this long length of the store was the entire store, or two separate stores. I replied, "It's the entire store. You'll have to go inside to find out."

But that's not the meeting that inspired this blog entry. An hour passed of Mom, Dad and Meridith looking inside the store, then an hour and fifteen minutes, but I did not mind that at all. I was happy right where I was, and even though the uniform blue and orange and red color scheme of Southwest 737s bore me, I smiled every time I watched the nose gear retract on one of those 737s after take off, and watched the nose gear door close. I love how quickly it closes, and it was the same with the 757s and 767s I saw, as well as the JetBlue A320 and the American Airlines MD-80, which is longer than I remember, but it had been a long time since I had seen one.

An hour and fifteen minutes, maybe. I don't know. I only looked at my watch to see if it was getting closer to the time that a 747-400 might land. There were enough flights coming in from the west coast on the runway on the left side of my view, and planes coming in from the rest of the country on the route that passes over the mobile home park near Sam's Town that I used to live in, and I didn't even know there was a runway that far afield, but there is. I understood where those planes landed after flying over my former mobile home park and then banking. According to the website FlightAware, a British Airways 747-400 landed at McCarran at 7:49 p.m. yesterday evening, long, long after we had left that consignment store, and a Virgin Atlantic 747-400 landed at 2:48 p.m., which was an hour after we had left that consignment store.

As I sat on that stool, watching a lull in the takeoffs, seeing an American Airlines MD-80 get a pushback from the gate, and a Delta flight waiting on the taxiway to head for the left-side runway, a car pulled into the consignment store lot about three spaces from me. A guy got out, short hair, wearing a Motley Crue t-shirt. The car looked new, in better condition than many cars are where we used to live, and about average for our area of Henderson. He came up to me and asked if I could help him, speaking with an accent I couldn't place, but knew right away it wasn't English, it wasn't Irish, it wasn't anywhere in Spain, but it was somewhere in Europe. Czech, maybe? I don't know. I wasn't going to guess, or ask him, because I wanted to learn what he needed help with.

I replied, "Sure, what's up?" and he, not understanding my American vernacular, said, "Yes, thank you," and asked me where the rental car places were.

I wasn't entirely sure. I needed a few seconds to think about it. I knew that he couldn't go back the way he came since that was only more of the field of the airport. It didn't lead to the terminals or Avis or wherever he rented the car. I told him he had to circle the airport the other way and he would eventually find it.

He thanked me and walked away, and as he did, I noticed that the back of his t-shirt heralded "Evening in Hell," which is the name of Motley Crue's residency at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino here. I called out to him and asked him how it was. My fault, because he thought I meant the car and told me it was fine, and I replied, "No, no, I noticed your shirt. How was the show?" He smiled and gave me two thumbs-up. Like wine, Motley Crue does not interest me, but it does help boost our economy, so I wanted to know.

After he left, I thought of two things right away. First, I should have told him to drive past the McCarran Marketplace shopping center, where Walmart is, because passing that, he'll eventually see the digital terminal boards which would tell him where to go. Unfortunately, I remembered that after the fact. And secondly, I'll never see him again. And that amazed me. As he pulled out, I noticed either his wife or his girlfriend was sitting on the passenger side in the front, so I thought that their luggage was probably in the trunk, and they'd return the car and take a shuttle to wherever their terminal was for their flight home, somewhere in Europe. It had to be. I'm sure of that.

Years ago, I met people I've never seen since, like that attractive girl about my age in 1994 when my family and I were at Universal Studios Orlando and there was some kind of juice survey we were invited to take and she was with her family. And there was also Bridget, who I met in line at Kongfrontation on that same day. Brief conversation, and then gone. Just like that. Same with that guy. I'm a little disappointed, because I wanted to know more about him, if it was his first time in Las Vegas, how long he had waited to take this trip, what his first night was like here, and also more about his own home. But it looked like he had to get going, had a flight to catch, so I just told him what he needed to know and he was off. But I also realized one of the blessings of living here, that as transient as it is, and as hard-edged as it can be, you sure do meet a lot of interesting people here, and he was one of them. Silently, I wished him safe travels home. People like him are the reason that Las Vegas continues to exist, that they put money into our economy, but to me, they're more than that. I'm always curious. And I was glad to meet him for that brief moment, to know a little bit about him, including his love of Motley Crue. The world is vast, but with moments like that, it's never boring.

