Transport

Airports and I have a distant relationship. Distant because I am rarely near enough to them to have a relationship. Best? Worst? Those are qualities that I am not well enough versed in to venture educated guesses. For many years, my primary means of transport was by highway, by way of using my thumb to catch rides. If I were unusually flush, it was by bus. After a while, as I became better equipped with folding green, I moved up to trains.

The Bus and Me

Now ask me about the best and worst of the bus terminals. Well, they are all mediocre at best. But my least fond recollections are about the Baltimore, Maryland Greyhound terminal. In extremis for money, one summer I took a job as a baggage handler for part of one summer. You know those giant bins under the bus your big bags go in? Yup. I loaded them. You’d be surprised what else goes in there too. That summer a cagey worker discovered that the manager was much more interested in his relationship with someone at the ticket counter, and less about watching the baggage loaders. Said baggage handler, Jeff, was offering cut-rate freight rates for some interesting produce off of some of Maryland’s most reputable “herb” farms. He always directed me to put the goods in first so the real baggage would go in last and come out first. This was good because the “herb” wasn’t always so securely packed, and you certainly wouldn’t want the bags to burst open in Boston. Who could resist pilfering a bit of Baltimore Gold on offer, free?

Boston was my favorite terminal. It was my homeport. Boston was my origin point of travel, and the place to which I consistently returned. A road trip was not over until I’d walked through the Public Gardens, the Boston Common, along Charles Street and up Beacon Hill to our group “pad” on Grove Street. One, ensconced at a table at the Harvard Gardens, beer in hand, I could relate all the gory details of my last ill-fated trip to Chillicothe, Middleboro, or some tiny place in Indiana. I don’t remember most of them, and my sincere wish is that they do not remember me!

The Train

After I started at Boston University, I had a bit more wherewithal, and I began to prefer the train. But in grad school, Philadelphia’s Thirtieth Street Station provided all the links I needed to points local and far. For a while, until the operation got busted, I also found out about the many “extra” services offered informally at the station. But I could spend much of the time waiting for my train in a favorite bookstore located within the terminal.

By that time I was traveling with my big grey cat Clancy ( AKA the Grey Menace). I always traveled north in summer to Boston, and developed a deft hand at giving unobserved emollients of cash to the attendants in charge of the baggage to give him the best location in the baggage car. He was very loud in protesting confinement and screamed so loudly that there was no way he could ride in a coach car.

Our trip North ended at South Station in Boston. From there, we often took a cab to our luxurious accommodations in a Beacon Hill rooming house. We were in proximity to my old friends, and life with them picked up its old routines of parties, trips to the Harvard Gardens, and sailing small sailboats on the Charles River.

A Car?

In 1981, I at last got a driver’s license and a beat-up old 1969 Mustang. The rust trap looked so beat up that a deadfall might have landed on it, and the dents were inexpertly hammered out. Oh, and then gold paint was sprayed on it in patches. I rarely locked it, nobody wanted to steal it.

It opened up vast new vistas in mayhem. Soon I was dating my beloved, soon-to-be wife, and we were away every weekend at beaches and nearby attractions.

Planes, only rarely.