juanzqui

A COOL, CLOUDY morning. Mostly. The weather people promise a high of about 90 degrees this afternoon, but at a tad past 7 a.m., coolness reigns. So do the birds. The grackles, who are just coming to life, the mockingbirds, the doves and the tweeters and chirpers. It’s too late for the roosters. Can’t hear any of them. A cloud just covered the bright star that dominated the southeastern sky. Probably a planet, it’s so bright. My cousin Mike would know what it is, or my brother Alejandro. But I never learned the heavens at night. Or at dawn.
Looking down the street to where a truck is backing up to the HEB grocery store’s unloading dock, I can see a trace of fog under the yellowish light of the street lamps. We don’t call them that anymore, do we? Street lamps. The term evokes a older times. Charles Dickens, maybe.
Across the street, my sister’s neighbor’s son’s 80s- or 90s-era Cadillac presides over that side of the street like a satiated royal. It stands out against the various shades of dark green of the trees, the lawns and the house. It is a light blue car with a white top. The blue looks like a pretty pastel in the semi darkness, which is a lie. It’s another kind of blue, a metallic blue, really. Less appealing. But at this moment it’s a satisfying blue.
I’ve prepared the morning coffee in the old-style electric percolator that my sister refuses to give up, and it will soon be ready. My brother-in-law Jess is in the shower and my sister Carmen is still in bed, enjoying every last moment of sleep before rising to don her walking clothes. Soon another sister, Dora, will arrive after attending morning Mass at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church a few blocks away and the twe best friends will set off on their morning walk and gossip exchange.
The sky is getting lighter and soon the street lamps will enter their period of slumber. Soon the school buses will roll by on their way to pick up their charges to deliver them to their schools, and soon the whole town will be awake and the heat will set in and the morning’s magic will also say, hasta mañana.
And we shall respond, as my grandparents and parents taught us to: Si Dios quiere.

TRAVELING ABROAD, especially in Europe, always serves to remind my how incredibly stupid and ridiculous American politicians tend to be.

With every election season, we hear the all-too-familiar boast about this being the universe’s greatest and best nation. As proof, they offer the spurious assertion that almost everyone living in another country wants to move to the Unites States.

What utter nonsense.

I don’t have very many friends living abroad, but I can assure you that none of my foreign friends has any desire whatsoever to live here. They are perfectly content where they are and would find laughable any suggestion to the contrary.

Yes, there are no doubt millions of people around the world who would sacrifice much to enter this country, but I’m willing to bet that, given the option, many of those people would welcome a new home in Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany or any of the other developed countries.

Many have found those new homes there, as you can see wherever you go in Europe where you see African, Asian, Latin American, Middle Easter faces wherever you go. And I’m not talking about tourists.

The reality of human nature is that we would rather stay put.  For the most part, we prefer to stay with the familiar — faces, landscapes, weather, customs, cultures, foods, etc. We would rather live among those who understand, appreciate and love us.

What drives us away from home – from the familiar — is rejection, hopelessness, despair or danger. In other words, when the comfortable becomes uncomfortable, that’s when we decide it’s time to move on.

With few exceptions, we move to places that are as similar as possible to the place we’re leaving behind, and as close as possible. If that place is the United States, that’s where we will go. If it’s Spain, then we’ll go to Spain.

My father’s father moved his family to Texas because he’d had a serious falling out with his boss — a big hacienda owner — and feared for his life. My mother’s father loaded his family onto a horse-drawn buggy and transported them across the Rio Grande because his family did not approve of his new wife, whom he married after my mother’s mother died.

Neither of them, I can assure you, told themselves or announced to the world that they were coming to this country because of baseball, Chevrolets or apple pie.

Or democracy, which by itself is not that huge of a drawing force.

I’m sure that there are many Cubans who will swear that they or their parents or grandparents moved to the United States because of this nation’s democratic traditions and institutions. But these are the same people who were perfectly content to remain on that island under dictator after dictator.

Freedom and democracy are not necessarily the main motivations for moving to another country. Just ask the hundreds of thousands Filipinos and other Southeast Asians who are working under oppressive conditions in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Middle Eastern countries.

And let’s not forget that many of the people who come to this country, legally or illegally, come here because they can no longer put up with the economic, social or political conditions in their home countries — conditions that the United States, directly or indirectly, helped bring about.

We exploit a country’s resources and/or we prop up ruthless and corrupt leaders there because who allow us to have our ways, and then we wonder why that country’s people want to leave.

Or we pat ourselves on the back because those people want to come here.

