But Wait -- There’s More!

Sometimes the trip you plan isn’t the trip you get

Ten days ago I went back to St Louis on the spur of the moment for a 36-hour stay. Blasted into town for a family meeting that I very much wanted to attend. It went well and I learned a lot. Next morning I drove my rental car to the airport and checked in for the first leg of my return trip to Grand Rapids. I watched my suitcase disappear on the conveyer belt, leaving me with a tote containing a stack of heavy files, my night guards (yes, plural), my electronics and a comb.

Down to Concourse C and my gate... and there the fun began. I saw that my flight was delayed by a half hour because a severe storm system in the upper Midwest. There would be no chance of making my tight connection at O'Hare. The few remaining alternatives were sold out, seats bought up by frantic travelers in my exact predicament, who just happened to get to their airports a tad earlier than I did. However, that suitcase I watched disappear? That made it on the eventual flight just fine and onward to Grand Rapids.

Well, okay. Here's what I can do, thought I. Exchange my tickets for new flights in the morning, book a room at the convenient Airport 'Horton'  for the night, take their shuttle, which I knew to be reliable, back over to Lambert early tomorrow and be on my way home. Inconvenient but no sweat. I scored a toothbrush and toothpaste at the front desk, lulled myself with stupid TV and slept poorly.

   Next morning I got out of St. Louis as planned, landing at a beleaguered O'Hare. This monster storm, which I never did see, was still making kamikaze hits across the Great Lakes, effectively dorking airline schedules everywhere for the second day running. Well, no matter. This time I'd been smart, choosing a connecting flight due to take off  a couple hours after my first flight landed.

That was all well and good until I actually trudged off the O’Hare jetway and discovered said flight had been canceled. I managed to get on an alternative flight; it, too, was axed. My phone and tablet were running out of juice. So was I, having lugged my heavy totebag up and down the lengths of O'Hare concourses H, J and K -- which you may know is quite some distance. My only option now: the last flight out to GR, arrival time 11 pm, on which I occupied the waiting list #20 slot. Risky in the extreme.

No way was I going to spend another night in a hotel or in the terminal. Chicago was just three hours from home by interstate. So I found my way back up concourse  G or H or wherever the hell I was at that point, down into the bowels of O'Hare, and after a very long trek guided by red arrows painted on the floor (in a surreal nod to The Wizard of Oz), into the waiting room for regional bus connections. I bought a ticket, no muss no fuss, to Michigan City, Indiana. I rode for a peaceful two hours in a cushy, commodious seat, as the grappling hooks in my neck and shoulder muscles loosened their grip. Not once did I hear a Barbie voice bleating over a scratchy microphone, reminding me to keep my seat belt fastened (“We DO ask…”) or a weary pilot reporting further delays at the next stop.

My dearest hero husband met me at Michigan City and drove me 90 minutes back up the Michigan coast, chasing a spectacular Big Lake sunset all the way. Then...I was home and it was over.

   Except it wasn't. Several days later I began scratching the angry red bites that had broken out over my body -- shoulders, back, ankles, Wherever. Funny, I hadn't been outdoors. The oddest bites were inflicted in two precise lines like Busby Berkeley chorines, time-stepping a perfect Art Deco chevron across my right shoulder. What makes a mark like that? Where had I seen this before? On the internet... on WebMD?

Five...six...seven...eight... ONE....overnight sensation!

    Oh, no. Oh, the horror.

   Bedbugs!  I had been ravaged by bedbugs, maybe on the bus, but way more likely in the Airport Horton. It's a favorite stopover of flight crews, whose peripatetic luggage is the perfect vehicle for these parasites.

    Everything about my experience fit the bedbug profile. And let me just say, reading about the habits of the loathsome little creatures is nightmare material. Let me also say that their bites itch like crazy.

By now the itch has subsided, though my unwelcome tattoo job remains. It will fade, though my new resolve will not. Another meeting in St. Louis? Probably, and I'll happily attend. But you can bet I'll be driving.

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The View From Ford Country

A Wildly Unscientific Election Year Observation

By an Admitted Outsider

My observation is this: in Holland, Michigan, the Lake Michigan beach town where I live six months every year, there are almost no front-yard presidential campaign signs. I find this remarkable.

