Editor's note:  From 2013 to 2014, CWF's Matt Patterson traveled to Tennessee regularly in his campaign against the UAW in Chattanooga.  This is what happened on one of those trips.

“Mechanical problems.”

It may not be the worst thing you can hear while sitting in a plane on the tarmac in Washington, D.C., waiting to take flight.

Wait, maybe it is.

The pilot was judiciously vague as to the exact nature of the problem.  He didn’t say, “ladies and gentlemen, our wing broke.”  But of course that’s what I heard him say.

So we all shuffle off the plane and into the customer service line to get re-booked, a line that quickly stretches beyond the horizon – okay, beyond McDonald’s, but that’s still pretty far.  After an hour and twenty minutes of waiting in said line, the nice lady at the counter told me she found a seat for me on the 5:30 pm flight to Atlanta.

Very good.  I dutifully text my team members on the ground in Tennessee that I will be arriving late and can we please meet an hour later.  No problem, they say.

Well, maybe no problem on their end, but when I arrive at my new gate for my new flight, we’re told “it’s been delayed 30 minutes.”  I ask the very tired-looking lady to my right if she knows the reasons for the delay.  She shrugs, but still manages a smile in a reflexively friendly we’re in this together sort of manner.  Ah, I think, you’re not from around here.

Just then we’re told that the plane is delayed yet another half hour.  The lady and I both spy an empty outlet on a wall under an empty space where a payphone once resided like an idol in an altar.  We both lunge for the beckoning sockets, arms and chargers outstretched.  I’m not sure what’s happening in her head, but the theme to “Chariots of Fire” reverberates loudly in my skull (granted, it does that a lot).

After a vicious fight, wherein iPhones and their cords are wielded like weapons in a Gladiator arena, a truce is called and we decide to share the outlet: 10 minutes for her, 10 minutes for me, etc. Tethered to the wall by empty, shiny rectangles, we have no choice but to talk.  Turns out she’s from around here, is trying to get back to her family in Mobile.

Just as my phone was greedily slurping up electrons on its second turn, the captain of our erstwhile flight comes out and informs us all that we were not going anywhere: Severe thunderstorms have shut down Atlanta airport, maybe for the night.

Once more, unto the breach.  And by breach, of course, I mean the customer service line.

It was 8:30 pm by the time I was told the next flight I would be on would be at 11 am the next morning, and to please go downstairs to baggage claim to collect my luggage, which has been pulled off the plane. Ms. Mobile was in line in front of me and was told the same thing.  And so we trot down to the carousel – you know, the one without the horsies that go up and down? – and watch as bag after bag after bag is paraded in front of us, cackling gleefully as it passes as if to say, “sorry, not yours!”

Then there are no more bags.  Just an empty conveyor belt.  Ms. Mobile and I go to the baggage claim counter and explain that our bags are missing.  Well, we eventually explain that – after the 40 other people in front of us explain the exact same thing to the exact same person.  “Please be patient,” I am told, at last. “We are having trouble locating your bag.”

No kidding.

At 11:30 pm I am told that my bag may have left on one of the flights that was canceled or delayed.  Or possibly on some other flight.  “Don’t worry,” counter lady assures me, “it may be in Chattanooga when you get there tomorrow.”

“You mean my bag got out of this airport before I did?” I ask.  I have never been more jealous of a slate-gray Samsonite receptacle in my life.  At 12:30 am (I have now been at the airport since 2 that afternoon) I hail a cab to take me home.  The driver informs me that he’s been driving taxis for 40 years and that next week, on his 80th birthday, he’s retiring.  Then he misses my exit and we get lost in the deep, dark forests of Maryland (see: Blair Witch Project, The).

By the time we finally reach my house, it’s nearly 2 am.