SO YES, THIS idea that the entire world is in utter fascination with and covetous of the Great American Way of Life is nothing more a Great American Fantasy, foolish and dangerous. But it continues to be pushed by politicians because it appeals to people’s natural need to feel that we are better than others.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this country. While I love to visit other countries, this is where I choose to live. It’s a great country, and it doesn’t need any foolish myths to make it great.

AT THE TRAIN station in Milan last week, I was one of the first to board the train that would take me to Switzerland.

A few minutes later, an American couple and their daughter, who appeared to be about 9 or 10 years old, boarded.

Right before them, with their larger suitcases (and they were large and heavy) came a dark-skinned man, probably East Asian, who proceeded to heave the suitcases up onto the luggage racks. When he finished, he held out his hand.

“Do you work here?” the wife demanded. He said no.

“Then you shouldn’t be on this train!” she said angrily. The guy sheepishly suggested that she might give him some money and he would gladly get off.

“No!” she said. “I am not giving you money! You do not belong on this train! Get off!”

The guy tried again but was again refused and eventually he did get off the train.

The family’s seats were at the other end of car, so she ordered (yes, ordered) her husband and child to go to their seats while she stood guard over their luggage. I guess she was afraid the guy would come back and take her heavy bags.

It just so happened that my bag was on the lower rack. My first instinct had been to offer to move mine to the overhead rack so that this family would have room for their suitcases, but after what I saw and heard, I felt no compunction to help out.

Next to my bag was the bag of another passenger, another dark-skinned East Asian guy of about 30. He had gone to the bathroom, or somewhere, and had missed all that had happened. When he returned, he decided to move his bag, and he reached for it.

The still-irate American woman slapped his hand and said, “That isn’t yours!”

The Asian guy appeared shocked and said nothing, but he again reached for his bag and again the woman slapped his hand away, repeating that it wasn’t his bag.

I sat there, watching in a state of unbelief for a few seconds but finally I said loudly, “Yes it is! It’s his bag.”
The woman turned to me and gave me a stare that said, “Who the hell are you?”

I repeated, “That is his bag. Let him have it, damn it.”

With that, she removed her hand from the guy’s suitcase and he was able to retrieve it. He looked at me with both a bewildered and thankful look.

“I’m sorry about that,” I told him, loud enough for the woman to hear. And as he exited, I said, “Jesus . . . unfreakingbelievable!”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that was his bag?” she said sharply.

“You didn’t,” I responded. “But you assumed that it wasn’t just because he has a brown skin.”

“That is not true!” she said. “That had nothing to do with it at all. It did not enter into the equation.”

“Of course it did!” I countered.

“You don’t know me,” she said. “My job happens to take me all over the world and I work with all kinds of people.”

And with that, she walked off to join her husband and child.

NOW, HAVING JUST lost all of my money and credit card to a subway thief in Rome a few days earlier, I understood oh so well that there are crooks and thieves in Europe, just as there are in every corner of the world. I know that they steal not only wallets, but also suitcases. So I can understand the natural instinct of a person in a foreign country to protect what is hers.

But this woman was not protecting her luggage, she was protecting the luggage of someone else – someone she didn’t even know — from a guy she assumed was not the owner of the bag, and that assumption was based solely on the way he looked.

The way this American woman reacted to the dark-skinned man’s attempt to retrieve his own suitcase still makes me shudder. She probably would have slapped my hand if I had attempted to reach for my bag.

And so I can’t help wondering what kind of message about Americans she – and others like her – send out to all the people with whom they come in contact as they travel around the world. Surely there has got to be a way to be protective and smart about our belongings while traveling abroad without treating like dirt those with whom we come in contact.

There is no bad wine in Italy.

There is no bad wine in Switzerland, especially when your host knows his wine.

A quarter-liter of wine is enough with lunch.

A half-liter is too much. Way too much, unless you’re close to your hotel room and can walk there quickly for a siesta after lunch.

Beer doesn’t get the same respect in Italy as does wine, but it’s good.

I know Venezuelanos and Brazileños are going to disagree, but Italians are the most beautiful people in the world. Except for the ones who bump into you as you’re getting into the subway and take away your wallet, leaving you without money or credit cards in a strange city.

And they all have chingos de style.

Italians are a cold people. No, not in the unfriendly sense, but in the physical sense. Either that or they just love to show off their fancy jackets and coats and scarves. It may be 68 degrees, shorts-wearing weather in Texas and DC, yet Italians are still wearing their jackets.

Italians are a friendly, accommodating people. Except for the ones who bump into you as you’re getting into the subway and take away your wallet, leaving you without money or credit cards in a strange city.

