Airports make me Lonesome...

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go

Now the time has come to leave you
One more time, oh, let me kiss you
And close your eyes and I'll be on my way ....





Aviation has always been a part of my life. As a small boy, I stood on the flight line a million times and watched my father preflight his military jet, strap on a parachute, G-suit, and helmet, and roar off into the wild blue yonder.

One of the best smells in the world to me is JP-4, or Jet-A.. It Hits me right in the stomach of my soul when I smell it. I guess it's just part of my life and always will be. My heart beats more quickly, I'm more alert, I just love it...

But there is a part I despise about it as well.. The bittersweet kerosene smell as you prepare to leave the place where someone you care about lives. It hurts you on a deeper level. Not like a gunshot, more like a cut from a finely sharpened razor.. You see blood before you feel any pain.

You can glide through TSA checkpoints with ease. You can sit at the cheesy little taverns inside the security areas, sipping a $13.85 double martini with emotional empunity as you give a call to your loved ones voicemail..

(why is it that phones never work, and people are never answering their cell phones when you are sitting in the gate area? )

In fact,

you can board the plane with your "Maxim's expensive" carry on food, get seated, adjust the little pinpoint air vent, and even buckle your seatbealt with very little feeling at all...

You can scan the incoming throngs that are lumbering down the thin isle, scanning seat numbers and puffing away, and hoping the fat guy, or young mother with the wiggily baby won't sit next to you and not be too bothered about it..

But..

Once you are climbing out on takeoff, you cant help but look for the dwelling you just left. You will try to identify streets, places you have been while you were there, the whole thing.

Heaven help you if you do see where you where on the ground.. You'll order double drinks to numb the pain, and it won't help at all..

You will simply sit and ruminate about the people/person you just left on the ground. Trapped in a pretty metal tube you will stay..

Right until you are standing around a crowded baggage claim area, pushing rather rude individuals aside so you can grab your bag before it goes around the "Carousel of the Macabre" once again..

And then the taxi ride home..