I could easily spend a week in an airport terminal, chatting with travelers from around the world. You can find the most fascinating people from all walks of life in airports. Trust me on this.
A) Isabel… a customer service representative in baggage claim who has witnessed three deaths while on duty.
B) Lance… a bass guitarist who used to work for Shania Twain.
C) Nora… a sprite 26-year-old law student at the London School of Economics.
D) Chris… an airplane steward, and easily the most metrosexual man I have ever met.
And for reference, here are links to maps of the O’Hare and Newark Airport Terminals.
A) Isabel… a baggage claim worker who has personally witnessed three deaths in the airport: two were heart attacks (an elderly woman and an elderly man), but the latest was a 4-year-old girl who came to America for medical treatment. She died in her father’s arms in Terminal C. Isabel is Portuguese. With a name like Isabel, I suppose that should come as no surprise. We spoke about family, and she shared a wonderful story about her 5-year-old nephew, the product of a marriage between a Lebanese man and a Brazilian woman. As a result, this child speaks four languages fluently (Portuguese, Arabic, English, Spanish). Everyone tells her nephew he has beautiful eyes. One day he says, “Everyone tells me I’ve got beautiful eyes. Why not beautiful hair, a beautiful mouth, nose or ears?” One part of our conversation held implications for public policy. Isabel met her future husband at age 12, started dating him at 15, then married at 18. Her husband is three years older. Thus, her husband was 15 (vs. 12) when they met, 18 (vs. 15) when she was dating, and 21 (vs. 18) when they married. In many states, their relationship would have landed her husband in jail. She told me of a 20/20 episode she watched where an 18-year-old boy served three years in jail for sleeping with a 14-year-old girl. Prison didn’t sever their faith in one another. The father who pressed charges came to regret his actions, since immediately after the trial, he came to appreciate the depth of feeling these two lovers shared. Why was I at baggage claim? I needed to track and lock down a lost suitcase. Isabel came in clutch.
B) Lance… the bass guitarist who worked for Shania Twain and Mutt Lange. I met Lance, strangely enough, in the mens’ bathroom near Newark’s Gate C-103. The stalls were full when I entered so I joined a queue. As he exited his stall, he shook his head. ‘The last person in here smoked up a fury,’ he announced. ‘It smells like cigarette fumes. I can understand addiction… I used to be addicted myself, but when you get to the point of smoking in airport stalls…’ Rolling his eyes, he trailed off. I thought that’s where our interaction would end, but then I found myself next to his wife on the plane.
Lance is a bass guitarist who has worked for years in the music industry. Most of his work is done in the country music scene. He worked for eight months as Twain’s bass guitarist. He’s not on the album… it’s not unusual for the bassist on the album to be different than the bassist who tours. While on tour with Shania, he became close with Shania Twain’s future husband, Mutt Lange.
He was headed with his wife and a friend named Stephanie to London to work in a Christian service mission, teaching Christian spirituals set to country tunes. I volunteered to exchange seats with Stephanie so that their group could sit together during the seven hour flight. Lance sent a beer over my way. We exchanged contact info. I’ll be meeting up with him again later this week for an English ale at a nearby pub.
While we were going through customs in London, Lance was the first of us to notice that the crowd was separated into three ‘queues’: one for EU citizens, one for citizens from other countries, and one line filled only with what Lance called “dark skinned people”. It looked like old-school segregation to both of us. I asked a customs agent why there was a separate line for blacks. She explained that it was because citizenship documentation from Western, Eastern and Central Africa is often difficult to interpret, and if African travelers, immigrants, refugees and workers weren’t separated from the others, the line for citizens from first-world nations would be far slower. She concluded by saying, “That’s the theory.” Then she turned warily back to the next traveler.
C) Nora… a sprite law student at LSE. She sat directly beside me on the way to London. She was returning from a three-day shopping trip with her mother to New York City. She speaks four languages (German, English, French and Italian). Her mother is German (German & English) and her father is French. Her parents live in Paris, where she was raised. After college, Nora lived in Milan for several years and learned the Italian language there. Surprisingly, Nora didn’t enjoy Milan. She says she would have much rather lived in Rome. She disliked Milan’s (s)lavish devotion to the fashion industry. I asked her about her London experience. She recommended restaurants in the East End to me before checking out for her beauty sleep. Around 2am, I stepped over her to befriend the airplane stewards.