Italians are stupid: they smoke too damn much.

There should be a World Opera Federation and it should meet right away to decree that opera be written in no language but Italiano.

Italian television appears to be as much of a wasteland as US TV. Maybe more.

There is bad Italian food. But you have to work really hard to find.

I still don’t get those bidets in hotel rooms.  

Even though most of the time it’s seems that Italians won’t allow an American to communicate in Italian, it is possible at times. And it feels so good when it does happen.

Even though at home you drink your coffee black, with no sugar, when you’re here you just have to pour in that packet of sugar that comes with your cappuccino. You have to.

The word for postage stamps is francobolli. You might go around an entire day trying to recall that word but rest assured that at 4 in the morning, you’ll wake up and triumphantly shout: Francofriggingbolli!

Romans and Sienese are not very much into bicycling. It may have something to do with all those cobblestone streets. Makes it kind of fought on the derrière, I would think. They love their scooters, though.  I did see a lot of bicyclists in Florence, though.

There really is something about the way the sun hits the buildings in the late afternoon.

Immigrant street vendors don’t exist in Siena, at least not compared to Rome.

The weirdest item offered by these vendors is a blob-looking plastic globule in neon-bright colors that emits a cat-like shriek and looks as if it’s going to splatter into a hundred pieces when slammed to the ground than magically reconstitutes itself into the original blobbish form.

Those Indian guys who levitate, floating cross-legged, with one hand resting on a cane the only thing touching the ground, give me the creeps.

You can see all you need to see in Siena in two days. Three at the most.

The term for you’re welcome is prego. Why is it so hard to remember? If you do remember, say it right away after someone says grazie. By the time you’ve walked to the store’s entrance, it’s too late, so just accept the fact that the merchant is going to think you’re an ugly American.

Commercial art galleries, the kind where you can find affordable interesting art, are hard to find in Rome and Siena. I’m sure they are around, but I didn’t see any. They’re everywhere in Florence, though.

You’re going to find it impossible to resist that stylish espresso maker, even if you already have a bunch of them at home.

When you go into one of the hundreds of beautiful old cathedrals and churches, even if you’re not a believer, you’re going to be moved, and you won’t be able to resist dropping a euro through a slot so you can light a candle in honor of your mother, who was a believer, and your father, who wasn’t, and others who have died. And you’ll feel a stirring in the center of your chest.

I really can’t get into Italian ceramics.

Tuscany landscape paintings are the Texas bluebonnet paintings of Italy.

Don’t leave a shopping bag on the ground next to where you’re sitting because a bulldog just might come by and piss on it.

Bring a flashlight, or make sure your iPhone flashlight app works, because your B&B host might not think it’s worth mentioning that the lights in the stairwell that leads to the apartment don’t work and, without a flashlight, you will have to climb up or down in total darkness.

Italians love to walk, as a form of entertainment, especially in the evenings and on weekends. Maybe that’s why there are so few fat Italians.

You cannot escape the sound of church bells. They’re everywhere, and they’re beautiful.

Gelato.

Italy is younger than the United States.

The largest church in Rome is not St. Peter’s. (These last two items came from our Vatican tour guide.)

Trains in Italy and Switzerland are on time, and many are so quiet you hardly know they’re running.

Venetian blinds in Siena go on the outside of windows. (I wonder what they are called in Venice?)

Salve is not heard as often as ciao, but it’s nice to hear when it is. Reminds me of a church song, Salve Mayo Florido, which we used to sing when we’d go to church every evening in May to pray the rosary and offer flowers to the Virgin Mary.

One shouldn’t drink too much of any liquid in Italy because there aren’t very many restrooms around. Some museums don’t have restrooms and you have to pay to use almost all public restrooms.

Take the oldest clothes you have and at the end of the trip, throw it away. That’ll give you more room in your suitcase for all the stuff you bought on the trip.

The most beautiful ties I have ever owned, I bought in Florence when I was last there. Now that I don’t have a job, I don’t need to buy ties anymore. Nevertheless, I found myself looking longingly at ties in store windows. Although I resisted the temptation, I noticed that, for the first time since my retirement, I regretted not having an office to go to (so I could have an excuse to buy a tie or two). The feeling didn’t last that long, thank goodness.

The more you walk the more you discover.

A sign that says uscita in green and features a green stick figure in a walking stance means exit. It really does. Don’t go through that door unless you really want to go out or you’re 100 percent certain you can re-enter through that door.

Siena reminds me very much of Toledo in that it is easy to get lost but nearly impossible to stay lost. If you walk around long enough you will soon come to the main square or the cathedral.

