Blather

Sitting in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I’m thinking about the last couple of days. I left my house Sunday morning with my son Richie driving Kimmie’s 4-Runner to Oakland Airport. I had packed enough clothes for three days. Now I’m waiting three hours for my flight to Phoenix, then I’ll have a 100-minute layover until the connecting flight brings me back to Oakland at a quarter to midnight.

The first night was in the American Airlines Training Center, about 15 minutes from the airport. The hotel was huge, but ran pretty efficiently. Because so many people spend a few days at this hotel, they grew a cafeteria. Like many burocratic enterprises, the results depend on the resources someone pours in, and someone’s decision to fund the cafeteria well has resulted in pretty decent food. They offer the standard in breakfasts- eggs in various forms, oatmeal and grits, fruit, yoghurt, milk, coffee, tea, toast, etc. The lunches are also good, and vary a bit from pretty good to downright tasty. Dinner brings a variety of entrees and the people who wear a cafeteria uniform appear to be happy with their work. Ever deal with a cafeteria matron whose hands are putting food on your plate while her mind is out near the orbit of Mars? Well these folks are great- they listen, they are prompt, and they smile at you.

The group consisted of 12 other guys: Norman the former Border Patroller is from Florida and will go to do Border Enforcement with me. The rest were former sheriffs, police or state trooper types. They’re going to work with Iraqi police, while the two of us will work with Iraqi border police. I enjoyed a cigar while one of my colleagues tells me why he’s here. Former police, did a stint as a guard at a private prison, has an ex-wife who calls him a couple of times and a girlfriend near the Dallas area. The gym rat who merely smiles at the physical challenges we’ll face, joins us. Good guys, mostly.

Monday most of us got to the dental and physical exams. We took X-rays. Then, because the hotel had overbooked, we got bounced to a nearby Day’s Inn. While it seemed to all of us that reservations at a huge hotel seemed to be a certainty, this, like other events broke the “it’s not logical” ice. Remember, Dyn-Corp is a big company with plenty of money. So when they make reservations for 13 people, you’d think the hotel would keep them happy so they’ll keep bringing other groups back. But such was not to be. We had dinner there, then vanned to the Day’s Inn, where the beds were larger but the amenities were much fewer. Dyn-Corp, in its corporate wisdom, decided that we had to share rooms, so I got a roommate, a very nice guy from Alabama who put the basketball game on the TV and promptly fell asleep, snoring all night long. I didn’t sleep well at all.

At six AM (four AM California time), I woke up, dressed and vanned back to the first hotel. After my second day “usual” breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, we went to the conference room where we waited for the corporate folks to talk with us. We got the party-line speech: “Here’s my personal email if you have any trouble” and “When you sign for a year, you’d better plan on staying because we’ll blacklist you.” (I think he meant “blackball,” since only HUAC blacklisted anyone.) However, he was mostly straight-forward with us, so I took that as a good omen.

Then the paperwork minions began on us. These were corporate burocrats who worked under a belief that the security background stuff had to be “just so.” The less on the forms, the safer it was because the Department of State investigators had to approve each of us. To a few in the van, I opined that the contractors were likely not State investigators, but contractors, like us, whose paychecks depended on getting the work done. This process let credibility to my tenet that “If you want someone to do something, (like Department of State approval for each of us) you’ve got to do it yourself.” So Dyn-Corp’s folks helped us tweak the background clearance paperwork so that the DOS investigators would have to do nothing but approve the submitted forms.

We’ve all been there- some burocratic impulse constrains us to jump through hoops that have no relevance with reality, yet someone sometime has found the limit of mathematical uncertainty and ordained that 10 to the minus 100^th is, for the purposes of this exercise, equal to one point zero. Thus we have outlawed Fourth of July sparklers for 99.999% of the population because .001% may injure themselves. Similarly, if you can’t remember if it was June or August of 35 years ago that something happened, the software will allow an “estimated” drop-down tag, but the security folks don’t want to make the State department investigator have to consider the relevance of a variation of two months, 35 years ago. After a few tries, we got past all that. And like other top-down environments, when one person is satisfied, another one has to confirm that the information is, in fact, “OK.”