Why? Because usually at this time in an election year, signs would have popped up like the town’s famous tulips, and a majority would be for Republican candidates. Holland is in the heart of uber-Republican southwestern Michigan. Nearby Grand Rapids was the hometown of 38th president Gerald R. Ford, who actually spent summer holidays about five miles down the road from me in a modest beach community. It’s the base that sent him to the House of Representatives in 1948, and the home of his presidential library.

Holland, 30 miles to the southwest, was settled in 1847 by a band of Dutch Calvinist immigrants, whose piety was too severe for the liking of their counterparts in The Netherlands. Here in their New World settlement, they could escape the poverty of the old country and enjoy the freedom to practice religion the way they wanted. At some point a schism occurred, spawning a reformed Reformed congregation, the Protestant Reformed Church. I’m told that newcomers to Holland, down to this day, are routinely asked upon first meeting: “What church do you go to?” although this has never happened to me.

___________________

"Where are the signs ?"          __________________________     

Holland remained an ethnocentric enclave until the mid-twentieth century, when Mexican migrant workers here to pick summer blueberries began staying over and putting down roots.  Later they were followed by a significant Vietnamese population. The groups intermingle at work, in schools and political office; it’s a common thing these days to meet a Brian Gutierrez or a Rosario Vandenberg. Yet despite the deepening skin tones of Holland, Michigan, its overall ethic remains: church, family, very hard work, tight with a penny. Fierce independence: no government aid, thank you, we’ll fund this ourselves.

    This is an area that in 2014 sent tea-partier Cindy Gamrat to the Michigan state house. (If you’re in need of diversion some day, Google her name to see how that worked out.)

   In Holland’s Park Township, where I live, eight candidates filed for seven open positions on the board of trustees. Of these, all but one were Republicans. Their campaign signs were all over the place. So where are the signs now? Specifically, the Trump signs? Where is the easy public political jawing, pre-Republican convention, that we heard routinely at the retired folks’ gym we frequent? Now, nada. Everyone’s lips are zipped.

  To date, I’ve seen eight Hillary signs in the areas of Holland I frequent--one less than a block from my house--and none for Trump.

   That’s the view from this corner of Ford country. I take no position on the implications, though I find them a distinct curiosity.  The journalist in me loves curiosities and loves even more to pass them along. So, this is what election year 2016 looks like in one formerly predictable corner of the nation. What it actually means...we’ll have to wait for election returns to find out .

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How about your vicinity? Behaving predictably or otherwise? If you’d like to share some observations, please record them here in the Comments section, and please include your location(I know that some readers have had difficulty with comments. It has to do with a quirk of Blogger, my host. I’m sorry.) BTW, I’m more interested in the behavior of your local constituency than in your political views. But, free speech and all that, you know.

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COMMENTS

A friend from Holland: Trump supporters may not be posting signs because of fear caused by violence during Trump rallies.

Another friend from Holland: My in-laws are very Republican and they have been pretty quiet about the whole thing! (My kids were big Bernie fans.) I haven't seen any presidential signs. I think too early, but also a lot less this year. I don't think people want to put their neck (reputation) out for Trump like they would for a non-controversial Republican.

BAJ, St. Louis neighbor: We are not seeing many, if any, signs yet around here.

ODB, formerly of Ann Arbor, now Seattle: My belief is that (a) people who vote will largely be voting against someone rather than for someone and (b) many stalwart supporters of Clinton or Trump would prefer not to be identified with the candidate (i.e., to preserve deniability) so they are not posting yard signs. Total speculation on my part, but consistent with my disenchantment with what our political system has been able to put forward by way of individuals with stature and integrity.  Politicians and voters alike are not looking much beyond the next 6-12 months.  They see the train-wreck a'comin' and they are focused on self-preservation. That sort of focus precludes any useful thought about solving persistent economic and social problems.  

  Just watched an interesting 1995 movie about Jesse James and his brother, Frank, in post-Civil War Missouri.  Jesse was taken-out by a Pinkerton hireling (named "Ford" incidentally) and Frank was captured, put on trial for murder, and acquitted by juries three times. Perhaps we have found our way back to the Wild West.  No yard signs for Robin Hood, but a lot of sentiment for radical change.  Yet another "most critical election of our lifetime."

CJC of Louisville: Louisville is mostly Democrat, the rest of Kentucky is Red State all the way.