Pistachio is pronounced “pistakio” in Italy. I should have known that. How embarrassing.

Artichokes are my new favorite food.

George Clooney sells coffee in Italy, and Julia Roberts sells perfume.

The air in the Milano area is very, very polluted.

Lake Como, as seen from the train, is beautiful.

The first sight of the Alps is awesome. It always is.

So is the view of the Siena skyline at sunset, with the church bells ringing all around you.

ONE OF THE DRAWBACKS drawbacks of traveling in Italy is that bathrooms in public spaces are scarce. You either have to try to sneak into a restaurant’s facility, risking the wrath of the owner, or you search for a public restroom, for which you have to pay.

Even at the Duomo in Siena, after you’ve paid a steep price to enter, if you need to go to the bathroom, you still have to pay.

Sometimes this leads to strange adventures.

Here’s what happened on Friday morning, for instance, at the Siena train station. I was hoping to take the 9:18 train to Florence but I found out that train had been cancelled. The next train was two hours later. No big deal. I was not in a hurry and if I got to Florence too early, chances were my hotel room would not yet be ready.

Having nothing to do, I decided to go sit outside to warm up in the pleasant morning sun.

Soon enough it happened: I started feeling an urge to pee. I looked around and saw a sign for restrooms inside a nearby modern shopping center building. Carrying my suitcase, camera bag and backpack, I walked into the building and followed the signs to blessed relief. The signs led me to a hallway. At the end of the hallway there were three doors, one on each side of the hall, unmarked, and a door in between. It had a sign saying uscita — exit. There were no signs for bathrooms anywhere. The hallway was deserted so there was no one to ask.

So, I decided to go through the marked door, reasoning that the bathrooms were on the other side. When I opened the door, I was outside, on a wide metal stairwell between the building and the hill behind it. There were more exit signs pointing upwards, these ones saying “emergency exit.”

That should have set off some alarm bells and convinced me not to close the door behind me. But that’s exactly what I did. I first went down to the floor below and tried the door there. It was locked so I went back up and tried to open the door I had exited. It too was locked.

What to do? What to do?

First of all, I decided I needn’t panic, at least not yet; I still had about an hour and a half before the train left, and if I missed that one, there’d be more trains to Florence throughout the day.

I decided to knock on the door, hoping somebody inside would hear and open the door. After a few minutes of that, I opted for Plan B: I started pounding on the door.

That didn’t work either.

So, reluctantly I moved on to Plan C. I would climb the stairs to find the promised emergency exit at the top. My fear was that it was one of those doors or gates that set off an alarm when opened. How would I explain to the police or security guards what I was doing?

I say reluctantly because I would have to haul all my stuff up, which together weighed quite a bit.

But haul it up the stairs I did (all the while thanking my daily workouts at the Y this past year). Five flights of stairs. At the top was the promised emergency gate and beyond the gate was a dirt road parallel to the shopping center. I saw an old man walking on the road so I knew it led to somewhere. But to where?

First things first, though: the gate was locked. Fortunately, the fence on either side was not very high, maybe about four and a half feet, and there was a sturdy fence post, which I could hold on to, where the fence met with another fence. So I threw my stuff over the fence and then climbed over. Easy.

I decided to head to the right because otherwise I’d be going uphill, and also I could see a street in the distance. I thought there might be a chance the two would meet.

So I started walking. The morning was still relatively cool but I had on a light jacket on top of a sweater on top of a long-sleeved shirt. Walking in the warm sun and pulling and carrying my stuff soon had me sweating, so I stopped to take off my jacket. I was still too hot but decided to proceed anyway.

Let me tell you that gravel/dirt roads are not good friends to those tiny wheels on rolling suitcases.

After walking about six or seven minutes, I met another man, who was walking his dog. I can’t imagine what he thought, seeing a Mexican with his luggage on such a back road. I asked him if the road led to the street and he said yes. I then tried to explain to him what happened but he didn’t care, he just wanted to get the hell away from me.

Eventually, the road did meet the street and I was able to walk back to the station to await my train. I think I must have walked close to a mile.

But, you know what they say about a silver lining? After I met the man and his dog, I was all alone on that lone country road, a perfect opportunity to step behind a group of trees to relieve myself. And I didn’t have to pay anything! I peed for free!

