My Papaw never flew commercially. A practical family farmer with 25 years experience on a Detroit auto assembly line, he never grasped the physics of flight– or the desire to travel in a way that denied one the ability to stop at will, stretch cramped legs, grab a beef jerky stick, and use the facilities without fear of turbulence. To Papaw’s way of thinking, a man ought to be able to travel on his own timetable, comfortably, with the knowledge that everything he needed for the journey and stay ahead was safe within his own vehicle.
I tried, multiple times, to correct his thinking, to bring him into the modern age of travel. He resisted, finally confiding that he had seen too much life to feel comfortable giving his person and his belongings over to a crew of strangers and trusting them to do their best to take the whole package and transport it from point A to point B.
“Baby,” he told me (because he always called me “Baby”), “you can hire a person to do a job, but you can’t make them give a damn about doing it right.”
The opportunity for careless mistakes– for outright callousness– was too high, he felt, in something as precarious as air travel. And so, like a good consumer, he voted with his wallet.
He never flew.
I don’t have that luxury, and chances are, neither do you. My Papaw lived the bulk of his life in a 200-mile radius that had the ultimate convenience of being bisected by I-75. Even if I weren’t heading off to Asia, I still live perched on the very edge of the western seaboard. My entire family, a good chunk of my friends, and a whole smorgasboard of life opportunities sit on the other side of this sprawling continent. We clocked driving to D.C. for our summer trip. It would have added a week to our plans. One way. Who has that kind of time? Who can invest that much life into something more easily accomplished in a 5-hour flight? Unless the journey is the point, you’re better off ponying up with all the other cattle and being herded onto a plane that, while less comfortable, at least has the advantage of being mercifully quick about the distance.
So we fly.
We fly, and we hope for the best. Because, let’s be honest, my Papaw had it right: choosing to fly is choosing to trust strangers. Strangers who have been hired to do a job but may or may not give a hoot about how well that job gets done.
When we returned from our trip east last week, I had this point illustrated to me in one of the most painful and personal ways possible. Our last stop had been to my grandparents’ home– a solid little brick house crafted largely by Papaw’s own hands, standing on a little rise above a country road that had once been a thoroughfare. When he had passed, I had asked for only one thing by which to remember this amazing man who had set so much of the tone of my life: his watch. It was an inexpensive Timex, the kind with a large face, sweeping hands, and a stretchy metal band that had a habit of pinching arm hairs and skin if you weren’t careful. It wasn’t heirloom quality. It was simply a thing that I remembered from the very beginning: tracing the circle of the face with my fingers, being allowed to slip the band over my wrist, pressing my ear to its works and hearing the firm, reassuring tick-tick that signaled the rhythm of our down times together. It wasn’t special, but it was Papaw’s watch. That fact made it more valuable than gold.
We had thought the watch lost in the horrible transitions form home to hospital, home again, then to a nursing facility. But our final night visiting, my Mamaw thought that maybe, somehow, it might just be in that little porcelain trinket cup in the curio behind Papaw’s La-Z-Boy. And sure enough, it was.
I held it in my hands, lost in a flood of memories. I showed it to my children, I slipped it onto my arm, and I treasured it.
Then I carefully placed it in a shoebox, burrowed it deep into a rigid Rubbermaid Action Packer, snapped the hinges shut, added two TSA-approved locks, and waited to be reunited with it in Seattle.
Of course, when the black bin slid onto the baggage return belt, it was nearly empty. Its locks were missing entirely, its lid was haphazardly tossed inside, and the box itself was crushed and unable to be used again. Next to it, a random red bin held a plastic trash bag holding a few things we identified as ours. A handful of clothing– stained with black grease– and an empty shoebox was all that was left of the items we had carefully folded, weighed, and entrusted to Delta.
The watch was gone. This time, for good.
In that moment, I hated myself for doubting my own ability to keep the watch safe. See, that night before, I had carefully weighed my options. And really, the keepsake seemed safer locked in a nearly-indestructible box cushioned by 50 pounds of clothing than anywhere I could secret it as I herded children, pell mell, through the maze of two airports, two planes, back and forth to toilets smaller than my pantry, opening and closing my bag to pull out sticker books and pretzels and chapstick and fruit snacks.
I made a call. And I lost.
But really, the reason I am writing this is that folks, we have all lost. Do you know the very first reaction the Delta folks had when we moved, heartbroken and aching, into the little glass office to report our issue?
“We’re not responsible.”
The women working that night affirmed, multiple times, that they are not responsible for luggage. For the contents. For the condition it arrives in. For jewelry. For clothing. For locks. For anything.
It could have happened anywhere, they said. In Lexington, where our journey home began. In Atlanta, where we had our layover. In a dozen other airports we didn’t visit, but may have been involved in the portage of our belongings. It could have been purposefully tampered with, or it could have been an accident. TSA agents could have opened the locks, and forgotten to put them back on. Or they could have been broken off in transit. Or maybe purposefully cut. The contents could have spilled in the hold of a plane, or been strewn across the entire continent, one item at a time. There was just no knowing, and no way to find out.
In any case, they weren’t responsible.
And if that’s truly how it stands then yes, we have all lost. We have all been dehumanized, when we come to expect to pay $25 on top of our ticket price to be robbed or disused. We have all suffered a blow when we have our own stories of items arriving in pieces, of baggage never being found, of things ruined at the hands of those who have been charged with the task of handling what belongs to paying customers. We have all been sold a bill of goods when we would rather pack the bare minimum and drag a roller bag through a cacophonous airport than let the folks getting paid to move our golf shirts and belts get close to our stuff.
Papaw was right. You can hire someone to do a job, but you can’t make them give a damn about doing it right. You can’t even make them own up to the wrong they’ve done you.
And while we may not all be able to vote the way he did– by refusing to take part in the system– we can at least make some noise and try to regain a tiny bit of customer service in this area. Draw some attention. Share your story. Refuse to pay to be abused in silence. Speak up. Tweet. Post to Facebook. Social media is a powerful thing. Let’s use it to get some change in this area. It’s too late for my Papaw’s watch … but heaven knows, someone else’s precious cargo is in the air as we speak. Can any of us afford to sit by, silently, and wait for our turn?
#papawswatch #takeresponsibility #notpayingtobeabused #airtravelfail #delta