David Johnson
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Subject: FW: Delta Blues
Some of you may know of Garrison Keillor's radio shows and writings.
>>
> > By Garrison Keillor
>
> > Tribune Media Services
> >
> >
> >
> > I flew to New York on the day spring arrived and all along 90th Street
> > a lovely
> > blue flower called Pushkinia blossomed which is named for the poet
> who,
> > according to Russians, cannot be translated into English, but
> > Tchaikovsky made
> > a gorgeous opera of 'Eugene Onegin,' which is some consolation, and
> > then there is the flower.
> I flew on Northwest Airlines, which now, like Pushkin, will vanish into
> > the
> > earth, devoured by Delta, and this makes me a little sad. Not sad
> > enough to
> > write an opera but enough to write a column. The company used to be
> > called
> > Northwest Orient and was founded in Minneapolis
> > in 1926 to carry mail to Chicago.
> > I used to live in a house in St. Paul
> > once owned by Croil Hunter, a president of Northwest Orient, who, when
> > Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was stranded at the airport by a blizzard, put
> her
> > up in the
> > guest room of his house.
> >
> The company grew after the war and launched the Minneapolis-New York
> > route in 1945 and two years later started flying
> > to Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Manila.
> > Back in my youth, Dad sometimes took
> > us to the airport to watch planes take off and land, such as the
> Boeing
> > Stratocruiser, a double-decker equipped with
> > passenger lounges. There still were farms out by the airport then, and
> > in the
> > majestic Northwest Orient radio jingle I grew up hearing, a Chinese
> > gong went
> > whanngngngngn after the word 'Orient' and you imagined lifting up
> > from cornfields and flying away to the West until you got to the East.
> Our family did not fly, we drove, and Spokane
> > was as far west as we went, where Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Bessie
> lived,
> > and so Northwest Orient was not a
> > carrier to me, it was a romantic concept. We middle children are
> filled
> > with
> > restless longing, trapped as we are between the Sacred First-Born
> > Miracle Child and the Darling Infants. I grew
> > up with middleness, a B-minus
> > student in the middle of the country, and I longed to get out of the
> > Midwest and fly away to the edge of the world, and I knew
> > that Northwest Orient would take me there.
> (When I say Northwest, I am talking about a childhood romance, not a
> > corporation as such. The company was founded by romantics, men who
> loved
> > aviation, and in 1989 it fell into the hands of rapacious bandits who
> > ate its
> > heart and plunged it headlong into debt and could be as cruel to
> > employees as
> > any other big uni on-busting corporation. But
> > we cling to childhood illusions.)
> We are good travelers, we middle Americans, and when Northwest opened a
> > route
> > to Beijing, everybody and their
> > cousin talked about going there, and this spring the direct
> > Minneapolis-Paris
> > route opened, a beautiful idea to us as we scrape the ice off our
> > windshields.
> > We don't actually go, of course - we go to work - but we could go on
> > any given
> > day, could write 'Au Revoir, Ma Famille' on a paper towel and leave
> > it on the kitchen table under a salt shaker and drive to the airport
> on
> > the
> > bank of the Minnesota River, abandon the car in a snowbank, flash the
> > plastic,
> > board the plane, and wake up in Paris, like Lindbergh.
> I did not fly in an airplane until I was 28 years old and that was a
> > late-night
> > Northwest flight on a 747 to New York.
> > I sat back in the 30th row, surrounded by empty seats, my nose to the
> > window,
> > a nd when we came down through the clouds to the great city spread
> like a
> > blanket of glittering stars and into Kennedy Airport, I felt as if I'd
> > been
> > given a great prize.
> And so I mourn the loss of my childhood airline and the silver planes
> > with red
> > tails that rose from the corn. What is a Delta? A delta is mud
> > deposited by the
> > river. Also the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.. Also a sort of
> > triangular
> > shape. But to me it is mud which
> > forms a rich bottomland where they grow cotton and late at night old
> > black men
> > sit in a juke joint and play an old beat-up guitar and sing: 'I wanted
> > to go to the Orient someday. Get on a silver plane marked NWA. But
> that
> > plane that would take me, it done flew
> > away. I heard it on the morning news. They're wiping out the Ns and
> Ws.
> > That's
> > why I got these Delta blues.'
> >
> >
> >
> > (Garrison Keillor's 'A Prairie Home Companion' can be heard Saturday
> > nights on public radio stations across the country.)