I LOST A FRIEND yesterday. A painting I did about a decade ago. It had hung in my office in Washington and here it had hung on my kitchen wall. It is a bright painting in vivid, contrasting colors, so it was impossible not to notice every time I came into the kitchen. The painting is essentially a colorized New York Times crossword puzzle, one of those Saturday puzzles where almost every square filled in with letters. The first line across reads, “It takes a village.” The second, “board of trustees. The last two are “unparliamentary” and “store detective.” My plan was to use mostly contrasting colors for each square and the letter inside it, in a certain pattern that I had used in an earlier work that appealed to me. However, about three quarters of the way through the painting, I stepped back to take a look at it and I was struck by the beauty of the remaining white letters, so I decided that the painting was finished.

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of comments from people who look at it for the first time. Most of them have been along the line of “interesting,” or “intriguing,” or simply, “hmmmm.” I realized the bright colors aren’t most peoples cup of Coke, but it didn’t matter. I liked it.

But now it’s gone. Yesterday morning I unhinged it from the hooks that attached it to the wall and took it downstairs and to the curb where a friend’s car was parked. He opened the trunk and I unceremoniously placed it in that space and closed the trunk lid. I didn’t even bother to say goodbye. It didn’t seem like a big deal, just part of a transaction. My friend had come to town on business and had the spent the night at my place. During his visit he mentioned that he and his wife had talked about buying a painting from me and he mentioned the one they had talked about. He later called her to make sure that the painting on my kitchen wall was indeed the painting he was talking about. He asked me to think of a price and that we’d talk in the morning. The next morning I asked him to make me an offer and the amount he mentioned and it was exactly what I had thought about as the price I would ask from a friend. So it was an easy deal.

I was flattered, of course. In all my years of creating art, I had given away a number of paintings, as presents, to friends, but until yesterday, I had only sold one painting, also to a friend. Well, that’s not exactly true. When I was in grad school and nearly broke, I talked one of my friends into buying a painting so I could afford to buy groceries and pay my rent during the last couple of months of school. I felt bad about that, and still do. First, because he was not a great lover of art and only agreed to buy it to help me out. Second, because I really liked the painting and hated to part with it. Over the years, since then, I visited him both in his home and his office and I never once saw the painting, so I’m assuming he put it under a bed somewhere, or tossed it into his barn or store room. I was always too embarrassed to ask him about it, and maybe buying it back from him. And now he’s dead and I’m sure his family has no idea where that painting is.

I’m not very good at selling anything, but I’m particularly bad about selling my art. I always find it difficult to believe that anyone else would like what I create, even if I do. For years I refused to call myself an artist, believing it was presumptuous of me to claim that designation for myself. But in recent years I’ve grown more confident in my artistic endeavors and the idea of selling a piece of my artwork is no longer that alien.

So, I was happy to sell that piece to my good friends because I know they appreciate what I create, and because they are very, very special friends. They have several other of my creations hanging in their home and they have displayed them prominently. It’s in a good home.

Still, every time I look at the empty space on my kitchen wall, I feel a small pang of angst and sadness. It’s like when I have visitors who stay for more than a day or two and I become accustomed to their presence and then suddenly they’re gone. There’s a certain emptiness to the place that overwhelms it and it takes its own sweet time to vacate the premises.

I know I’ll get over it. I’ll find something else to replace that empty space on my wall and things will eventually return to normal. Who knows, it just might be the new piece I started painting, just today, or the next one after that. Something will, for blank walls and I simply do not get along.

I’M SITTING OUSIDE a coffee shop, enjoying the nice relatively mild Houston evening. A beautiful thundershower powered through the area this afternoon, bringing with it temperatures just a tad cooler. Normally these summer storms leave behind nothing but steaming mugginess, but the air tonight is on the less-humid side. The breeze from the Gulf of Mexico provides added comfort. And so I say to myself, “It won’t be long now. Fall will soon be here.”

That is a phrase that is repeated probably 3 million times a day in this city, and it’s uttered millions of times more in this state and the entire Gulf coast region. It is a phrase based on solid evidence, we tell ourselves. Tonight is one of those pieces of evidence. The other morning when I stepped outside to retrieve the paper at 6 a.m. and it didn’t feel as if I’d stepped into a sauna was another one. Some of even claim to smell the approaching change in the air.

The fact that when you look at the weather app on your smart phone you no longer see temperatures in the high 90s predicted for the week ahead, that’s another clue. My friend Mary bases her belief that fall is just around the corner on the hummingbirds she is starting to see in her yard. They are on their way south, she assures me, because they know that cooler weather is on the way. My sister Delfina, when she lived in Texas, would always swear, as early as the second week of August, that she could tell that la canicula, the dog days, had been broken and that summer’s days were numbered. Ya no falta mucho, she would assure us: it won’t be long now. We laughed at her and thought she was delusional, but she was probably no more delusional than the rest of us. She was just a little early, that’s all. And, who knows? Maybe her old bones sensed something the rest of us couldn’t.

