Sipsey Street Irregulars: Well, that last leg damn near killed me. "I'm going back to Alabama where everyone is, without exception, armed and therefore unfailingly polite."

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Well, that last leg damn near killed me. "I'm going back to Alabama where everyone is, without exception, armed and therefore unfailingly polite."

I'm back in Alabama. Barely. After traveling from Denver to Memphis to Atlanta, I rediscovered that the Delta-ese term "gate change" actually means "death march." The changes -- from concourse to concourse, and then again from one of the second concourse to another -- damn near killed me. Couldn't find a vehicle to hire so I had to march at speed with my two bags -- something I shouldn't even have tried. By the time I got home I had avoided a heart attack but was completely, utterly spent. I'll have a report later today, but what sticks out in memory is a moment in Denver after being trampled, cursed and elbowed aside for the umpteenth time, someone asks me where I'm headed. "I'm going back to Alabama," I replied, "where everyone is, without exception, armed and therefore unfailingly polite."

7 comments:

iwitness02 said...: Sounds like a bad dose of culture shock at the airport. There really is no place like home.; July 9, 2014 at 8:42 AM
Anonymous said...: See you Saturday, Mike!; July 9, 2014 at 10:38 AM
Jaque said...: I will never again take a flight that requires making connections in Atlanta. I too have had such an experience in Atlanta and when we finally reached the gate we were told the plane had left. There were about 25 of us that got left behind. Lesson Learned-save your coins for a nonstop flight, or drive. I made the decision to no longer Fly, unless an urgent family event requires it. Flying in the US today is a far cry from how nice it was 35 years ago when I flew often as my job required it. Today flights are crammed full of diseased 3rd world migrants and grossly overweight people. Have a disagreement with a flight attendant about a seat selection, or a rude passenger who is so obese they occupy their seat and yours and they will have TSA yank you off the plane. Why has air travel gotten so rotten today ? G O V E R N M E N T.; July 9, 2014 at 1:40 PM
Anonymous said...: I haven't flown since 2000 and am glad of it. I would have driven to CO to see the jerk's face when you said " "I'm going back to Alabama," I replied, "where everyone is, without exception, armed and therefore unfailingly polite."
Did this comment produce a heart attack?
Ray in GA; July 9, 2014 at 2:49 PM
j said...: welcome home.; July 9, 2014 at 9:36 PM
MissAnthropy said...: Here's a little factoid about the Atlanta airport: the automated people mover carries more people per year than any other transit system in the world.

I've had to do the dash between concourses there myself. My calf muscles were on fire by the time I finally got seated on that Greyhound in the sky.; July 9, 2014 at 9:53 PM
Anonymous said...: I can sympathize. I've worked 9 years in Detroit, while my home is near the Melbourne, FL airport. For most of those 9 years, only Delta flew in to Melbourne (there were some issues about the airport manager taking kickbacks from Delta to "discourage" competitors), and I pretty much HAD to fly through Atlanta. I didn't usually take luggage, so I would shave the layover close. There was one time when I arrived in Atlanta near the end of one concourse, got off the plane, checked the board at the end of the jetway to verify the gate for my next flight hadn't changed (it hadn't), I hustled two concourses over and out to the end to the proper gate, and got there just in time to hear the announcement that the gate had been changed. To the gate right next to my arrival gate. At least I DID make the flight.; July 10, 2014 at 9:36 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Well, that last leg damn near killed me. "I'm going back to Alabama where everyone is, without exception, armed and therefore unfailingly polite."

7 comments:

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