I don’t know if you remember or ever heard the story of my journey home from the only visit ever to Cleveland forty five years ago. While Brother Greg and bride Pat were basking in newlywedness, I was off on an adventure.
The major strike against the airlines that had delayed my arrival to be best man at the wedding was still going on at Cleveland airport departures. It was bedlam as flights were cancelled by the non-union employees willy nilly and the hordes of distraught would-be passengers were jockeying for new reservations with elbows, shouts, and subterfuge. I felt like a cowboy in an urban jungle and my flight left without me as did the next leaving for a now questionable connection in Chicago.
A young woman who had been next me in the original boarding line for our flight came back and said it would take a bribe of at least fifty dollars to get on any flight and that was not guaranteed if someone came up with more in baksheesh. She suggested we rent a car together and thereby save money and time in getting to Chicago. As it turned out, we should have just headed for Boulder since it eventually came out she was headed there for a job interview.
On our way to Chicago it rained hard. In fact, it rained so hard even I eventually pulled to the side of the road to wait it out as you could see nothing and chanced rear ending some stalled car. She had said nothing but was visibly relieved even though any slim hopes of making our connection were fast fading.
Once in Chicago, in contrast to Cleveland, there was an eerie quiet in mother O’Hare Airport. Small groups of people were standing and sitting and lying around. But, the skeleton crew quickly and efficiently put us on a stand-by list and explained in detail how the system would work and what our chances were. They gave periodic updates over the intercom and it appeared there were no possibilities for baksheesh in the mother city of rough and tumble politics.
We sat down next to a beautiful young woman who had clearly been crying. Her sobbing seemed to have cleared a couple of seats on each side of her. I asked what was up and that launched another bout of sobbing. She had married an American soldier in Germany against her family’s wishes, she was now pregnant and he did not want a baby. He had abandoned her and was now back in Denver. She did not know what to do, had little money left, and knew no one but him in America. She had only his parents’ names and address. We said we would try to help her once we got into Denver. She immediately fell asleep on my shoulder to the seeming distress of my Cleveland companion.
After an hour or so a sophisticated young man in a power suit came into the waiting room. As he stood in line to get on the stand-by list he scoped us all out one by one. He then came and sat on the other side of my new German friend. As happens in these disaster situations, everyone talks to one another like there may be no tomorrow. It turned out he was a lawyer for IBM and was eventually going to be transferred to the new Boulder/Longmont facility. Meanwhile, he was a weekly commuter from his home in New York to Boulder at the company’s expense. He came off as very self confident, decisive and appeared to be a young man with a very bright future. He had been a star bio-chemistry undergraduate and that served him well in working on patent law for IBM. His wife was not excited about moving to Colorado.
When we shared our German companion’s situation with him he offered to get her a pro-bono attorney in Denver. That sounded like a great idea and relieved me some although Cleveland later told me she was concerned he was not to be trusted with Germany’s honor—too slick. She was a good mid-western girl with her antennas out for eastern predators.
We wound up stuck at O’Hare for at least twenty four hours if not more. We explored every nook and cranny of the airport as you could do in those per 9/11 days. There was a group of well dressed Iranian college students flowing around from time to time with bandages and stories to tell from their just concluded large demonstrations in Washington DC against Shaw Reza Pahlavi. I often wondered how they feel about all that now.
Mr. IBM was very generous with his expense account in buying us coffee and snacks to break the monotony of our little campsite. We gained a few camp followers but they came and went over the course of our wandering. In the end we four wound up on the plane in close proximity. Germany was still laying her head on my shoulder at every opportunity but IBM was also finding favor and increasing levels of trust and even hand holding faith as her step into the unknown America approached. Cleveland became a bit withdrawn but stayed somewhat connected throughout the flight. At some point she gave me a blow by blow description of the income and sales tax advantages of Ohio over Colorado which I had no idea of heretofore. I explained to her in detail how she did not need a rental car to Boulder as the bus was very easy to use and I would help her with her luggage assuming it had arrived and we could find it. (It turned out the airlines delivered our luggage to Boulder the next day.)
Before we all took the bus downtown, IBM called from a pay phone and talked with a lawyer friend for Germany and set up a meeting the next day. Cleveland had jumped into action on another phone and had reserved Germany a room at the downtown Denver YWCA as “protection from any accusations of infidelity in possible divorce hearings.” The YWCA had a curfew and a no men on the floor policy they strictly enforced. And, it was very inexpensive. IBM agreed to pay for a week’s stay. He asked if she had a round trip ticket which she did not. All of this started her crying again so we had to refocus on the eminent meeting with the lawyer and clarifying just what she would want from him. Basically she wanted the lawyer to make the guy love her and take her back. Cleveland and I wished her luck with that and left her in the clutches of IBM headed for some more discussion over coffee.
Cleveland and I jumped on the last bus to Boulder. I invited her to stay with Jeanne and me but she demurred and said she had reservations and needed to get some good sleep and prepare for her interview the next day in her well worn clothes! We exchanged phone numbers but never talked again.
I also never heard the outcome of our other two companions’ project to get Germany reunited or satisfactorily divorced across international boundaries and legal structures. If I wrote a short story based on this little adventure I guess it would end with Germany and IBM getting married in O’Hare and living happily ever after while jointly running IBM-Europe.
Dowell Caselli-Smith © May 5, 2011
May 7, 2011 at 12:07 am |
Nice story, Dowell, but unsatisfying as true stories often are. As we look back on our lives we often think of people we have met, and wonder what became of them, or how their stories ended. For me, most often, I wonder what became of someone I knew well at the time. There is a similar theme in the previous post by “anonymous.” I had a good friend at CU who was from LA. He gave me an address where I could always reach him. We lost touch in about 1965, and a few years ago I wrote him at the address I somehow still had. The letter didn’t come back, but he did not respond.
May 7, 2011 at 4:00 am |
Great piece, Dowell. I really enjoyed it and appreciate your sharing it. Thanks! I have a few airline stories from my United days out of O’Hare — maybe someday. But, I know that if shared, none would be so well written . . .
May 8, 2011 at 9:13 pm |
Dowell,
As always, nice work. This is very different from most of your other pieces, but quite an adventure. The most intense feelings were probably on the part of Germany. I was stationed in Panama after training and I danced with some attractive young Panamanian girls. A couple of guys station in Flamenco Island with me married.
I was miles from being ready to married, and never got to know any young women well enough to ask for a second date. I did go to a bullfight with the my friend Charlie, the woman he married and her sister. I doubt I’ll see another corrida. I never saw the girl again.
Jeff Arnold