We also cite history. We all have anecdotal evidence of fall’s actual early arrival. Most of us remember such and such hurricane that brutally broke summer’s will, but we usually don’t talk about those because none of us wants to be seen as wishing for a hurricane. Not after Katrina and Ike.

My favorite historical reference is that Saturday, September 15, sometime in the 1970s when I was watching the Chilympiad parade and a cool front swept through, dropping the temperature 20 degrees or more. My memory has never been that good, but that image of standing on the sidewalk and feeling that cold front arrive is etched indelibly in my mind forever. Others offers similar instances of summer’s early demise. In August and September, it seems, we are all weather experts.

And we’re all religious. For, while we like to believe that we have hard evidence and history on our side, what we — those of us who choose to live in this part of the country — have is faith. And hope. We have faith that sooner or later, the heat and the humidity will be swept back into the Gulf for a few months, and we will tell ourselves that those five or six months of relatively mild weather make putting up with summer’s oppression worth it.

As for hope, it is that the change will arrive sooner rather than later.

August 17, 2013

IT’S BEEN A while since I’ve been on a plane — since December, I believe — and I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’m on my way to Montreal aboard an Embrear 170, the larger of the jets made by the Brazilian company. This is the first time I’ve flown this type of small plane. Unlike the smaller version, the 170 has a first class, or business class, section, and that’s where I’m sitting, thanks to either United Airlines’ generosity or mistake.

It’s supposed to be a three hour-y-cacho flight but the captain said a while ago that because of strong tailwinds, we’ll be there about 40 minutes early, which means we’ll be in Montreal about 5:15 and I should be at my hotel by 6:30 or so. I’m eager to meet my friends, Rick and Zoe Cowan and their kids, Gabe and Sophie, for dinner. I haven’t seen them since I bid them a tearful goodbye in early January. They are staying in an apartment they found through AirB&B, but we’ll be staying in the same hotel in Quebec City.

I love flying. I have loved it since the first time I got on an American Airlines Boeing 707 from San Antonio to San Francisco back in the early 70s. I was teaching art at San Marcos High School and I guess I thought I was rich because I bought tickets for myself and my parents to fly to California to spend Christmas with my sisters, in Gilroy. I wore a tie on that first flight, as did my father. It was what men did back then when they flew.

We flew coach but the service we got was equivalent to what we get on first class these days (except that the booze wasn’t free). We got a full meal on real dishes and glasses and with metal silverware, and cloth napkins. I don’t remember what we were served, but it tasted heavenly. I chose the window seat because I wanted to see exactly where we were flying. By the time we got to San Francisco, my neck was hurting badly because I spent the entire three hours or so looking down at the earth below. The biggest thrill was being able to identify from 30,000 feet the roads we had driven over when we traveled to California over several summers to work in the food processing industry. The plane’s route pretty much followed I-10 to Los Angeles and then US 101 to San Francisco, so that I was able to identify the towns and cities I had driven through.

Before getting on the plane, my siblings and I had worried about how my parents would handle flying because they too had never flown before. My sister-in-law even gave my mother some sort of pill to take to calm her nerves should she need it. She never did. Both my father and mother acted as if they had flown all their lives. They traveled with dignity, authority and an almost-regal disposition. I was so in awe of them. They didn’t even flinch when, as we were approaching the San Francisco airport the plane started to shake and rattle. I looked out at the wings and they looked as if they were flapping, like a bird’s wings. I nearly shit in my pants for I was certain we were going to crash into the San Francisco Bay. Yet my parents set calmly, as if they were in front of their TV watching a telenovela.

THAT WAS THE beginning of my love affair with flying. Soon after that I discovered Braniff Airlines and its colors and vibrancy and air of excitement. I flew it to New York and Chicago and loved every minute of it, and I mourned mightily when it went under. I loved the 707s and hated it when the 737s began to replace them, but that didn’t keep me from flying. I was excited when the 747 was introduced and couldn’t wait to fly on it. I got my wish when I flew from JFK to LAX, with a stop in Phoenix, aboard one of those giant graceful birds.

