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Modine on travel

I got no desire to be a jet setter. If I am going on a trip, I would rather be a car setter. When you get in a car nobody asks you did you pack your own bags, like the do on a plane. Who do they think packed them? Do they think I go out in the street and find a suspicious looking stranger to do my packing for me?

And in a car, unless you are actually driving, you can touch your feet whenever you want to. This ain't something you appreciate until you have ridden in economy class on a plane. Then you can't tie your shoe, you can't scratch your ankle, you can't pick your toes, even if you are the type to do that in public. You might as well tell your feet goodbye until it's time to get off.

In a car, you can reach in the back seat and grab a Coke and sandwich out the ice chest. In a plane, you are like the dog at feeding time. As soon as the stewardess starts backing down the aisle, you pull down your dinner tray so she don't skip you, and then you stare at her for 25 minutes until she hands over your bag of peanuts and half a Coke.

In a car, when Mother Nature calls, you look for a McDonald's and pull over. In a plane, the bathroom is right there, but you can't get to it, unless you got a seat next to the aisle, which you don't because you had it in your head you wanted to look out the window. So you are going to have to disturb at least one or maybe two strangers so you can go. You try to wait until they get up of their own accord, but it is a airplane Murphy's law that whoever is sitting next to the aisle got the bladder capacity of a two-humped camel. And while you are working up your nerve to ask them to let you out, they fall asleep. So now you got to wake them up, and whisper that you need to go, which they are too groggy to understand until you say it so loud the entire airplane knows you want to pee.

So when you do get into this bathroom, you feel like you have won a marathon, even though you got to do your business in a room as wide as your cat's litter box.

I am ranting and raving like this because I myself just got off a plane.

I got to explain. My mother-in-law, Miss Larda, she thinks like me about airplanes. So she ain't overly thrilled when her kids come up with the brilliant idea to present her with a plane trip for two to Jamaica for her birthday. She just as soon go on a rubber raft, she tells me. But it is all paid for. She tells me I got to be the other one, since we feel the same way about planes.

Almost. There is one difference. I check my baggage. But Miss Larda believes in carrying everything with her. The airlines have got stricter about carry-on luggage lately, but that don't stop her. She packs a little suitcase mostly with souvenirs for her kids. She buys that ahead of time at the Dollar Store to save money. And she carries this huge purse which holds her nightie and toothbrush and makeup and curlers. And then she wears a big straw beach hat with her extra underwear stuck up in the crown

We head for the gate and like usual, when Miss Larda goes through the x-ray machine, the alarm goes off. But she ain't carrying no concealed weapon. It is on account of her girdle clips. I got to explain. When the rest of the world switched to pantyhose in the 1960s, Miss Larda took advantage of the close-out sales on girdles with stocking clips at Krauss's, and bought a few cases of them to hold up her thigh-high stockings. She ain't never run out.

But them old-time clips are made out of metal, and they always set off the security alarms at the airport. And then the guards got to frisk her and she got to tell them to watch out where they are putting their hands. It can get pretty ugly. So I just gather up her stuff and take it to the plane gate and eventually she comes along and we mutter a little prayer to St. Jude that the plane don't crash and we get on.

St. Jude don't let us down. We get there fine, and Miss Larda actually stows away a couple extra bags of airline peanuts in her cleavage. She is good at that. She is what you would call well endowed. I have seen her stash two or three romance novels in there. I am just the opposite. I can't get away with a purse-size pack of Kleenex.

So we check into our hotel, and we spend the next three days steeling ourselves for the plane ride back. Finally we go back to the airport, and the airport security frisks Miss Larda again, and we get on the plane, and everything goes okay until we are back in the U.S. and they ask us if we have anything to declare.

Miss Larda asks me what that means. I tell her that if we bought any expensive souvenirs we would have to pay tax, but we didn't because she bought hers ahead of time. But I can tell she is still worried about it. I think they stopped her so many times because of the girdle clips, she is starting to believe she must be guilty of something. Catholic school can do that to you.

So when we have to show our papers and this customs agent asks if we got anything to declare, Miss Larda reaches in her cleavage and pulls out them little bars of hotel soup, two mini bottles of shampoo and some bath gel. "Stolen goods," she says, hanging her head.

But no, the customs man don't turn a hair. Maybe she reminds him of his own mother. He just puts the stuff in a little bag, and he says "not taxable," and he waves us through. So we don't get strip searched, and we walk out the airport and get into a car like God intended. And nobody make no fuss about girdle clips. We are back where we belong.