CASUAL
Carlson, Tucker
Casual WHO NOW RIDES GREYHOUND? I'm writing this somewhere over New Mexico, on a United flight to Los Angeles. This is the day's last plane out of Washington, the one for people who absolutely...
...Every seat is taken...
...I spent the next two days on the phone from my motel room trying unsuccessfully to get back in...
...Where are you...
...If you grew up after about 1965, you probably never considered air travel glamorous...
...Another of them called me from his cell phone the other day...
...It sounded almost appealing...
...Just about every other element of American society seems to be flying to California tonight, though...
...Even me...
...Looking around the cabin, I realize I'm in no danger of becoming a corporate drone...
...Compared with a lot of people, I don't travel much...
...I wanted to live in the woods with my girlfriend and 10 dogs and never leave...
...This is the day's last plane out of Washington, the one for people who absolutely have to be in L.A...
...He'd just flown in from Cannes, by way of Australia and Buenos Aires...
...On the other hand, what's the appeal of traveling if you lose track of where you are...
...Evidently a lot of people do...
...I associated it with drudgery...
...They fly to Bermuda for dinner...
...Minutes after I arrived at his office he accused me of scheming against him, started yelling, and canceled the scheduled interview...
...One of them married a woman who works for USAirways...
...My friends and I were the sort of sneering undergraduates you'd want to beat up...
...By contrast, I had more profound career plans...
...Except, apparently, the Radio Shack guys...
...I never thought I would...
...Even a failed assignment in Detroit, I decided, was more interesting than being a drunk history major...
...I remember in college thinking that the bulky-briefcase business types you see on airplanes were all mid-level Radio Shack managers on their way to some sales meeting in New Jersey...
...He's a big deal at a movie studio now...
...My friends and I envisioned them as the sort of people who might wear hairpieces, or order the Executive Decision Maker from an in-flight magazine...
...I asked...
...They were talking about sex, but one has since fallen asleep and is now snoring...
...I had drinks with him in Washington a few weeks ago...
...My first trip was to Detroit, to profile a member of the city council...
...He'd seemed normal enough on the phone...
...But anyone who flies more than three or four times a year knows what it's like to throw back the Sheraton drapes first thing in the morning and feel uncertain as to whether the skyline is Dallas, Phoenix, or San Diego...
...He travels constantly...
...Earlier generations may have associated frequent flying with opulence and adventure...
...Everyone else has to live near an airport...
...TUCKER CARLSON...
...I was in my backyard fiddling with a sprinkler when he called...
...I moved to Washington, which has three...
...Within a few months of arriving, I was flying with the Radio Shack managers...
...by midnight...
...In the seat next to me is a woman who's dressed like an art student—black clothes, silver jewelry, sketch pad— except she's at least thirty years too old to be enrolled anywhere...
...Now that I'm 36,000 feet over New Mexico it doesn't seem so strange, just something that everyone with a job has to do from time to time...
...It's not just that I'm an out-of-touch, inside-the-Beltway elitist...
...He turned out to be a foaming paranoid...
...Across from them is an elderly woman with too much carry-on baggage flying alone...
...The trip was a total bust, but I had a pretty good time anyway...
...For a second he couldn't seem to remember...
...They're probably all on corporate jets by now...
...I'm in Canada somewhere...
...I think I'm in a national forest...
...At some point they must have spun their Executive Decision Makers and decided to buy tech stocks...
...I came for the weekend from Munich...
...My next-door neighbor commutes to Atlanta...
...In fact, I don't think I even know anyone who rides Greyhound anymore...
...Then I graduated and discovered that only the very rich and the very poor live in the woods...
...In front of me are two middle-aged men in T-shirts...
...It's that everyone flies everywhere now...
...Ten years ago, I couldn't have imagined myself catching the night flight to L.A...
...Except for the pretzels, it could be Greyhound...
...Most of my sneering college friends came to the same conclusion...
...Next to her is a youngish guy with stiff hair and a backpack covered with pins who looks like he's on his way to a Satanists' convention...
...He ordered his secretary to escort me out...
...I don't see a single one of them on the plane...
...Watching the passengers file on, I realized that I haven't been on a Greyhound bus since the '80s...
Vol. 4 • July 1999 • No. 41
