Our Honolulu
Airport waits can bring joy

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

After all the scare talk, I felt a little nervous about flying to the Big Island last Sunday to attend a wedding anniversary celebration.

You've heard stories about the sharp objects they take away from you at checkpoints. What about the pen I use to take notes? Would they confiscate my camera?

I waited four minutes on the telephone to get a reservations clerk at Hawaiian Airlines because of "higher than normal phone volume."

Were they checking each caller? Short of clerks?

Friends weren't much help because they hadn't flown, either, since Sept. 11.

Let me now assure you that flying in these tense times isn't much worse than renewing your driver's license. The only violence I encountered was a young father spanking his little girls for playing in the terminal.

I felt sorry for them.

Getting there an hour and a half before the flight takes off is the biggest hurdle. So let us discuss how to solve this problem the old Hawaiian way — by having fun while you wait.

You see, another guest invited to the wedding anniversary was Mary Judd, widow of an old hiking buddy, Dr. Charlie Judd. Why not make a party of it and fly together?

She was agreeable.

At 6:15 a.m. we showed our photo IDs to a security guard at the parking lot gate. Next came an ID check at the ticket counter.

While we waited in line, Mary said, "This is nothing. The longest lines I've seen were in London in 1966 after I won the door prize at a Yale reunion. There was a scare in the tube and everybody was evacuated. Automatic weapons everywhere."

Apparently, we Americans are latecomers to the terror business. We passed another ID check at the hand-carry luggage photo machine, and sat down to wait an hour before our flight.

It was here that the genius of my plan asserted itself because Mary is talkative. She is also observant and well traveled, sort of like CNN, only you don't have to turn her on. Let me share some of this information:

• Mary used to cut Charlie's hair because it gave them more time together. They saved so much money on haircuts that they took a trip to Greece.

• The favorite home-from-school sports of their children at their Tantalus home were mudsliding, rotten guava fights, and walking 10 feet off the ground in the bamboo forest.

• It was missionary William Ellis who advised missionaries in Hawai'i not to let their children associate with Hawaiians because two of pioneer missionary Charles Wilson's daughters in Tahiti became prostitutes.

• There weren't many flush toilets in Western Samoa when Charlie was government doctor there. Nobody knew why the pull chain from one disappeared until the links began turning up in jewelry around the island.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.