Overall Wit & Wisdom

Bill Chitwood for Progressive Dairyman

You win some, you lose some and some are rained out. That is the way life goes. I hope things are great where you live today. I hope the weather is great, the flowers are blooming and spring is in the air.

As I write this article, it is the middle of January and ice is all over every thing. We are lucky so far that we still have electricity.

This hobby I have in my old age of giving talks to people all over the country gets me into a lot of different situations. I was supposed to speak to the kickoff breakfast of the North Dakota Grain Dealers Association. It sounded like a great group to speak to, but I did not get there. I got half-way, but that was not near good enough.

I had a ticket to fly from Oklahoma City through Chicago and on to Fargo, North Dakota, on Sunday afternoon. The meeting was scheduled for 8 a.m. Monday morning.

It looked like a good deal. I would have time to help feed the calves and get to Oklahoma City with plenty of time on Sunday morning, but Mother Nature had other plans. The Oklahoma City airport was completely closed down by an ice storm. I mean a good one. There was about 2 inches of ice all over everything.

I started trying to figure out what I was going to do on Saturday morning. I called the airline and the first operator I got could not speak English well. I couldn’t understand her at all, and I did not know a word of her language. I called back later and got an operator that could speak pretty good English. I told her my problem, and she told me I could fly out of Dallas, Texas, and that is not much farther for me to go than Oklahoma City.

I said, “Okay, I will do that.”

I drove to Dallas and stayed all night Saturday night so I would be sure I could get to the airport on Sunday. I went to the airport at 10 a.m. for a 3:15 p.m. flight. I thought I might go standby on an earlier flight. My grandson does that all the time, but it did not work this time. When I got in line to get a boarding pass, I found out my airline was not flying any planes out of Dallas that day. All the other airlines were flying but them. Maybe that is why they are in bankruptcy. They told me I could take this other airline and go through Denver and get to Fargo. I said I was ready to try to get there anyway possible. I got my boarding pass and headed for my gate.

When I started through security the man looked at my boarding pass and said, “You have an ‘S’ on your pass, so I will have to take everything out of your bag and look at it.”

This was the first time I had tried to not check my bag since they changed the rules about liquids, and he threw away several things in my bag, but luckily they were about empty anyway.

Well, I finally got to Denver and ran to gate B59 where I was to catch the plane to Fargo. Guess what? It was gone, and there would be no more flights that night.

I called the man in Fargo and told him my problem. He was real nice and said, “I had an idea you might not make it, and I asked a local fellow to be on standby.” Hopefully, I will get another chance to speak for that group in the future.

Well, there I was in the Denver airport with no need to go on to Fargo, so I tried to figure out how to get back to Dallas where my car was. The next thing I had to do in this situation was go stand in line at the customer service line. There were about 25 people ahead of me, and three people helping all of us get re-booked.

I was in that line for one and one-half hours. You stand next to people for that long and you get acquainted. They all have your same problem: How do I get out of here?

Finally, I got up to the desk and two of the three people who were waiting on customers were talking on the phone to customers who had called in. I thought, “I should have called them.”

They told me I could not have a confirmed flight until Tuesday, but I could go and try to get on two flights Monday morning.

I spent the night in the Denver airport. I don’t know how many of you have ever spent the night in the airport, but it is not a very good situation. There are no chairs in the whole airport that have backs high enough that you can lean your head back to take a nap.

I talked to lots of people, but I remember my conversation with one fellow in particular. I asked him if he was going to have to stay all night in the airport. “No,” he said. He was going to Oklahoma City at midnight. He said he was supposed to go at 9:50 p.m., but the crew could not get there ’til midnight.

I told him I could not believe he was going to Oklahoma City because that was where I was to fly out of to start with. Sure enough, at midnight that plane left for Oklahoma City. After it left, I went up and talked to the two ladies that had handled the boarding of that plane and told them my sad story.

One of the ladies asked me if I was a member of this airline’s frequency flyer program. I said, “No.” She said if I would join it, she would move me up the list on the next day’s standby flight list.

While I was filling out the papers, the other lady was pecking on her computer. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was breaking the law. She said, “I am printing you a boarding pass for the 8 a.m. flight in the morning.” She said, “Don’t tell anyone.” I told her I did not even know who she was.

I got back to Dallas about 11 o’clock in the morning. I guess you could say I made a mistake to try to go to Fargo in January, but I’ve heard it said that mistakes are what you make when you are living life to the fullest. PD