To start with, people in Tennessee talk funny. It’s also contagious. I had a heck of a time returning back to my normal accent. It must’ve been three days before I stopped combining you and all. My bestie had wanted, no begged me to go and visit his place down in Savannah, a mostly rural community. I never got what the population was. According to Bing here the population of Savannah, Tennessee is 7,224. As I’ll explain to you later, this community has more history to it than the fact it’s a small backwater by the Tennessee River.
Tuesday afternoon I left Spokane on a Delta flight bound to Atlanta. I arrived around 7:30 and was on the Delta concourse that was an airport all itself. I vaguely remembered coming through Atlanta when I left Fort Jackson after my initial training after joining the National Guard. Apparently, this airport grew exponentially since.
I went straight to the boarding area and waited for the 10:45pm flight, passing my time by listening to my music on my cellphone with noise cancelling headphones and texting Greg that I was waiting to board my next flight. If the name appears familiar, I also did a blog two years ago for his departed mother’s funeral. We have known each other since I was nine and he was six years old.
Something came up on the alert board informing us heading ton Memphis that the flight was delayed. I thought nothing of it and continued texting my friend letting him know there was some sort of delay. I continued listening to my music. Another flight to Cincinnati came up and those people left. It was now after eleven. I was alone. Everybody had gone. What the heck?
I texted Greg and told him the situation. He called back. “What do you mean you missed your flight?”
“I don’t know. I thought the delay just meant they were holed up and would arrive shortly before taking off to Memphis. But they ended up at another part of the airport. I guess I’m getting a hotel room tonight and I’ll see you in the morning.”
I wasn’t the only one who missed this flight. Another man from Pensacola, Florida sat in one of those wheelchairs the airport provides. Not knowing where I was going, I took this porter’s invitation and also sat in an offered wheelchair, and he pushed us both out to where the airport shuttles going to other hotels.
After a time, a long, long time, we finally had a van shuttle us to the hotel the airline supported us. I planned to give the driver a tip for his efforts, assuming that this shuttle ride was also on Delta’s dime. “That’s $25 please,” the young Arabic looking man told me. I was more than a little taken aback as I handed him a twenty-dollar bill to go with the five dollars I just handed him to go basically around the block.
I was too tired to argue what I felt certain was an error on his part and grabbed my briefcase that was big enough to handle my toiletries as well as my laptop, headphones, and cell phone. I got my complementary room and went to bed after taking a quick shower. I checked my watch, which I still had on PDT that showed 11:30. I set the alarm on my phone for five am.
Jerry Schellhammer 