In 1984, when I was assigned to work out of Barbados, I loved the idea that in order for me to get to Central America or much of the Caribbean from that island, I first had to fly to Miami, and I started racking up miles on the Eastern Airlines frequent flier program. The first password I ever had to memorize was for this program, and it is still a valid password for my United frequent flier program (Eastern was bought by Continental, which merged with United). I loved flying back to Barbados on the L1011 used on that route. There was a certain whir to that plane’s engines that I had not heard before and haven’t heard since that was just so soothing and reassuring. The flight took off in the late afternoon, which meant that if I sat on the right side, I could look out the window to witness some spectacular Caribbean sunsets. I made it a habit to play (on my Walkman) either Rimzky-Korzakov’s Scheherazade or The New World Symphony by Dvorak, both perfect soundtracks for that orgasmic visual feast.

In 1982, I was covering politics for The Houston Post and I got to travel a lot with candidates for statewide office. My favorite was Mark White, who was running for governor. He flew all over the state but he insisted on spending every night in Austin, and every day, after the last campaign stop when the plane’s nose was pointed towards the state capital, we knew it would be only a matter of minutes following takeoff before White would say, “It’s time for a drink.” The complete opposite was flying with dour, sour Jim Mattox, who was running for attorney general. He did not drink.

With White there also was the extra thrill of riding on a helicopter, LBJ-style, from campaign stop to campaign stop in the Rio Grande Valley.

In 1998 I got to travel with Michael Dukakis in the general election campaign. I flew in the press plane that followed the candidate’s plane. It was called the zoo plane, for good reason. On that plane, there were a number of flight attendants, but their jobs were not to tell you to sit down or to buckle your seat belts. Their job was to make sure you had all the food and drink you needed or wanted, when you wanted it. And if there was any booze left over at the end of the day, they would distribute those little liquor bottles to anyone who wanted them. I don’t think I bought any alcohol for several months after the election was over.

On the last Saturday of the campaign, we started in Milwaukee and made stops in Chicago and one other place before a giant rally in McAllen, from which we flew to Denver to spend the night. It was decided that this being our last Saturday together, we would have a margarita party, and the flight crew made it happen. As soon as we left the McAllen airport, the margaritas started flowing (we also had Tex-Mex food). It so happened that my seat was right across from the galley so I spent the entire couple of hours or so to Denver standing there, gulping down one margarita, placing my glass on the counter and picking up another one (luckily most of our stories had been filed for the day before we left Texas). By the time we got to Denver I was so drunk that I have no memory of getting to the hotel and to this day I am amazed that I didn’t lose my Trash 80 computer or any of my other stuff (one radio reporter did lose his equipment and I never found out if he ever located it).

Dukakis had an early morning rally in Colorado and so we all had very early wake-up calls. I woke up with the worst hangover I have ever had. The schedule called for rallies in Oregon, Seattle and San Francisco with an overnight stay in San Francisco. Sometime during the day, however, somebody in the campaign decided that Dukakis needed to travel to Ohio for a last-minute rally. I guess polling showed that an Ohio win was possible. Ha! We were told that we had an option: join Dukakis on a smaller plane from Seattle to Cleveland, where Dukakis would attend a breakfast rally, then fly back to San Francisco — or fly from Seattle to San Francisco. I called my editor, hoping he’d tell me to skip Cleveland but it was not to be.

So, still hung over, I flew halfway across the country (back then I couldn’t sleep on planes, so there was no hope of getting any sleep), covered the breakfast rally, got back on the plane and flew back halfway across the country to San Francisco. They took us to the hotel to join the rest of the press corps but we were only there long enough to take a shower before we were hustled back on the bus. That was probably the most expensive shower I’ve ever taken because the room cost something like $400 a night!

And there I was, still hung over and with almost no sleep, following the candidate as he made his final push in Southern California. After his last rally in San Diego that night we were supposed to fly straight back to Boston but another smart-ass in the campaign decided it would be a good idea to stop in Des Moines for a final, final rally — at 4 a.m.! We finally made it to Boston around 8 on Election Day, where I was at last able to get some sleep and get rid of the two-day hangover. (I really need to go back to look at my clips to read what I wrote on those last few campaign days!)

But of all my flying experiences, nothing beats flying aboard the Concorde. I was back in Houston, in 1984, when British Airways decided to join American Airlines in flying the Concorde from London to Dallas for the summer. They invited reporters for the inaugural flight but our aviation reporter wasn’t interested and I quickly said I would do it. We flew from Texas to London on a regular plane and spent the night there. The next day we got to go to the airport to look at the plane.

I have a photo of myself somewhere, kicking the tires of the Concorde. Then the next day we got aboard that beautiful bird and flew across the Atlantic to Washington Dulles then on to Dallas. The pilots allowed the reporters to fly in the cockpit for a while and it just so happened that my turn came when we were about to land in Dallas, and so I got to experience, first a flyover DFW, and then the actual landing, all while looking over the pilots’ shoulders. It was over way too soon, but it was an experience I will never forget.