Addendum: Looking at the departures from McCarran on FlightAware in the hours after I saw him, I noticed that there was a Condor Flugdienst (Condor for short, of course) flight to Frankfurt International in Germany at 5:43 p.m. The Boeing 767-300 is still in the air, with 3 hours and 53 minutes to go, for a total flying time of 10 hours and 19 minutes. That could be him, since it was a little past 1 p.m. when we briefly met, and I think it's advised that for international flights, you arrive four hours ahead. There was also a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 bound for London Gatwick that departed at 5:20 p.m. But I don't think that was him. Everything else before those flights were domestic routes.

Politicians talk about international turmoil and strife all the time, but I wonder if they really mean international turmoil and strife amongst themselves. There I was, a regular guy, an American, talking to possibly a German guy. No problem there. No conflict. Certainly one of the most interesting experiences I've had here of late. I liked the little I knew of him, and I hope for more experiences like that.

The Heavenly Saturday Haul

This afternoon, Dad came through the front door with a long arm of packages from the mailman (along with the mail), using his chin to make sure the stack didn't fly out in all directions. It turned out that between two packages, he had been carrying well over 1,400 pages. And all of what he was carrying was for me.

Earlier this week, I had a yen to reread the Tales of the City books by Armistead Maupin, but I didn't want to pay for each one, cheap as they can be found at abebooks.com. The two omnibuses, 28 Barbary Lane and Back to Barbary Lane would have to do. They came today, big and thick, and I can't wait. Well, I am excited, but they have been waiting, because other priorities took hold.

There was also Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan, which I'm reading right now. And A Cook's Tour and The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain, which will follow. But Trucker by Jane Stern, published in 1975, may come before them. The full title is Trucker: A Portrait of the last American Cowboy, and I'm really curious about this one. This was before Jane and Michael Stern became known for traveling the entire U.S. in search of great food.

Also in the haul was Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor (I listened to a few broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion last year, and those stories from Lake Wobegon have always stuck, so I wanted to see what those stories were like in print), Seconds of Pleasure by Neil LaBute, and Proof of Heaven by Mary Curran Hackett.

I rushed through those last two titles because of a book that was immediately more important to me than any of the others. It's why Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones, her first novel, remains still at page 46. It's Trust Me: A Memoir by George Kennedy. That George Kennedy. The George Kennedy whose Joe Patroni in the Airport movies made me even more enthusiastic about aviation after I had turned 11 and was deeply into it. It was because of Patroni that I had begun to seriously consider a career in aviation, maybe in the Air Force (The first job I thought of was a mechanic for Air Force One), maybe as an NTSB investigator.

Those considerations are long gone in favor of hopefully a full-time career as a middle school campus supervisor so I can have plenty of time to read and write, which I need in order to write the so-far seven books and many, many plays I have in mind. But Patroni remains, that unending love for aviation, that vastly intelligent troubleshooting mind that knew exactly what was necessary at the crucial moment.

I had hoped that Kennedy would devote many pages to his role in those movies, but there was only less than a page about them, and yet I wasn't disappointed because what he had given me was something I'd absolutely never known about him, and a piece of trivia that fits in with all the movie trivia I love. I love those stray facts that are utterly fascinating, what's worth repeating because you can't quite believe that it was possible, and yet it happened.

First, from page 107, the first paragraph of what Kennedy offers:

"In the four Airport movies, I played a guy named Joe Patroni. Over the years, more people have told me stories about him (and what he did and said) than about anyone else. I was coming back from New York to LA in a jumbo, and it was pretty quiet. There was a bing-bong and a voice: "This is your captain speaking. Everything is fine, and we'll be a little early. Should anything go wrong, however, Joe Patroni is sitting with you, and we'll get him up here." I got a round of applause, and in my head I genuflected in the direction of Lloyd Nolan. He was right."

