MIDWEST COUNTRY JOURNAL, Part Two (aka, Airport Bliss) — by Steve Nadis
Long before 9/11, I wrote a screenplay with a friend who worked in Hollywood. Our story took place mainly in an airport. We came close on a few occasions to selling the script but never sealed the deal. We let it sit for a few years and then 9/11 happened, after which point airports became miserable places and our story appeared to be permanently dead.
But I got lucky on my recent trip to Chicago. Everything worked out perfectly. I used some miles to get a free roundtrip ticket less than 48 hours from my departure and printed the boarding passes from my own computer. I was supposed to be hit with a $75 fee for the ticket, but for some reason the fee was never charged to me. At both ends, the security lines moved quickly. And because I had no baggage to check, I was able to get onto earlier flights, right at the final boarding call–thus arriving at my destinations an hour or two ahead of schedule. The flights, needless to say, were on time and generally smooth. And the flight attendants were courteous too. It was as if I’d stepped into a time warp, arriving at the airport sometime before September 11, 2001–a more innocent era where the luster of air travel had not yet worn thin.
