It came to pass that on a warm California Christmas Eve, I was going home to see my family and friends after spending 3 months at the training command of the U.S. Navy in San Diego.  I was not what you'd call an experienced air traveler yet.  So I found myself on a bus heading to the airport there at 4 a.m., too early for a base breakfast.  I figured that I'd get something on the plane and I was pretty used to deprivation by that point since the main goal of Navy training is to show you how tired and hungry you can get before some warm well fed asshole tells you that you can eat and rest.  

The bus ground slowly through the dawn and when I stepped down I was hit by the most incredible number of panhandlers and dope dealers I'd ever seen.  It's easy to spot people who are going home for the first time from there.  For one thing they shave the whitewalls and make you wear a dress uniform for travel.  I think there may be some kind of contract between them and the Navy, you know, just to make sure that no one misses a potential mark.  

They all know you have money and at least then they knew that you would be looking to get high.  Okay, I could have appreciated the service but, the truth was that out of ten potential sellers I was offered crushed aspirins, parsley and oregano, dessicated over saged scrambled eggs and one genius offered to sell me some "chocolate" mescaline that was Nestles' Quick wrapped in tinfoil.  I passed.  Then there were the "legitimate" salesmen.  As I waited for my flight I was accosted by everything from Bibles and encyclopaedia's to cookware and cars.

At last I boarded my delayed flight at about 10 a.m. and it was off to Phoenix.  Unfortunately that meant that there would be no meal service on the flight.  So I flew over the deserts and mountains and listened to the growling of a hundred stomachs.  It was cheaper than the headphones.

At last we landed and I went to see if my connecting flight to Dallas was still there, it had departed some time before we got there.  Well I thought, at least I can get something to eat.  Now you have to remember that this was on Christmas Eve so the normally busy and open airport concourses were mostly shut and barred leaving only the bars open.  I wasn't really interested in getting hammered and being sick for two days so I had a bag of chips and hoped for dinner on whatever flight they managed to get me on.

I would have left the airport in search of a McDonalds or something but we were to remain ten minutes away or on a ten minute notice or something.  Like it was perfectly okay to hold me up for two hours and it was okay for them to let the connecting flight go on without me but if I wasn't johnny on the spot when they found me a seat then I was just S.O.L., after about an hour they found me a seat that took me on to Dallas.  I wasn't there long since there are a lot of St Louis to Dallas and vice versa flights.  Still when I finally got to Lambert it was five hours past my original arrival time in Carbondale another hundred miles or so as the crow flies.  Crows by the way, might have been faster than scheduled airlines that day.

The weather became a factor in St Louis.  The time was as well since the last leg of my trip was to be flown on a regional airline, Ozark, long since out of business now but the connecting link from the more rural area where I was from.  There was one flight left going to Carbondale and then it was afternoon on Christmas day before another would leave barring foul weather of course which had been predicted.  

I considered trying the Greyhound or calling friends to make the trip, but it was very cold, icy and late.  Most of them would have been much too wasted to drive anyway.  So I milled around at the gate annoying the clerk and begging people to let me have their seat.  Finally as midnight approached there was a cancellation.  I climbed aboard the De Havilland Twin Otter and was amazed at how tight the cabin was.  A winter storm was brewing and it got very bumpy.  Once after a violent shake the plane went dark and silent.   As a recently begun flyer I was not happy.  Engines and lights stay on until I am on the ground, no exceptions.  Shortly though the aircraft came back to life and while the crew reassured us that all was well, I couldn't help but notice how pale they were.

I arrived at about 12:30 a.m. on Christmas day a bit tired, hungry, shaken, and ready to go back to hitch hiking.  A flight that was to have landed me at home in about six hours had taken eighteen.  It was if not the holiday from hell at least the holiday flight through it.