D) Chris… an airplane steward, and the most metrosexual man I’ve met. He was flirtatious to an extreme. He’s been working the US->UK plane routes for Continental Airlines for what he says feels like years. He enjoys the work and the lifestyle. The rest of what he told me is too outrageous to publish. So outrageous, in fact, that like many others who have shared their lives with me, I’ve chosen to voluntarily conceal his real name.
The stewards fed me well. They hooked me up with two extra portions of hearty lasagna. Good deal. I can’t wait for my next plane flight.
I met Hank and his daughter Sharon waiting for a flight from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to Newark, NJ, in the first leg of my journey to London. They came to Chicago for the weekend to celebrate the wedding of Sharon’s niece. Sharon is an account manager at an advertising firm that works with pharmaceutical companies. Most of my time in the terminal I spent chatting to Sharon about the advertising industry and her aspirations for the future. Hank was hard-of-hearing and, as a consequence, harder to engage. But when Sharon and I reached a natural break, I turned to Hank by asking him about his feelings on the wedding (and the groom). Hank works as a surveyor for an architecture firm in upstate New York. Hank still has an incredibly youthful vigor about him. I had a hard time believing that he was, as he claimed, 84 years young. He had a terrific relationship with his daughter. Here’s Hank’s story.
Where were you born?
I was born in Middleton, NY. I grew up on a dairy farm with nine siblings–two brothers and seven sisters. My brothers and I would wake up every morning before dawn to milk the cows. The three of us would milk anywhere from 30 to 40 cows at one time. We never had a break, and it was harder in those days. Now there are all these fancy devices that milk the cows for you.
Did you drink the milk right from the cow?
Sure we did. We didn’t need to pasteurize milk straight from the udder. What we didn’t drink from the pail we’d put away in an icebox right away. That way, bacteria wouldn’t fester in it. My family would sell the milk to a creamery and that’s how we made our living.
Were all your childhood friends working on their family farms also?
Yes, remember, this was right before World War II. It wasn’t unusual for a family to farm back then. I was friends with all the boys in my neck of the woods. We used to play in the fields all kinds of games, but my favorite memories are of the icehouse at our farm. My dad built a shed insulated with sawdust to store ice through the summer, to cool the milk down right after each milking. My dad filled that ice house right up to the ceiling with ice. He would cut it out from the pond with an ice saw. Me and my pals used to break in whenever we could. We’d go skating with our shoes. [Laughs] Other families would call up my dad and say, “Where’s my boy?” He’d sigh then say, “I’ll go check the icehouse.” He tried to shutter it off, but no matter what he did, we always found a way back in. [Laughs] I miss that dairy farm. We sold it years ago, as family farms were going out of business.
So, what’s keeping you busy these days? Do you still work with the land?
I’ve worked for over sixty years as a surveyor. I go out and check the land for working connections to water, sewage, electricity and cable. I work with the city government to make sure the land is compliant with regulations, and I help the architects decide where to site their designs. Today, with GPS, my job is a whole lot easier. I just push a button and I get the latitude and longitude of my position, then I graph that into my program and I’ve got the answers I need for the architects much more quickly than I ever thought possible.
It sounds like you’re keeping pace with technology.
Oh yeah, I was the first on my block to have a pager. It was this big blocky thing, maybe 7 inches long, 3 inches thick and 3 inches wide. We used to wear it on our belts like an enormous buckle. I saw a good buddy of mine down the street. He’s significantly younger than me. He couldn’t believe I had a pager. [Laughs] Remember, this is before the days of text messaging and before cell phones were ubiquitous. You needed a pager if you wanted or needed to get messages wherever you were. I was a volunteer with our local volunteer fire department for fifty years. With the pager on, I could respond to fires faster.
How did you celebrate your fiftieth year as a firefighter?
We had a big party. All the guys came. They gave me a gold watch, engraved with a message. Here it is. [He slips the watch off his hand]
Can I take a picture of this, Hank? As something to remember you by?
[Laughs] Sure. Of course you can.
