Every few weeks I find myself in the second-class cabin of an airplane. This has been going on for years. I have been flying, on a regular basis, throughout most of the age of airline deregulation. It’s not as much fun as it used to be.
Don’t get me wrong – after thousands of air miles, I’m still entranced by the magic of flying. It’s wonderful to behold summer from 30,000 feet. This week, on a transcontinental flight, I passed over my birthplace – and for 90 seconds I was home again. My reverie came to an abrupt halt as the elbow of a fellow traveler careened off my skull. The gentlemen was not trying to start a fight, he was merely trying to get out into the aisle without the aid of a yoga instructor. Thank you, deregulation.
Continue reading
Anything Worth Doing
Monday, September first, is Labor Day. This year the actual Labor Day falls on the Monday holiday on which we will all celebrate our jobs by not working. It seems fitting that Labor Day actually falls on Labor Day this year; it seems like a good omen. American Labor has had a good year in 1997, the first in a long time.
The first food that ever entered my mouth was paid for with union wages. My father, Al Floegel, was a member of United Artisans, Local 13, Plumbers and Steamfitters. My father had a few maxims to guide his working life and he made sure I became acquainted with them at an early age. The first was, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” and he would say it slowly, to be sure I didn’t miss a single word. He repeated that phrase with an exhausting regularity and I hated it, but something must have clicked because 25 years later I’m using the same phrase, although I try to spare my audience the emphatic delivery.
Continue reading »