I miss the smoking section.
I’m not a smoker.
For several years, I dabbled with occasional cigars and took up pipe tobacco, partaking of them like fine wines. But I gave those up after I settled in Canada over a decade ago. Too expensive for my then $15 an hour wage, supporting a family of five. Who knew…vice taxes actually work.
While taking my first flight since COVID, if not my first flight in over nine years, I was reminded of summer 1991.
I was a 20 year old hippie on an intercontinental return flight from South Africa. The trip was a toying of sorts with the Peace Corp. Which in conservative/privileged/Christian circles translates to “mission trip”. Turns out, that wasn’t the life for me. The gist was there. But the dogmatic mechanical nonsense was also there, thus the bad taste in my mouth to this day.
Funny how the things I remember most about my seven weeks in three distinct South African cultural sectors had little to do with the Peace Corps mission.
Like somehow our flights from Johannesburg (Jo-berg, according to the locals) got screwed up. The airport managed to get us on a different flight that went to London, then to our connection in Paris, instead of direct to Paris.
This somehow deleted all of our assigned seating for the 24-ish hour journey. So we were given whatever leftover seats were available during every flight.
For the Paris to NY flight, I was put on this empty row in a smoking section. I was all alone. Except that every smoker on the plane had assigned seats in non-smoking. So they’d come have a smoke break and sit next to me.
I met the most eclectic people on earth.
There was that one hoity-toity middle-aged guy who flew out to the Mediterranean for a luxury cruise. I think he owned an insurance agency in Manhattan. You’d expect him to be very elitist. But he turned out very genuine and warm.
Then there was the scantily dressed woman who was extra flirty with me. I think she was drunk. But hey, 5 minutes of smoke filled flirty gab was ok with me at the time. Non-committal.
Then there was that quasi-hippie about a decade older than me from Kansas who was returning from a tour of India. He abruptly left when my conversation leaned towards mission trip fodder.
But the best was my undercover agent partner. He was some crazy artist guy making his way back to LA from Paris. He’d ask, “Hey man, want a Hollywood?” I didn’t know what that meant. Hollywood was a brand of French gum. We started chatting and making friendly jokes about other passengers that he was convinced were smuggling illegal items. He dubbed us “The Air France 007”
I miss smoking sections.
Me too. And smoking, for that matter.