Friends, I really hope you don’t have to fly into or out of Newark International Airport any time in the immediate future. For those who don’t live around here, or haven’t seen any of the news stories, conditions are less than ideal due to a combination of factors. There’s currently a runway that’s closed for maintenance, there’s been some serious air traffic control equipment failures and partly related to the equipment failures there is also a serious shortage of air traffic controllers. Anyway as a result of all this, a whole lot of flights are getting cancelled and lots more are delayed.

Newark happens to be my “home” airport. It’s definitely the airport that I’ve flown into and out of the most times. For those not familiar with it, Newark is one of the three major airports that serve New York City and the only one that’s located in New Jersey. It is a big, sprawling airport that can be overwhelming and stressful to deal with on a good day, so I don’t envy anyone having to deal with it in the midst of this current crisis.

With the airport in the news of late, I couldn’t help thinking about some of my various air travel memories. The first time I ever flew anywhere was when I was in Kindergarten and my family went on a trip to Baltimore, but wait, you are thinking to yourself. Didn’t she grow up in New Jersey? Yes, friends we flew from Newark to Baltimore. Again, if you’re not from around here and aren’t well-versed in East Coast geography, let me assure you this is patently absurd. These are definitely two cities that are within driving distance of one another. Perhaps because of the proximity of the two cities, my memory of that flight was looking down at the miniature towns below, where miniature cars drove on miniature roads. It all reminded me of watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I don’t think that plane even got up to cloud altitude on that short trip.

My second time flying on a plane came a couple of years later, and this time it was the airport and the journey to the airport that proved to be more memorable than the flight. Mom and Dad had used a travel agency (remember travel agencies?) to book a family vacation to Disney World in Florida. Unfortunately the travel agent handling the arrangements was not so good at their job. For starters the entire vacation got booked under the last name Grasso while our last name is in fact, Grosso. Thankfully this was at a time when airlines were not as particular about the name on the ticket being spelled exactly the same as the name on your identification. So, this was more of annoying glitch than anything else. 

However, as part of the package my parents had paid for a car service that was supposed to pick us up at our house and drive us to Newark Airport in time to catch our flight. We were ready to go in plenty of time, but it seemed the car service was running late. We kept waiting. My parents began to fret. Calls were placed. Soon, they learned that the travel agency had dropped the ball and the car service had never been booked. We did have a car, of course, but it was now very late, and as anyone who has ever parked a car at Newark Airport knows that takes time. There was no way we would have enough time to park the car and make it to the gate on time.

This was in a time before Uber or Lyft, but there was a local taxi company. Dad called and explained our predicament and a the driver showed up at our house packed all of our luggage in the car, and we took off. Rush hour traffic threatened to keep us from getting to the airport in time, but the cab driver was determined and a bit of madman. He wove through traffic and sped down the shoulder of the highway, all the while saying things like “I’m going to get these kids to Disney World!” And I guess that taxi driver was a bit of a hero because he did get us to the airport in time. We raced through the airport Home-Alone-style and made it onto the plane just when they were about to give up hope on us. We boarded the plane to cheers from the other passengers who had been waiting for the missing Grassos. Fun times.

My other favorite Newark Airport memory happened several years later, when we were there bright and early (emphasis on early) for another family vacation. I guess after that Disney World fiasco, Mom and Dad didn’t want to take any chances with missing a flight. So, even long before security checkpoints were a thing, we were the family that arrived way, way early for our flight. In fact it was so early that the airport was eerily empty. I mean, Newark Airport is never truly empty, but it was definitely sparsely populated on that early August morning. We made our way through the deserted terminal in a bit of a fog on account of the fact that we had not gotten much sleep, and happened to pass another group of travelers. They seemed to have more energy than we did as they were doing some improvised dance routines and generally hamming it up. I have no idea who these folks were, but to this day my younger sister will swear up and down that the woman in this entourage was Janet Jackson. It’s a bit of a family legend, and like all legends, it might not be entirely true, but maybe, possibly we saw Janet Jackson at Newark Airport in 1990 when we were about to light out on a family vacation.

Earlier that summer I did run into someone I knew at the airport, in fact, I was on the same plane as someone I knew, well two someones. That wasn’t a surprise. Well, it wasn’t a surprise at the airport. The surprise happened some weeks earlier in math class when I was talking to a friend, and then somehow we pieced it together that our math teacher was going to Bermuda right around the same time my family was going there, in fact he was leaving the same day I was, and wouldn’t you know it, we were on the same plane. This would have been kind of cool if it was a teacher I actually liked, but I loathed my math teacher with a passion. He was an obnoxious man, who among other things thought it was fun to deliberately mispronounce my name. He also got into a fistfight with an eighth grader, so you can see the sort of maturity level we’re dealing with here. As it happens, his wife was also a teacher. She had been my seventh grade reading teacher, and I never liked her either. So, lucky me I got to travel on a plane with two of my least favorite teachers. Thankfully we weren’t seated near each other. Even better, it turns out they were staying at a different hotel so I didn’t see them at all during our vacation. 

My sister has a different memory of that vacation. It happened to be her birthday while we were there. Now, we did have a party for her just before going away on our trip, but the actual day of her birthday my parents completely forgot about it, and had to be reminded by my sister. They felt so bad and embarrassed that they took her to the hotel gift shop and let her pick out some presents.

Thankfully I have no plans to fly anywhere anytime soon, which is good because I do not yet have one of those Real IDs. If your are headed off on any trips I wish you safe travels and hope that the memories you make are all good ones!

— Alissa

This Week’s Inspiration

What I’m Reading: Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross (Thank, Greg!)

What I’m Watching: Corner Office

What I’m Listening to: “Living in America” by Aztec Two-Step