While I doubt that any aviation experience can equal that one, other than maybe flying into space, which I have no desire of doing, I am still looking forward to new ones. I was really hoping, for instance, that this trip would involve a flight on the 787 Dreamliner, and I certainly would like to fly on the Airbus double decker plane.

THE ONE THING about flying that I’ve noticed is that it puts me in a reflective and writing mood. So, all those who have encouraged me to write more, maybe you might want to send a few bucks my way so I can afford to fly more and write more.

I’M SITTING IN a coffee shop, alone, at a table for four. Normally I take a smaller table but this is the only one unoccupied. I see a grandmother and her grandson, about four years old, come to a nearby two-person table that has just become available. They are carrying their drinks and grilled-cheese sandwiches. The grandmother is looking around with a pained look on her face and, after a while, asks if she can have one of the chairs at my table. I realize that her party is larger than just the two of them so I ask her if she’d like to switch tables.

 

She is grateful, very grateful, and tells her grandson that the nice gentleman has offered to switch tables and isn’t that nice, and so we begin the big switch. As this is going on, the woman’s daughter or daugher-in-law arrives carrying her sandwich and drink. The older woman tells her that I offered to trade tables. The younger woman says nothing, and instead begins to move my stuff out of the way so she can make room for her food and stuff. Because I was trying to hurry, I leave the black plastic coffee cup lid behind. She picks it up and unceremoniously drops it on my table.

 

I look up in disbelief and see a face that shouts out, “I’m entitled! Get over it!”

 

It’s a face I’ve seen many, many times in my life, and almost all of them have been white faces.

 

I’m entitled to hog this sidewalk or this hallway, and it’s your duty to move out of the way.

 

I’m entitled to get on that elevator and it’s your duty to hold the door open for me.

 

I’m entitled to get in front of you in this heavy traffic and it’s your duty to make room for me.

 

I’m entitled to walk through this doorway and it’s your duty to hold it open.

 

I’m entitled to have this last grocery cart and it’s your duty to wait for another one to come along.

 

I’m entitled to be waited on next at this coffee shop and it’s your duty to be patient while I get my coffee.

 

I’m entitled! I’m entitled! I’m entitled!

 

Several years ago I decided that I’d had enough and I forced myself to not hold doors open for white people even though not doing so went against all that my parents and my grandparents had taught me.

 

I decided that if I was walking down a hallway or a sidewalk and a white person came straight at me, I would hold my ground and force that person to detour around me.

 

I decided that if a white person near me accidentally dropped something, I would keep on walking and not pick it up for him or her.

 

I decided to not do all those nice things I had been doing for people because that is what good people do for others. I didn’t like it and I felt bad but eventually I began to get over it.

 

Sometimes I fail and forget my resolve, as I did today, and I do the right thing, only to get that putrid air of entitlement blown into my face.

 

I realize that a good percentage of the white people who read this won’t understand and might even be offended. I fully expect them to give me examples of how they have been treated similarly by Mexicans or blacks or other minorities. I will accept those examples and believe them because I know there are a lot of very angry/frustrated/fed up/etc. Mexicans/Blacks/Asians/Native American/etc. out there. They have had it with those airs of entitlement and have decided to fight back. Screw manners. Screw kindness. Screw love they neighbor. Screw turn the other cheek.

 

I also expect that some white readers will give me examples of how they too have had to move aside to accommodate other white people’s sense of entitlement. It’s not a race thing, they will assure me. That woman who wanted my table might have treated a white person exactly the same way, they will say.

 

Maybe. But when you grow up in a deeply racist society in deeply racist times when it seemed that the whole world conspired to make you believe that white people were indeed entitled to have what they wanted, when they wanted it, and it was up to you to step aside to let them have it, it’s very difficult to believe otherwise.

 

It’s very difficult not to rant.

 

I don’t expect you to understand. If you didn’t find yourself nodding in understanding when President Obama talked about walking into an elevator and seeing white women clutching their purses, you probably won’t understand what I’m talking about here. That’s OK.

 

I have been very fortunate in that I have many, many white friends and I have known many, many white people who have treated me with dignity and respect and have not let the color of my skin influence them. I appreciate them very, very much. It is because of them that I was able to temper much of the race-related anger and resentment I grew up with. But every once in a while something like this happens and a dark hand reaches down deep inside me and pulls at those painful, humiliating memories, making me want to scream.