Last Friday, I was sitting in the aisle seat of a Northwest flight headed from Detroit to LaGuardia when an older woman approached our row and said she’d rather sit in my spot than shimmy her way to the window seat she had booked. The guy sitting in the middle realized as soon as he moved over to the window seat that this turn of events was less than fair for me. It’s a quick flight (I know it well as we have a client in the Detroit area); it wasn’t worth making them both get up, so in the middle seat I sat.
As soon as she sat down, the woman said in a spirited tone, “What kind of ship are we on?” I looked at the safety card and reported it was an Airbus 330. She then told us she worked in the airline business before we were born. It turns out she was a flight attendant in the mid-1940s.
The remainder of the flight felt a little like talking to Gloria Stuart’s character in the movie “Titanic.” She spoke of the soldiers coming home from WWII on her planes and how she had no way of reheating passengers’ meals, so the food was served quickly and often cold. She said the airline, which was later sold to one of the big players, forced her to quit when she married her husband. Then she asked me, “Do you know where Idlewild Airport is?” She said that was the airport she used to fly in and out of in New York. I told her I hadn’t heard of it and wondered if it was once the name of the airport on Long Island used by Southwest, among others. I made a mental note to check online at home, simply to satisfy my own curiosity, but forgot as soon as the plane landed. After the woman got her things, she leaned over to me and the man next to me and said, “Well, I am glad there are at least two people who can still do business in Detroit.”
I hope I am as alive and engaged as this woman when I am 87 years old.
Fast forward to Monday morning. I picked up a copy of am New York in the lobby of our office building. As I waited for my email to download, I flipped through the quick-serve news source. When I saw the headline, “At Idlewild, books for all places,” I was quickly reminded of our conversation. A review of a new bookstore called Idlewild Books informed me that it was the original name of John F. Kennedy Airport (it’s apparently had a few names over the years, but has been JFK since 1963). The store’s collection includes travel guides, literature and non-fiction titles representing 100 countries across the globe. The moniker is a nod to the airport so many New Yorkers use to leave the country as well as a nice dose of nostalgia.
I originally chose to keep the middle seat because I figured it was easier for everyone. But doing so led to a rich conversation I won’t soon forget and ultimately learning about a new bookstore in which I am sure to spend many hours and even more dollars. It seems that every aspect of how we share and absorb information is ever-changing. But, no matter the source, storytelling remains a constant that binds our present to our past.