Kennedy describes Patroni perfectly. He is a guy. An average guy, with immense talent. He'll get along with anyone, but does not like anyone that does wrong by him, such as the pilot with a sneering sort of attitude in Airport who says that nothing can be done about the stuck 707 until the chief pilot for Trans Global is contacted. Burt Lancaster, as airport manager Mel Bakersfeld, tells the pilot that they can't wait, that the plane is blocking a runway and they need to do whatever they have to to get this plane out of the snow. "Joe here is licensed to taxi, so he'll take over," says Bakersfeld. And that's exactly right. Joe will get it done and he'll make sure to get it done right.

The bit about Lloyd Nolan is about what Nolan, one of Kennedy's childhood heroes, told him on the set of Airport, about admirers that will come to tell him about their favorite movie of his and describe what they loved about it and how it touched them, and to always pay attention to that. Nolan says, "Ours is a business of 'touching' people, and sometimes they tell you in such unexpected ways you just don't know what to do or say . . . but when you recall it, years later, it'll warm you all over again. People can really 'touch' back."

This next paragraph is partly what I never knew about Kennedy until now, and a remarkable piece of movie trivia, especially since the Concorde remains one of my favorite aircraft, even in retirement:

"I took flying lessons during the film and got my license on time, and later, multi-engine and instrument upgrades. I owned a lot of planes, single and twin, but the Cessna 182 was my favorite, and the Beech A36 is a close second. In the last Airport, I got to taxi the Concorde from the copilot's seat at Le Bourget in Paris. Quite a thrill. Universal rented it for forty thousand dollars an hour."

Kennedy not only played Joe Patroni, he was Joe Patroni in a sense. And I never expected that being part of the budget for The Concorde: Airport '79. Certainly the Concorde was used to a great extent (And as it turns out, the Concorde used in the movie was the one that crashed in 2000, killing everyone on board), but I thought that perhaps the budget for the original Airport had been higher. I do wonder for how many hours the Concorde was used at that rental fee. I wonder, and I think there's something there for me to explore further, what with how many times I watched all four Airport movies all throughout my teens.

I started reading Trust Me after I organized the other books, and finished it about an hour ago. When I really want to read something, I don't wait. And this was worth it, especially because it was as genial as Kennedy was as Joe Patroni and in other roles as well.

I hope the rest of the weekend will be equally worthwhile, especially with all these books around.

Home is So Accessible

There's a company called Just Planes, which specializes in cockpit videos. They show pilots doing walk-arounds of the aircraft before flight, explaining what they're doing, the cameras are there during the preflight preparations, and during takeoff, and during the flight, and landing. Today they're doing a "Hurricane Irene Special Sale!" on certain DVDs: "For a limited time today as the storm is over our area!"

I had to take advantage of this, so I went to the website (First worldairroutes.com, which, when you click on the "Shopping Mall" link, leads to justplanes.net, and the discounts to be seen), scrolled through the "World Air Routes" offerings, and found "Carnival B727", a Boeing 727 flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Newark, which I wanted because in 1994, when my father's grandmother was in the hospital, we flew from Fort Lauderdale International to Newark International on a Delta Airlines Lockheed L-1011, and I wanted to see the route from the vantage point of a Boeing 727. It turns out that this particular program was the first one filmed by Just Planes 20 years ago in 1991 (3 years before my flight). I kept worldairroutes.com open in a separate browser to check the running time of the program to be sure I was getting a decent value, and though this one is a short 55 minutes, I didn't mind paying $10 because I want it for sentimental value.

Continuing my scrolling, I came upon Corsairfly B747 (Caribbean), a program with my favorite aircraft, the Boeing 747, in this case the -400 model. 2 hours for $15? Sold.

It turns out that not only is the company selling some of their cockpit DVDs at a discount, but also their airport DVDs, filming takeoffs and landings at various airports. Looking at that part of the justplanes.net site, the obvious DVDs are sold out, such as New York JFK, Los Angeles, and London Heathrow. But oh lord, what do I see here?! Las Vegas! Regular price is $19.95, sale price is $10. I clicked on the link, and I felt my heart race. A 3-hour program! A total of 340 takeoffs and landings! I don't care when it was filmed because McCarran International is a crucial part of Las Vegas history.

And this makes me love Las Vegas even more. Among aviation enthusiasts who have bought DVDs from this company, the obvious airport DVDs are sold out. But there is my home, so accessible to me. It's always welcoming, no matter in what capacity.