This is why we stay home most of the time

There's not much I can say for air travel these days that's good.

Yes, airplanes get you there fast. And that's about it.

My wife and I recently returned from a week in Seattle that included a drive to Portland for a wedding and a drive back to Seattle. Thank goodness Alaska Air has a nonstop flight from St. Louis to Seattle and home again.

The older I get, the less willing I am to deal with flight connections and everything that goes with them. I know. I know. Flight connections are a must to just about any destination you can think of, but I avoid them like the plague. That's why I'm so pleased with the nonstop to Seattle. And back.

But flying simply doesn't have the allure, the cachet, it once did. Flying used to be an elegant mode of travel, even in the cheap seats. These days the glob of passengers waiting to board any flight at any U.S. airport might just as well be standing in line for more tattoos.

Honestly, where did I go wrong in not letting a total stranger poke me with a big needle and inject ink made from God-knows-what into my skin? Apparently, though, my wife and I are among the truly unhip. We can't count even one tattoo between us.

I'll tell you one reason I don't like tattoos. I tend to associate them with the numbers that became a permanent fixture on the forearms of those interred in concentration camps during World War II.

When my wife and I lived in New York many years ago, among our many interesting neighbors were an elderly Jewish couple. They were pleasant and always nodded on the elevator. She would ask about the weather or compliment something my wife was wearing. He never spoke, just smiled. Then we saw the numbers etched into their skin. They had been in a concentration camp.

You can't help but behave differently when you're in the presence of someone who has suffered agonies and depravations that you can't even imagine. Tears would come to our eyes when we talked, however briefly, with our neighbors.

And so, you see, there are things much, much worse than having to fly in modern airplanes, even when the airline charges the heck out of you for things like checking your luggage. Airlines also constantly remind passengers that they are entitled to one carry-on bag of a certain size and a personal carry-on item, usually a purse. Some passengers have made an art of carrying a purse as big as a suitcase.

In any event, the overhead storage bins are always inadequate for the number of items carried on any flight. So there is the game of "let us check your bag after you board your flight." Passengers don't have any room to speak of anyway. Why not just make bigger overhead bins so everyone can stoop or crawl their way to their seats? It wouldn't be any worse that the scrunching in the seats and legroom airlines now require.

And, we're told, airlines are looking for ways to pack more and more passengers into planes that can, truthfully, hold only so much.

The thing that gives air travel its blackest mark, of course, is the security checkpoints where nice people are treated like scum. And still passengers board with forbidden items. And what about that woman who keeps sneaking onto flights, only to be flown home again for another attempted boarding without a ticket or boarding pass? She's been in the news frequently. Somehow her escapades do not bolster my faith in the security checkpoints.

But we still fly. Why? Because it would take us four long days of driving to go by car to Seattle. Instead, we fly in under four hours. That's actual air time of course, and doesn't include the nearly two-hour drive to the airport, the two-hour allowance to get through security and to your boarding gate, the half-hour wait for your luggage to appear on the carousel and the half-hour or more to get to your final destination, which in our case is our son's house in Redmond.

I was really dreading this trip, but it included the wedding of my wife's great-nephew in Portland to a lovely woman who has quickly become a part of the family. This was one of the most unorthodox weddings my wife and I have ever attended, yet it was strictly traditional in some ways.

The best part came after the ceremony, after the reception and after the dinner (held at the Portland Art Museum), when friends of the bride and groom stood up in front of everyone and told us how good it was to know Charles and Amanda. We knew that already, of course, but it was a joy to hear their contemporaries speak so eloquently of what knowing this young couple had meant to their lives. Once again I was impressed with a generation of young men and women who, in spite of their tattoos, are marvelous, wonderful individuals.

It was worth getting on that dang plane to get to know some of them for so short a time. Way to go, Charles and Amanda. You did good.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.