“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac
The trip had gone without a hitch, perhaps that should have been my best clue that something was about to go wrong. There had been more than enough time to drive the distance from Chattanooga, Tenn., to Atlanta, where we would catch a flight back to Little Rock.
As the short trip came to an end the stress increased as we looked for the Hertz Rental Car return area. We stopped and asked for directions three times, and each helpful person seemed sure of where we needed to be. It was strange there were no signs, as in most airports, leading to the rental car return areas. So you would imagine and expect that the busiest terminal in the world would make it easy. Not so, at least from the direction I was taking.
I told Publisher Boss (PB), as we hunted hopelessly for Hertz, about the time a decade before when I was returning from a trip to August National and The Masters tournament. We were pushed for time on that occasion and when we did finally get to the place to drop off the car we came to a large line. So we did the prudent thing and bailed on the car, leaving it on the road, just in time to catch our flight home. Atlanta-Harshfield is so humongous you have to take trains just to get to the planes. But what we needed was a hot air balloon, to carry us over the chasm to the sky tram station I could see in the distance. Across that same divide, I also saw a man in a yellow vest that looked like Hertz. I rolled down my window and yelled, “Excuse me!” He looked at me and I yelled,
“Do you work for Hertz?”
“Yes,” he shouted back.
“How do I get to you?” I asked.
“I don’t know!”
So I asked him if he knew where to take the car and he pointed up, towards the top of the parking deck. We drove and once there saw a sea of empty cars and three or four other lost souls driving mindlessly in circles. One of them, a woman, pulled up next to me and I asked if she was lost too. I don’t speak Spanish so I have no idea what she was trying to tell me, but I think it had something to do with Hertz being bad. I agreed. We headed back down, as south of the border obscenities filled the Georgia air behind us. Dazed and confused, I slowed the car to a stop and looked over at PB for wisdom and guidance. “Crap,” was all he said.
Then, when all seemed lost, a man pulled up next to us in a beautiful black Mustang. The way the afternoon was going I expected him to rob us. Instead, he said that he had heard the guy from Hertz give us the wrong directions, and that if we would follow him he would take us where we needed to be.
Faith and Begorrah!
One minute later we were in the right spot. Our guardian angel waved goodbye. Before I could respond PB had jumped from the car and was sprinting towards the black mustang. He handed our St. Christopher a reward for his kindness and we were soon shed of the Hertz Tahoe and standing in front of the Sky Tram.
Inside the terminal with plenty of time to spare we waited some 20 minutes in the luggage check security line. I made it through the scanner without a beep and began putting everything in its proper place. When I had my shoes back on I reached for my bag and laptop case. The bag was right where it was supposed to be; the laptop wasn’t. As a slow panic engulfed me I looked frantically around the floor and then at the sea of travelers moving in every direction. PB walked up and I said, “Someone got my laptop!”
I hurried back to the security guards, who looked like linemen for the Packers. “Someone stole my laptop.” Before they could answer I turned back to where I had been, knowing it was now hopeless. That’s when PB put his hand on me, I assumed to calm me down. “Jay, look under your arm,” which I did. My laptop hung there, I’d had it the whole time.
Some people should just stay at home.