Monday, March 31, 2014

Hey, Nice Little Suitcase You Got Here. Hate to See Anything Happen to It.



Mack Hall, HSG


 

Hey, Nice Little Suitcase You Got Here. 

Hate to See Anything Happen to It.

 

“This is disinfectant.  Use it.”

 

-Train Guard in Doctor Zhivago

 

When George Custer and I left Viet-Nam (poor George got into some fracas in the Dakotas later on), every departing passenger was required to go to confession before being subject to a pat-down.

 

The confessional was a little walk-through closet curtained on both ends.  The sign advised the passenger that if he was carrying home instruments of destruction for later use to repent of any such idea and in the privacy of the closet leave the things-that-go-boom in a little box provided for them.

 

My seatmate, a fellow named Wellington (he later visited Belgium and designed boots or something), was much amused when I told him that out of curiosity I had peeked into the box and had seen pistols, .50-cal machine-gun rounds, bayonets, knuckle-dusters, and a couple of hand grenades.

 

Lo these fifty years later no such courtesy or privacy is extended to airline passengers: unhappy people of the sort our mothers warned us against touch us in ways once regarded as inappropriate outside the bonds of wedlock. 

 

As for your toothbrush and spare socks, at Los Angeles International Airport, familiarly known as LAX(ative), there is no need to leave things in a little box for others to take away; the baggage smashers will go into your old Samsonite and decided for themselves which of your earthly goods they will endow themselves with.

 

Passengers, by order of Higher Authority, must not / may not / will not secure their bags except with a TSA-approved lock to which everyone in Christendom, Cathay, and Cucamonga has a key. 

 

Last week the Los Angeles police and the airport police (everyone has a police force these days; thinking of getting one myself) arrested a number of workers for liberating the people’s goods from the Belly of the Beast.  Apparently this criminal gang / activist group is an ongoing problem for LAX(ative), and like Captain Reynaud’s Casablanca Police Department the local authorities make a few arrests every now and then, claim to be shocked, shocked that there is pilfering  going on, and then steal Sam’s piano.

 

In Casablanca the response to a crime is “Round up the usual suspects.”  In an American airport the response is “Certain measures have been implemented…” broadcast over and over from Big Brother’s overhead speakers. 

 

When the unhappy people (maybe it’s the polyester uniforms) hired to paw through your stuff paw through your stuff, they ask “Did anyone else help pack your suitcase?”

 

And then lower down in one of the circles of (Newark) others who are not hired to paw through your stuff paw through your stuff, they help you unpack your suitcase before you even board the plane.

 

This is why the airline charges you to check your bag.

 

The cleaners, loaders, and security at American airports, unlike the paying passengers, are not inspected, not checked, not watched, and not regulated. What is to prevent some resentful son of toil from accepting a nice gift in a fat envelope in exchange for placing another fat envelope in your luggage?

 

When the Agency for Something Or Other reconstructs the accident and analyzes fragments of your suitcase, they can then tell your survivors that “Hey, your old daddy took a bomb on board.  What did you know about this?  We’re going to seize – um, sequester – all your property, and, hey, have you visited Guantanamo this time of year?  They say it’s lovely.”

 

While the Los Angeles police are investigating the LAX(ative) Chapter of the Comradely Brotherhood of This and That Oppressed Workers International, perhaps Captain Reynaud could ask them if they know where your lost youth is.  They may have pinched that too.

 

-30-

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