Next morning I arrive bright and early back at the airport, thinking to myself, “11 am flight gets me to Chattanooga by early afternoon.  My speech isn’t until early evening.   Plenty of time, it’s all good.”  But that was before yet another nice counter lady informs me that I should not have been assigned a seat on this plane, which was already overbooked.  Too bad.  They’ll have to put me on a direct flight on another airline that leaves at 1:30 pm.

Okay, now I’m starting to get worried.  And they still don’t know where my bag is.

So I board another flight on another airiline to Chattanooga scheduled to depart at 1:30 pm, along with a large group of elderly ladies; a sorority reunion.  If the plane leaves on time, I think, I can still make it to Chattanooga three hours before my speech.  Plenty of time.  But 1:25 rolls around and we’re still at the gate, as sorority sisters continue to board, each one more frail than the last.  Then it’s 1:50 and a beautiful old woman boards with the help of three attendants and a walker.  The woman next to me informs me “That’s Rose, she’s 93 years old.”  That’s sweet, I think, and surely we’ll be on our way now.

It takes 20 minutes to get Rose to her seat and settled before the stewardess announces we’re still waiting for one more passenger.  When this final, fellow flyer at last arrives, she is so aged she needs to be carried by a burly airline worker, while her wheelchair and oxygen tank follow in the hands of three other attendees.  I suddenly feel as though I’ve been dropped into some bad 90’s-era SNL skit.

At last we are airborne and the nice lady sitting next to me tells me all about her and her sorority sister’s great stay in D.C.  “What will you be doing in Chattanooga this weekend?” she asks. “I don’t know,” I say addressing her and her surrounding companions.  “What are we doing this weekend, ladies?"  The 80-year old in the red hat across the aisle gives a very southern, “Mmh-mh.  Don’t tempt me now.  We’ll take you out.”  They all laugh. 

I make it to Chattanooga by 4:30 pm, just in time for my first radio interview.  My bag (mirabile dictu) arrives on another flight an hour later.

The following Saturday morning I arrive back at Chattanooga airport, bleary-eyed and thankful to be going home.  I board the plane for my 9:30 am flight. As they close the cabin door I think to myself, wouldn’t it be funny if this plane was broken, too?  Then the captain comes on and says, “sorry folks, this plane is broken.”  

It wasn’t funny.  

So off we go to the customer service line, or as I’ve come to know it, ye ol’ waitin’ place.  We’re told they’ll be bussing us to Atlanta to catch our connecting flights.  I climb aboard the bus and someone takes note of the time.  Everyone simultaneously does the math - we have 12:30 pm flights out of Atlanta; it is now 11 am; it’s a two-hour drive to Atlanta.  When we all realize this, something happened that makes me feel every one of my 40 years: I realize that everyone else on the bus, including the driver, is way younger than me.

All at once the fresh faces, including the driver, turn to me, and one young girl asks, “Are we going to make it?” But of course what I heard was, Are we going to make it, Mr. Adult Man?

“Sure, kids,” I respond in the same soothing tone my father used when he told me that there is a Santa Claus.  “We’re going to be fine.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that just by entering the bus I had probably doomed them all.

Of course, just like my father’s promises about Saint Nick, mine turned out to be hollow.  I missed my connecting flight, and so too did the young girl who had so foolishly believed in me (lesson learned, kid).  I’m rebooked on yet another, later flight to D.C. and barely make it to the gate.  As we taxi on the runway, the pilot comes on and says, “Attention ladies and gentlemen…” but this time I don’t let him finish before I start laughing, the Joker-like cackles tumbling from a maw too tired to tame them. 

“We’ve been instructed to hold here by air traffic control,” he says, “for at least 25 minutes.  I’ll give you an update as soon as I know more.”  As I mentally prepare to spend the night in some cheap Atlanta hotel, the pilot comes back unexpectedly and says, “Good news! We’ve been cleared for takeoff.”  I don’t believe him until I see Atlanta vanishing beneath our wings.

We land safely.  At last.  When I get home, I have to disguise myself as a beggar to thwart the 108 suitors besieging my lady...

...but that’s a tale for another time.