12 May 2017
Speaking of "fiascos" concerning security . . . your Great Grammy 'bout got herself in a peck of trouble one time! Thankfully the incident occurred Pre 9/11, or we'd probably have been visiting her in prison!
Your Great Grammy was an avid bowler . . . the passion she had for it was unmatched in anything else I ever knew her to do! There were times when my sister, father, and I felt like second class citizens in her world . . . not really . . . but yeah, sort of! She bowled on several teams while we were in Spain, and traveled quite a bit with her teammates all over that country . . . to other bases . . . for tournaments.
I don't remember her ever bowling while we lived in Georgia . . . I'm not sure that small town we lived in even had a bowling alley, but when we moved to Tennessee, she found a group of like-minded women who bowled on teams. I think she bowled like 2-3 times per week. She was pretty good too.
Soon the travel started . . . to all four corners of the US . . . places in between. Sometimes they drove; sometimes they flew. But distance alone did not determine the mode of transportation.
This particular trip, I'm not certain where they were going, but it involved traveling by plane. Airport security has always been pretty tight, but it wasn't quite as tight prior to that horrific day in 2001. You still had to put your bag through the x-ray machine and remove all the metal from your body before going through the metal detectors, but I'd been on a plane from Mexico to Miami once where two guys carried swords they'd purchased as souvenirs right on board.
There were probably 5 or 6 women in this group that was going bowling, and each one of them was carrying on their bowling bag. Back then even bowling balls were allowed on airplanes . . . they'd probably consider them weapons today! Mom was last in line, so she was confident that security would just wave her through as one of that crowd. She put her bag on the conveyor belt, and when it got to the x-ray machine, the security guard stopped it. Someone asked her what was in her bag.
"What do you think it is? A bomb?" was her reply, in a tone dripping with sarcasm.
Bad choice Mom!
They pulled her aside, grabbed her bags, and led her off to the side where they questioned her thoroughly before finally letting her go . . . assured after a lengthy search that she was not a serious threat! We thought she got of pretty easily.
Funny thing, every time she told that story, she'd get a little indignant . . . about the audacity of those security people to question what was in her bag since all of the bowlers were traveling together . . . all carried the same thing.
We'd just shake our heads and say, "Mom, you know you can't say 'bomb' in the airport!"
Again . . . thankfully she didn't pull this stunt after 9/11 . . . who knows what they would have done! Pretty sure she would have, at the least, made the "No Fly List."
No comments:
Post a Comment