My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg

and say “How precious.” But I came to know that this was only a warm-up to the main event, and that a grown-up, a deacon even, would take over, to close the show.
    What would happen, I once wondered, if I just broke down in the middle of the litany of things we were thankful for, and snatched a wing? I could be halfway across the pasture and into the deep woods before they ran me down. But it was too awful, the eventual consequences, to even talk about with nice people.
    So I suffered.
    Now, it is one of those things I wait for all year. My uncle John does the blessing now, and he is a man of honor and brings to us a gentle message of great warmth and dignity. It is a simple prayer of thanks for this one day, for the grace that has allowed us to gather here for one more year. I think anyone, of any faith, or of no faith at all, would see great value in it. It is never too long, this message, though the older and older I get, it is sometimes over much too soon.
     
    THE PLANE TRUTH
    Southern Living , Southern Journal: March 2015

    I f you fly in from Birmingham you’ll get the last gate, If you blew in from Boston, no, you sure won’t have to wait, And I’m learning …
    —Hank Williams, Jr.
    All I wanted was a peanut.
    “We have no food on this flight,” the flight attendant said.
    A sip of water, then? Or, though I knew it was an impossible dream, a drop or two of ginger ale?
    The duration of the flight did not permit it, I was told … in coach.
    Time, like all things, is just bigger in first class.
    It is hard these days, to be a Southerner in the wild blue yonder, to be a boy from Alabama who tries to slip the surly bonds of earth. The grand days of Southern flight might not be over, but it is sure different, if you need to go from Memphis to Mobile or Baton Rouge to anywhere.
    You can get a peanut up North, on a long flight, but you will play heck getting one as you fly over Georgia and Alabama, which is where they come from. But I can do without a salty snack. I do not need ginger ale. It’s everything else that makes me want to Go Greyhound.
    The conversations have a sameness to them these days, up high.I noticed it when I was halfway through a long book tour, doing the same crossword for the third time. People around me thought I was real smart. Night was falling, and the young traveler next to me was trying to get home to Tampa after working in Louisiana. The young traveler showed me a picture of a bulldog puppy and said they would see each other again, someday, after connections in Miami and I think Saskatchewan. I did not tell the young traveler that, by the time he finally got home, the dog might not love him anymore.
    It did not used to be this way for the ragged, hypertensive Southern flier. I remember a gilded age, when carriers here flew to actual places we wanted to go—in the region and beyond—on real planes with seats designed for adult humans, an age when every single flight from every decent-size city did not have to connect in Atlanta or Charlotte or Nepal. I remember flying nonstop from Birmingham to Tampa, New Orleans, Fort Lauderdale, Nashville. I remember when planes were not pitiful; now, some are so skinny I feel like I am being shot out of a cannon. Disembarking, now, reminds me of those tiny cars in the circus, the ones that emit an endless stream of clowns. Some days, I think I shall not fly at all. I will just burn $500 on the sidewalk, line up 50 strangers, and see how many of us we can stuff in a phone booth. With a one-bag minimum.
    You can say times are tough all over, but down here the airlines have canceled so many flights that the only way to get around is to hop a freight. It would not be so bad if they did not rub it in. Many nights I sit in front of my television as sparkling, majestic planes glide through the clouds, the reclining passengers sipping Champagne on the way to Paris. The next day I board a Sopwith Camel and stumble off wild-eyed, smelling like jet fuel and