Norman and I, being penciled-in for a May deployment, had some urgency. So we finished the paperwork first. Then we went for shots. The Methodist Hospital HEB’s inoculations section was in a wing labeled “Lactating Mothers.” The two of us walked non-chalantly past racks of pamphleted tips for nursing mothers until we found the place where we’d get our shots. I met the nicest, friendliest and most capable RN in Dallas. Not only was she good at nursing, but as we chatted, she told me she likes to learn something new each year. Last year was music; this year will be learning to speak Hebrew. I noted that she had no Texas accent, and she told me she is from Wisconsin, near Madison, but has been a transplanted Texan for many years. Back to business, she asked about the inoculations I’ve had. I told her about being in the first Salk vaccine group, then being vaccinated for polio a few more times. I recounted how I had tetanus and HIV testing when I got stuck with a dental tool in Baggage. A few more questions and she gave me a ton of information about what I can expect in Iraq. She gave me four inoculations, loading up the syringes in front of me, and then showed me what each was. Two in each arm, one of which would cause me soreness tomorrow. Very little pain, but she put a band-aid on each arm.

Cholera and rabies exist there, but we won’t get cholera because we won’t be eating at anywhere but military cafeterias and Chez Dyn-Corp while we’re there. Cholera is curable with antibiotics, rabies with several shots. She advised that if I see an animal behaving strangely, shoot first and avoid rabies because the cure is quite painful. She also told me about a sand flea that leaves its eggs under your skin and subsequently causes trouble with your liver. DEET or its military equivalent are what I need to keep with me. When she talked to me about dehydration at my age, I noted that she had a lot of years to go until she was 62. She said she’d achieve that distinction in just a few years.

From the van, going back from the shots, the Dallas area looked great. There are some houses in the 2300 block of Murphy Street in (or near) Euless, TX that seem both affordable and comfortable. A bit older, but each was on a large lot with plenty of room to drive around the house. Tended lawns, mature fruit trees, and your neighbor about 100 feet away seem very attractive to me. A few of the houses were brick, a few were clapboard. They weren’t cookie-cutter houses, each being a bit different. One had two garages, one had a carport, one had no parking, but all were convenient to groceries, stores, etc.

Arriving at the hotel, I thanked Tommy, our driver and “soccer mom.” He chuckled a bit at the “soccer mom” designation but agreed that his job was, indeed, to take us in a van to various places, count noses to make sure each of us got there and got back and to make sure he didn’t lose any of his baby chicks.

Connor, the travel guru, got us tickets right away. Norman went to a different terminal, so we shook hands at the hotel before we took different hotel shuttles to the airport.

At the terminal, I vacillated over buying a one-day internet subscription. One part of me was saying, “It’s only ten bucks. Go for it.” But another, thriftier, part said, “Too much for one day.” So I decided to write this journal entry instead. I can wait a bit for internet.

The airport is populated with citizens. An elderly guy with some amazing shoes- they look appropriate for Victorian times, with tall (not high) heels sits dozing next to his wife who periodically gets up to take a flash photo through the glass of the baggage carts and the jetway exterior. Their seats are subsequently occupied by a crew-cutted guy wearing blue and white long-sleeved golf shirt while his wife speaks Chinese to him. Beyond them is a nice grey-haired lady with her feet perched on her wheelie bag. Next to her is a stout blonde lady stirring her slushie while her husband spoons frozen yoghurt. These could come from central casting for “SFO passengers.” Absent are any cowboys. I don’t see a single cowboy hat, pie-pan belt buckle, or even some dressy cowboy boots.

I wander the airport shops. I already read today’s paper and the selection of paperbacks seems limited. I’ve got more paperbacks in my downstairs bathroom than are for sale here opposite the US Airways departure gate. Maybe if I go back, I’ll find a magazine.

And I’d like to get Kimmie a pink “Texas” t-shirt. So maybe I’ll mosey over there, pahd-nuh, and see if Ah cayn’t wrangle me one. Gotta get something for Richie, too.