Somehow, some of my most popular content on YouTube has been very short videos of public transportation. No, they aren’t people behaving badly on mass transit; they’re literally just videos of various modes of transport.
Perhaps I’ve tapped into some strange niche. Or maybe the algorithm just liked that I was posting videos from more populous regions during my recent trip to Indianapolis.
Regardless, here are some trains and planes (no automobiles, sorry) for your enjoyment:
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Yours portly has been flying more frequently, which is out of character for me. My older brother lives in Indianapolis, and I’ve flown up there twice this year so far for various events (and will do so a third time this summer).
Between the two trips, I’ve somehow set off TSA’s full body scanner three times. No, dear reader, yours portly is not some kind of chaos agent attempting to smuggle more than three ounces of shampoo into the airport. For some reason, my manly area is setting off the scanner.
At first I thought it was the pants I was wearing. I wear these Member’s Mark mason pants (just $15 a pair at Sam’s Club!) and they have a brass (or some similar metal) button above the zipper. I figured those were setting off the scanner.
So on the way home from Indy, I wore a pair of shorts with a plastic button. Surely, I thought, I’d be immune from setting off the scanner, but I set it off nonetheless.
Is it the zipper? We’ve all heard of microplastics; are there micrometals? Is my personal area full of tiny particles of metal?
Regardless of why I keep setting off these scanners, let me explain to you, dear reader, what it is like to be fondled by Uncle Sam.
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At the tail end of 2020—and into the New Year—I visited the small town of Lucedale, Mississippi, to meet my girlfriend’s family. I flew in last Wednesday and we drove back Saturday.
I’ve driven through Mississippi before, and was in Jackson a couple of years ago for a friend’s wedding. This time I was much further south, as Lucedale—located in George County—is very close to the Gulf Coast, and about fifty minutes from Mobile, Alabama. It reminded me a great deal of my dear South Carolina—pine trees and deciduous forests; ample farmland; small, rural communities flung across open land between larger municipalities. In many ways, it felt like my home, just with small regional variations.
For example, my girlfriend’s family eats black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, like any good Southerner does (for them, the black-eyed peas represent good luck; for us, they represent pennies and wealth), but instead of collard greens (also for wealth—they’re the dollars), they ate coleslaw. I suspect that’s because none of her family liked collard greens, but the difference goes further: my girlfriend’s father had never heard of Hoppin’ John. For my Yankee readers, Hoppin’ John is a mixture usually consisting of black-eyed peas, tomatoes, and okra, and served over white rice. It’s good.
Other than a world without Hoppin’ John, Mississippi also had some local chains I’d never heard of before. My girlfriend’s mother kept raving about Dirt Cheap, which I think is like a Lowe’s-meets-Ollie’s that sells mostly “dirt cheap” home improvement supplies. There’s also a regional chain called Foosackly’s, which is essentially a smaller-scale Zaxby’s with clever advertising and a hilariously bizarre name. My girlfriend quickly became annoyed with my fascination with this obscure chicken joint.
One highlight of the trip was building a fire with my girlfriend’s dad. He is a man of few words, clad in suspenders, and incredibly resourceful—he maintains much of their land himself, and has built several sheds and garages. He also has added to their home, which has been in the family at least two generations, and will stay there (his mantra: “never sell land”).
I’m doing more retrospective/throwback posts here at the end of the year. The end of the year is always a good time for reflections, but I’m also on the move in these last, dying days of 2020, so I’m trying to log posts in advance.
Indeed, today I’m hopping a flight to Mobile, Alabama, with my ultimate destination being a small town in George County, Mississippi. My girlfriend and I are going to spend a few days with her folks before driving back to South Carolina after the New Year.
She might not appreciate this fact, but it’s reminiscent of a summer trip to New Jersey with my last girlfriend (although it went in reverse: she and I drove up to New Jersey together, and I flew back solo). I can never seem to date anyone whose parents live twenty minutes away—or even within easy driving distance. New Jersey, now Mississippi—where next? Here’s hoping I never date anyone from Alaska (although that would be cool); really, let’s hope I never have to hit the ruthless dating market again!
I don’t like flying. I’m not scared of it, it’s just a pain—you can’t take shampoo and fingernail clippers with you because some Muslim jerks destroyed the Twin Towers. I might be a jerk sometimes, but c’mon—do I look like someone who is going to hijack a plane with nose-hair tweezers? Let’s apply a little discriminatory common sense here.
But here I am, yet again hopping a couple of flights to distant, sleepy locales. With that, here is Summer 2019’s “Airlines; Back to the Grind“:
It’s a very late post today. Readers will know that yesterday was the end of a weeklong trip to New Jersey (you can read the full account of my trip at my SubscribeStar page). A delayed takeoff from Newark meant I missed my connecting flight in Charlotte, so I had to wait around for a later flight. Fortunately, I had a collection of ghost stories to keep me company, but the delays meant getting in fairly late, and with little energy for mental endeavors.
I recall reading a National Review critique of airlines and their incompetent inability to get people where they need to be. I think Kevin Williamson wrote it, but I was unable to find it. I did, however, find hundreds of blog posts and pieces on NRO about airlines and their shortcomings, perhaps reflecting the preoccupations of the coastal elites who write for the publication.
I haven’t flown since 2012. I don’t like it. It doesn’t scare me, but it is incredibly tedious, a lot of “hurry up and wait.” The security Kabuki theatre, the crazy packing restrictions, the usurious fees, the notorious unreliability—it’s a headache. Driving is vastly preferable. Yes, yes, it’s more likely to result in death, but at least I can stop and eat when I want to.
I flew American Airlines, which is, apparently, notoriously bad. That short Williamson blog post linked above is about how American Airlines required soldiers to pay extra baggage fees for military gear they brought on flights during deployments, requiring soldiers to file for a reimbursement with the military after the fact. Yikes!
The logistics of managing thousands of flights a day, in all manner of weather conditions across the globe, must be incredibly difficult, so I’m not without sympathy for airlines. But, good grief, it seems that we could figure out a better way. Flying in 2019 is pretty much what it was like when I flew as a kid for the first time around 1990 or 1991, just with more rules, less free stuff, and worse food. Thanks to people pretending to have peanut allergies, they don’t even give those out anymore!
Anyway, I’m sitting down to write this at 9:30 PM because it was immediately back to the grind today. That’s probably the best way to return from vacation—just throw yourself back into it. I’m definitely missing sleeping in until 9 and eating good food.
More to come tomorrow.
–TPP
The Portly Politico 