PRAY FOR TUCSON

The evenings in Tucson still freak me out, that odd combination of taking nostalgic comfort in warm nights outside when I was growing up but living in the midst of the most alien landscape I've ever familiarized myself with.

LOML dropped me off at the airport; it still feels somehow strange to kiss him in Tucson publicspace (and no, that's not a bodypart). I got inside, made the now-rote right-turn towards the AmericaWest counter. And this is where the wheels come off the reality wagon, a slow decline towards Lot 49.

• A billboard from the ride to TUS, a big black sign with white black (as in extra-bold) letters ordering/admonishing/hoping/suggesting "PRAY FOR TUCSON" weighs on my mind.
• The flight is delayed til at least 9:30, awaiting a crew for our plane.
• There's no first-class cabin in the first leg of the trip.
• A line is formed at the first security checkpoint, where there's never a line.
• Why? Because there's a family of Orthodox (capital O Orthodox) Jews in front of me.
• This makes me think of my Jeffy-the-Gentile days in Squirrel Hill, in Pittsburgh, PA
• They're slow because there are four of them, four-at-once IDs and boarding passes to check.
• I can't make my way around them, get ahead of them, before the metal detectors.
• They're carrying approx. 1728 pounds of baggage, foodstuffs and conveyances.
• I am reminded how many layers of clothing a typical Orthodox Jew wears.
• Even the laptop bag has layers.
• Still, even disrobed, even unpacked, each of the four must be individually scanned and the payload must be sent through multiple times.
• I begin to suspect I'm living in my own 40-days-in-the-[Sonoran]-Desert diorama.
• Stopped to have a beer. There's a man here who has a military haircut, wearing a teal Izod shirt just like the one I had in the early 80s..you know, when LOML was in his terrible-two's.
• A hearing-impaired guy across the bar gives me thumbs-up and says "Yeah, Mac guy over there!" as I open my PowerBook.

That's sort of it, for now. I suspect there will be more. It's one of those nights. Yes, indeedy. One of those nights.

Maybe it's just as well that I'm distracted from missing LOML even before I leave the ground.