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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

Ladies and gentlemen, horses and fleas, bowlegged ants and cross-eyed bees, I’ll be home for Father’s Day; it’ll be a breeze.

For Mother’s Day, Mom got flowers, candy and her favorite meal at a pleasant restaurant. On Father’s Day, Dad got a collect call from his son Allen, whose car had broken down over 30 miles from home. The car didn’t need a “check engine” light to tell me there was something wrong with it because there was always something wrong with it. That’s why the salesman had shed grateful tears and hugged me when I’d purchased the car. The heap of problems ran like a top until it was over 30 miles away. Dad dropped what he was doing and rode in like the cavalry to rescue me. We all need someone to lean on.

If I’d asked him what he wanted for Father’s Day, he’d have replied with his usual response to my requests, “Ask your mother.”

Whenever I’d ask permission to do something, he’d say that and I’d ask my mother, “Do you love me, Mom?”

“Yes, of course,” she’d respond.

“What did your mother say?” Dad asked later.

I’d answer truthfully, “She said ‘yes.’”

I’d gotten up before I went to bed to catch an airplane carrying enough passengers to be more than half the population of my hometown. The woman seated next to me trotted out the stories she tells when she flies. Travelers have practiced tales. She told me what she didn’t like about flying. Everything.

We’re told flying is safer than traveling in a car. Who would you rather travel with—a heavily regulated and trained pilot or your crazy Cousin Chumley behind the wheel of his 1978 AMC Pacer? You’re going to experience turbulence when riding with Chumley.

Flying is educational. I’ve learned I’ll never have the largest carry-on bag on any flight.

There are things not to like about flying through the sky. Would you like it if a passenger kept kicking the back of your seat the entire flight? No, you wouldn’t. Neither did the guy seated in front of me. Flying isn’t blissful. I was in the zone that boarded the plane after it had taken off. Bags are misplaced. “Somewhere, over the rainbow.” That’s where some baggage is found. I’ve pictured shipwrecked victims on a small desert island being circled by the baggage of others. Food prices are high in an airport. Why? Where are you going to go? I wanted a bagel. The line was long. I should have purchased a positional upgrade. Running by standing still. I’m happy they haven’t turned the moving walkways into toll roads. If I looked out the left side of the aircraft, I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.

A woman on the plane became upset. Who knows why? It wasn’t having to wear a mask. Maybe it was too much to drink, medication problems, mental health issues, seat location, not being allowed to vape or pilot the plane, or a distaste for pretzels.

My father never flew on a plane. He didn’t harbor a desire to do so. He liked where he was. His home wasn’t a place to escape and go somewhere else. One day, he went into two large stores, J. C. Penney and Montgomery Ward, that were at The Mall before they fled with their retails between their legs. He decided he’d seen all he needed to see. Besides, someone might have ridiculed his gunnysack.

When I was a nestling, he was Daddy. As I grew older, he became Dad. I began referring to him as the “old man” when I was a teen, as I bragged about his ability to get things to work that were dead-set against ever working again. Things like my unreliable car.

He liked country music with someone singing about the miseries of life, but I don’t think of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline when I think of my father.

I think of “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell that has these words: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”

I love all three of you, Daddy, Dad and the Old Man. Thanks for being someone I could lean on.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.