I would have given some of them a piece of my mind, but I calculated it would have only slowed the passage of a long line of patrons. I'm sure you have heard some sad stories, but I have a couple of incidents worthy of mention.
On a flight out of Dallas-Fort Worth, we were inching through the security check. My wife has an overnight case that she will not travel without. She placed her kit on the X-ray belt along with her purse. There was a slow down at the end of the X-ray belt as the inspectors did some secondary checking of items.
Her travel case had been given to an inspector, who took it to a table well away from the belt. After retrieving her purse, we walked over to the inspector's table. He obligingly shoved the closed case across the table to us and we went on our way.
I was curious as to why he had the case if he didn't have to open it and go through the contents. Being glad to move on, I didn't give it another thought until a couple of days later, when it occurred to me that maybe he had already inspected the case.
I knew that my wife had pinned an heirloom diamond ring to the lining of her travel kit. It was an expensive piece having three rows of four little brilliant-cut diamonds in a platinum setting. It was approaching 100 years old and had practically no visible wear.
We were planning a trip to California where she was to pass the ring on to her niece. Out of curiosity, I opened my wife's case and found the ring was gone. An open safety pin hung from the lining. We were stunned, but accepted the loss.
On a flight leaving Tucson National we inched our way through the inspection line. I emptied my pockets of metal into a tray and was passed around the detector.
Before I retrieved it, a guard wanded me and asked if I had anything in my pockets. Obligingly, I pulled out a single golf tee that I had missed putting in the tray with several others. He took the tee, saying, "I'll take that, it's sharp."
The really ridiculous thing occurred when they took my wife's tiny little cuticle nippers. They had approximately half-inch cutting blades with two-inch handles. They had passed inspection at Dallas-Fort Worth, but here they were detained.
The alternative was to take the little nippers, go back and get in line at the ticket counter and have the little nippers placed in a form of baggage. I told the guard to keep the damned things. The nail file on my fingernail clippers was a more dangerous weapon than those little nippers. They kept them.
My wife, who is 79 years old and a bit tottery, was wearing some thin leather low-heeled slip-on shoes. She was pulled aside and taken to a table, where, after being seated, took off her shoes for the guard to inspect.
I stood there waiting while he meticulously ran a wand with a patch on the end of it all over the shoe. Replacing the patch, he then went through the same procedure on the other shoe. For some reason they didn't even look at my shoes, but chose this little old gray-haired lady as a suspect. And the line moved slowly on.
What has happened to our beloved country when no one is beyond suspicion?
Surely the new federal inspectors will show better judgment.
Charley Rainwater is a longtime Homer-area resident and East End Road homesteader.
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