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Air Travel
another great lost art.

I can remember a time when flying was glamorous. Ladies and gentlemen dressed up and children rarely flew. It was an adult thing that was prized and cherished like a night out or an upscale adventure. We wore hats. Adult things happened on airplanes; we smoked and drank with the abandon of knowing that this casual, exciting lifestyle would go on forever.

People waited, smoking in organized cues, feeling secure in knowing their seat was reserved and there was plenty of time to get to it. We started our pre flight smoking and drinking in modernish terminal cocktail lounges (remember cocktail lounges?) And there was food. It was always a point of interest on your ticket to see that you would receive both breakfast and lunch on a coast-to-coast journey, and an opening for an airline food joke.
Somehow airline food was different, like ballpark food or high school cafeteria food.
Airline food went through varied transitions before finally being discontinued by many airlines as a money saving effort. Did travelers suddenly loose their appetites?
All of a sudden after years of complaining about airline food-there was none, the decline of civilized air travel, as we knew it had begun. Late night TV lost a lot of material when airlines gave up real meals. It was a slow decline. First the plastic to-go boxes or bags emblazoned with airline logos, then food in wrappers of one unidentifiable but ritzy sounding name or another (Warwick Hills Farms, Joyce's Fruit Delight), thenmeals were reduced to snacks. Even the nine peanuts or pretzels in an impossible to open miniature bag that cost more to make then its contents was something, something to distract you from the screaming babies, something to give at least an inkling of that international flair that travel once had.
In "the day", people didn't carry on their every possession, saving time as the luggage carousel was not a concern or issue. I once had a contact lens ripped from my eye while seated, by a trundling fat woman's metal edged carry on bag, no doubt full of food for her journey.
How is it that people no longer have the patience for the amazing magic that is the baggage claim, to watch the bags emerge from behind the wiggling straps of plastic and slide down the chute to the carousel? To position yourself just so to snag your bag with some grace and lift it from the merry go round, no matter how overloaded. That feeling of happiness that your bag had indeed

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