I'll Take California
United has filed for bankruptcy. US Airways is about to have its financing plug pulled. I’m glad I’m on American. I’ve always liked this airline. They have consistently offered a classier staff and a more professional degree of service, or so it seemed. Also, they have taken out several rows of seats which allows decent legroom, i.e., one can bend over to retrieve something under the seat in front, not an unreasonable dimension. One of the greatest regrets in my life is that back in the Seventies, I wasn’t smart enough to plunk down a hunnert bucks and become a lifelong member of the Admirals Club, their airport lounge program. Now they charge several times that as an annual fee.
Flying out of PBI, as West Palm Beach airport is known in flying parlance, was a delightful experience. American uses Super-80's on medium range flights like this one to Dallas, and with the engines in the back, it makes for a pleasantly quiet ride. I thought I might have the seat next to me empty, on what was supposed to have ben a full flight but wasn’t, until some stragglers came aboard, and one of them decided he didn’t want to sit where he was assigned and parked himself in the one next to me. It was tough to object, since I, too, would have grabbed the aisle instead of a middle seat unless stopped by a flight attendant.
I felt sorry for "Jethro," who was traveling with his mother and a disagreeably-large, unkempt woman who was probably his sister or a failed entry in a 4H contest. (Sorry, but people who don’t make an effort to contribute to the common aesthetic shouldn’t be allowed out in public, and she had let everything slide.) She came aboard carrying a large plant, demanded help from the flight attendant in stowing her other carry-ons, and insisted on holding up the departure to go to the head. They were likely headed for Arkansas.
We took off from runway nine-left which sent us climbing east from the airport in West Palm over Palm Beach. A mostly clear morning sky with small scattered white clouds dappling the ground below with gentle shadows allowed a beautiful view of this land-’o-the-rich, the red tiled roofs of their stucco palaces lined the beaches and golf courses on some of the most expensive property in the world. We rose above the Atlantic and began a one-eighty to the west, flying downwind past the airport. In another minute, we were lifting above a thickening layer of greying cloud puffs, which looked a lot prettier from above than they would from below.
In a matter of seconds, we were flying over Lake Okeechobee, a substantial body of water north of the Everglades, which the government has reined in with a berm all the way 'round, with access provided by a series of locks. I drove out to the east side of the lake the day before. One of the reasons so many airlines are in financial trouble is that they are dinosaurs when it comes to fresh thinking, and they would have charged me six bills to fly home without staying over a Saturday night; hence the time for the drive.
Because the skies were threatening during my Florida visit, my bathing suit had remained in the suitcase, and it was mostly nobility that had driven me out of my hotel room the day before to take advantage of my unfamiliar locale. Which meant driving west. Through miles and miles of sugar cane fields, broken only by irrigation canals and patches of black earth where the fields had been recently harvested, these dotted by flocks of egrets that found some special avian fodder in the wake of the harvesting machines.
The roads are long and straight and boring, many of them raised out of the swamps on crushed coral. People get bored and fall asleep driving these roads, and they wind up drowning in the murky waters of the drainage ditches a few feet from the pavement. Small crosses with tinsel and flowers mark their mistakes.
The climate in Florida -- hot-’n-humid -- means growing is a constant fact. The issue is to make sure that you grow what you want, and control the rest, though that doesn’t seem possible sometimes. The small houses and trailers by the road fight to keep clear a perimeter from the looming jungle, so they can keep the snakes and gators at bay, at least until nightfall. Most of the buildings are jacked up on cinder blocks, again as protection from critters, and also the pervasive rot, which seems endemic to the tropical environment.
There’s a lot of wealth and a lot of poverty in The Sunshine State. From what I could see in my travels, a huge number of housing units are being constructed, much of it on land that would otherwise have been a slimy bog. Once it was screens, and now it's air conditioners, that make life possible in a land that the desk clerk at my hotel referred to as Jurassic Park. And she likes it. Me, I’m pleased to be plying the atmosphere at 28,000 feet, heading for California.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
PS: The flight from Dallas to San Francisco was on a 757, and only a quarter full back in steerage. I had a whole row to myself, and stretched out to enjoy a truly comfortable flight.
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