On a Wing and (Without) a Prayer

Several weeks ago as we left my parents’ house in Washington Crossing, Pa., to return to Los Angeles, little did we know that our courage and endurance would be sorely tested as we jetted across the continent.

To begin with, we’d already had enough of the cross-country blues. Earlier, in July, we had missed our connection in Dallas-Ft. Worth after a thunderstorm stranded our early evening flight at the Philadelphia airport for three hours. We spent four miserable hours in an airport motel before catching a sunrise flight to Los Angeles.

We each arrived at work late, bleary-eyed and cranky following this long night’s journey into day. A relaxing five-day vacation was a distant memory before we had even reached home.

Never again, I resolved.

That’s why I booked a direct flight from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles six months in advance of our holiday trip. The inconvenience of getting to the airport would be worth the peace of mind. I even made it for 12:30 p.m. to give us a safety net of several hours in case something went awry.

It did . . . fully three weeks before our departure.

The airlines called to say we would have to change planes in Chicago. I was about to object when the agent pleasantly added that our arrival time in Los Angeles still would be 5:15 p.m. I let it go.

Weeks later I would mentally replay this fateful conversation over and over, trying to make it come out differently.

The sun was shining on a crisp December day when we reached the check-in counter at Newark International Airport. We had already taken a car, train and cab during a two-hour trek to the terminal when Katherine inquired about the weather in Chicago.

“Snow,” the agent replied so cheerfully that I thought she was kidding. “Three to six inches. But it’s not expected until this afternoon, so maybe you’ll miss it.”

Unfortunately, this would not be the last misinformation we would receive on this, our longest day.

Flight 1155 boarded at 1:30 p.m., one hour late. A flight attendant merrily recited the emergency instructions in rhyme, including holiday greetings. The rest of the journey would be pure bah humbug.

Moments later the pilot announced that a snowstorm in Chicago would force us to wait at least another hour, maybe longer. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. Soon I would feel something more immediate: hunger pangs.

Katherine said--a little late, I thought--that one should never connect through Chicago in winter. I burrowed deeper into my novel, “Ransom,” escaping to suspense in Japan.

“It was almost dark. Ransom looked up at the huge gray sky. He could almost see the first faint stars. He could feel the planet turning and moving through space. He could feel the tug of gravity in his arms and legs, and he could hear the roar of darkness sweeping toward him like a fist.”

It was 2:30 p.m when the pilot announced another delay. He reassured passengers that connecting flights would also be held up in Chicago. He would repeat this so often that it sounded like a mantra meant to ward off psychic duress.

The baby across the aisle, a veritable olfactory and auditory time bomb, was growing restless. My stomach was growling.

Wasn’t “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” last year’s big holiday movie?

At 3 p.m. the fasten-seat-belt sign flashed on. “We’re cooking,” the pilot chortled as he began to taxi toward the runway. My sophisticated wife put her fingers in her mouth and whistled.

“If we make that connection, all will be forgiven,” I told her, not sure who there was to forgive.

But moments later the captain was back, sheepishly announcing another delay. His credibility was shot; we would not hear from him again. A flight attendant would make all further announcements.

The baby across the aisle was pounding the service tray. I thought maybe next year we’d have the folks come visit us .

Perhaps fearing an uprising, the head flight attendant challenged the restive passengers to guess the combined ages of the five flight attendants. The prize was a bottle of wine. It would, of course, have plenty of time to age quite nicely right there.

I said 133. The answer was 126. I considered protesting; my estimate was based on their ages when the flight was completed.

At 4 p.m., after 2 1/2 hours held hostage on the runway, we were finally airborne. Halfway to Chicago I finished the novel. Ransom was dead. I tried to be fatalistic about what lay ahead for me.

As the snow streamed past the glistening wing of our jet in a dazzling fast-motion kaleidoscope, the pilot assured us again about connecting flights. Now, however, he had downgraded his assurance to refer to “most” of them.

He might as well have told us he was Kris Kringle. One airline alone would cancel more than 400 flights on this fateful day.

We arrived in Chicago at 6 p.m., nearly 10 hours after leaving my parents’ home in sunny Pennsylvania. Our Los Angeles flight had been canceled.

The airport was pandemonium. The hubbub and milling hordes reminded me of a Middle Eastern bazaar. I felt like shish kebab.

We were directed to the connections counter. I got into a long line that didn’t budge for 45 minutes. Kafka does O’Hare.

Inside I felt an unhappy little boy struggling to get out. He longed to kick and scream and throw a temper tantrum right there. But I looked around and no one else was kicking and screaming, not even all the little boys clutching their Christmas presents.

Instead, I stood silently and sulked. Like a grown-up.

More Grim News

Katherine left to work the phones and returned with grim news. Prospects for catching anything other than a colossal headache that night appeared dim.

But one option remained. I saw that a flight to Palm Springs was leaving at 7:30 p.m. We could trade in our ticket and rent a car to make the two-hour drive home. I surveyed the airport chaos once more. Decisively, we made our move.

“You’re on your own in Palm Springs,” the ticket agent advised us. “Fine,” I said. On your own. It sounded like a password to the Magic Kingdom.

We later learned that thousands of fellow travelers were stranded in the airport overnight. They awoke to face long delays the next day when snow blasted Chicago with a double whammy. I’m sure many of them would have preferred to fly by sled and reindeer.

We, on the other hand, had left only our baggage behind. Dire circumstances required sacrifice. It was them or us. The luggage would catch up with us the next day in Los Angeles.

As we barreled down the runway I felt as if we were on one of the last helicopters ascending from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975. Escape.

Well, almost. Inexplicably, Katherine struck up a conversation with an insufferably pompous and self-absorbed young man who was loudly touting the virtues of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, the Christian Science Monitor, Georgetown night life, National Public Radio and, mostly, himself.

He was tossing down bourbons and tossing out bon mots at a nauseating pace.

Where, I thought, was John Candy when we needed him?

Trivia Champ

When Mr. Spigot got up I asked Katherine to turn him off. But he returned, grandiosely announcing that he collected “bits of information that are of no use to anyone but myself.” I slept fitfully as the Spigot poured over the geopolitics of the Middle East.

We disembarked in Palm Springs at 10 p.m. The little boy almost broke free when the rental-car agent informed me that all the vehicles at the airport were reserved. Fortunately, this would prove to be the final erroneous news on a day when accuracy took it on the chin.

Katherine, meanwhile, assured me that we were destined to get a car because she had found a lucky penny that morning. “It’s about time it kicked in,” I replied.

Like Washington boarding his trusty Durham rowboat, we stepped into the chilled desert air, hopped into our rented Delta ’88 Oldsmobile and set sail for home.

Having destiny in our hands, however detoured, lifted our spirits. We agreed that it not only felt like a long time since we had left Los Angeles for our 10-day vacation, but that it seemed like eternity since we left Pennsylvania this morning.

Then, just when we thought we had seen everything, we spotted two huge dinosaurs just off the freeway. There in the darkness, between a food stand and a gas station, loomed life-size statues of a Tyrannosaurus and a Brontosaurus.

“You know,” I said, “when we began this trip, those things still roamed the Earth.”

We laughed, relieved survivors who had come a long way. Bring on the Hessians.