Some of you may know of Garrison Keillor's radio shows and writings.
>>
> > By Garrison Keillor
>
> > Tribune Media Services
> >
> >
> >
> > I flew to New York on the day spring arrived and all along 90th Street
> > a lovely
> > blue flower called Pushkinia blossomed which is named for the poet
> who,
> > according to Russians, cannot be translated into English, but
> > Tchaikovsky made
> > a gorgeous opera of 'Eugene Onegin,' which is some consolation, and
> > then there is the flower.
> I flew on Northwest Airlines, which now, like Pushkin, will vanish into
> > the
> > earth, devoured by Delta, and this makes me a little sad. Not sad
> > enough to
> > write an opera but enough to write a column. The company used to be
> > called
> > Northwest Orient and was founded in Minneapolis
> > in 1926 to carry mail to Chicago.
> > I used to live in a house in St. Paul
> > once owned by Croil Hunter, a president of Northwest Orient, who, when
> > Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was stranded at the airport by a blizzard, put
> her
> > up in the
> > guest room of his house.
> >
> The company grew after the war and launched the Minneapolis-New York
> > route in 1945 and two years later started flying
> > to Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Manila.
> > Back in my youth, Dad sometimes took
> > us to the airport to watch planes take off and land, such as the
> Boeing
> > Stratocruiser, a double-decker equipped with
> > passenger lounges. There still were farms out by the airport then, and
> > in the
> > majestic Northwest Orient radio jingle I grew up hearing, a Chinese
> > gong went
> > whanngngngngn after the word 'Orient' and you imagined lifting up
> > from cornfields and flying away to the West until you got to the East.
> Our family did not fly, we drove, and Spokane
> > was as far west as we went, where Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Bessie
> lived,
> > and so Northwest Orient was not a
> > carrier to me, it was a romantic concept. We middle children are
> filled
> > with
> > restless longing, trapped as we are between the Sacred First-Born
> > Miracle Child and the Darling Infants. I grew
> > up with middleness, a B-minus
> > student in the middle of the country, and I longed to get out of the
> > Midwest and fly away to the edge of the world, and I knew
> > that Northwest Orient would take me there.
> (When I say Northwest, I am talking about a childhood romance, not a
> > corporation as such. The company was founded by romantics, men who
> loved
> > aviation, and in 1989 it fell into the hands of rapacious bandits who
> > ate its
> > heart and plunged it headlong into debt and could be as cruel to
> > employees as
> > any other big uni on-busting corporation. But
> > we cling to childhood illusions.)
> We are good travelers, we middle Americans, and when Northwest opened a
> > route
> > to Beijing, everybody and their
> > cousin talked about going there, and this spring the direct
> > Minneapolis-Paris
> > route opened, a beautiful idea to us as we scrape the ice off our
> > windshields.
> > We don't actually go, of course - we go to work - but we could go on
> > any given
> > day, could write 'Au Revoir, Ma Famille' on a paper towel and leave
> > it on the kitchen table under a salt shaker and drive to the airport
> on
> > the
> > bank of the Minnesota River, abandon the car in a snowbank, flash the
> > plastic,
> > board the plane, and wake up in Paris, like Lindbergh.
> I did not fly in an airplane until I was 28 years old and that was a
> > late-night
> > Northwest flight on a 747 to New York.
> > I sat back in the 30th row, surrounded by empty seats, my nose to the
> > window,
> > a nd when we came down through the clouds to the great city spread
> like a
> > blanket of glittering stars and into Kennedy Airport, I felt as if I'd
> > been
> > given a great prize.
> And so I mourn the loss of my childhood airline and the silver planes
> > with red
> > tails that rose from the corn. What is a Delta? A delta is mud
> > deposited by the
> > river. Also the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.. Also a sort of
> > triangular
> > shape. But to me it is mud which
> > forms a rich bottomland where they grow cotton and late at night old
> > black men
> > sit in a juke joint and play an old beat-up guitar and sing: 'I wanted
> > to go to the Orient someday. Get on a silver plane marked NWA. But
> that
> > plane that would take me, it done flew
> > away. I heard it on the morning news. They're wiping out the Ns and
> Ws.
> > That's
> > why I got these Delta blues.'
> >
> >
> >
> > (Garrison Keillor's 'A Prairie Home Companion' can be heard Saturday
> > nights on public radio stations across the country.)