What I remember most of Hank is his wonderful, lighthearted sense of humor. At one point in our conversation, we started talking about look-alikes. I told Hank about DR’s sighting of a doppelganger in Charlottesville. He told me about a couple look-alikes who appeared in his own life. His deep belly laugh was a pleasure to hear. Alas, even the warmest conversations come to an end. As the boarding call for our flight was announced over the PA system, Hank excused himself for a trip to the mens’ room. We parted ways with a handshake and a smile. While he was away, I turned back to the conversation with Sharon. I was one of the last to board, but when I did, Sharon and Hank greeted me warmly from their seats one row in front of me. By an odd coincidence, they were seated adjacent to Heather, whom I’ll write about in my next post.
As I was nearing the entrance to the Randolph Station of the Chicago Metra, I suddenly noticed a man who closely resembled a friend from my fourth year of college. I called out to him, and as he turned I was pleased to see it was in fact DR.
DR had come to Chicago from UVA for Spring Break 2008. We stood alongside each other in the cold, exchanging stories from our lives. Here’s the most surprising part of our exchange:
DR: “You’re famous in Charlottesville.”
DC: What? Charlottesville?
DR: “Yeah. I was in a coffee shop near University of Virginia with another grad student studying math. And I saw someone who looked a lot like you. So I said to my friend, ‘That guy over there looks just like David C., a friend I know from Chicago.’ Well, it turns out, the grad student I was sitting with met you in Ohio six years ago and we were both thinking of you, David, as this doppelganger manifested before us.”
DC: Wow. Matt Z? I haven’t heard from him in years. We met at summer camp.
DR: “Yeah, he told me. But that’s not all. I put up an advertisement for a roommate to share an apartment with me, and one of the respondants (and the person I chose as my roommate) knows you from classes you took together.
DC: KB? He’s at UVA?
DR: Yes, he’s living with me.
DC: What a small world…
DR: Tell me about it.
I’m tagging Part 1 (MZ & DR) as “remarkable coincidence”, and Part 2 (KB & DR) as “serendipity”.
This weekend, a friend pointed me to Studs Terkel and his mammoth contributions to American oral history. Wikipedia does not do the man justice. The LA Times published a review of Terkel’s Touch and Go that provides more insight into his mission.
I met a woman last Saturday at a graduate student party in South Side Chicago who remembered, in detail, a conversation I had with her in late July.
Hi, I’m David Klayman.
Hi, I remember you. You interviewed me on the metra.
I interviewed you?
Yes, for that website. GreetingsStranger. Are you still writing for it?
No, I haven’t for some time. You remember me from the metra?
I do.
Monique spoke over the phone as I gave her three books I wanted to check out. After Monique handed the books back to me, she asked her friend to hold the call. Monique turns to me and asks, “What happens to an AWOL soldier? Do AWOL soldiers go to jail?”
I can’t say I know.
“Do you have a friend who went AWOL?”
“Yea… I don’t think he know the trouble he’s in. ”
“Good luck… I hope it turns out all right.”
“I don’t need no luck. It’s my friend that needs it. Wish him luck”
“Is he in a combat zone? Will do.“
Facebook launched a translations application today. Within seconds, the number of French language translators jumped from 32 to 189, then up to 470 less than a minute later. Scroll down to find links to a few screenshots. I’ll keep a log of the number of translators below as well.
11:04: 1,472 French translators..
10:57: 1,318 French translators…
10:54: 1,225 French translators…
10:47: 945 French translators signed…
10:39: 32 French translators signed up…
Translator Application
Facebook Screenshot
I found Jésus in the Madrid Airport at 02:00, following the New Year’s festivities in Puerto del Sol. Jésus was struggling to stay awake, fearful that his bags would be stolen through the night. An Argentinian by birth, Jésus was on his way back from Rome, where he spent Christmas near the Vatican. He booked tickets months ago for his trip to Rome, and because he put a higher premium on his wallet than his time, he found himself celebrating New Year’s in a Madrid airport terminal.
A friend and colleague tells me he once met a drug mule. This man used seven lubricated plastic tubes to transport cocaine from northern Africa to France. A quick Google search reveals even more remarkable stories, including this on a 12-year-old boy who turned himself in to authorities, after having swallowed 87 packets of heroin. The Nigerian-born pre-teen flew from Europe to New York and fell ill upon arrival.
Tired of walking to work through snow? Check out the pedway map at ChicagoWalks.org for the best indoor detours in the Loop south of the Chicago river.