Tag Archives: Summertime

Watermelon, Man…

If you’ve flown at all in the last six days — and I’ve flown every one of them — you know that Summer Time is here.  Airplanes full of kids, crazy weather delays, and in my black uniform, it’s been hot hot hot.  And where there’s Hot, there should always be Watermelon.giant-watermelon-with-bathing-beauty

As I’ve told you before, my writing group is cobbling together an anthology all about food.  Memories, poems, recipes and other of our members’ favorite tasty morsels.  My poem of the month for June is a haiku about my hot summer love of watermelon.  I have waxed ecstatic about the joys of watermelon before; this poem  was inspired my my second Best Food Moment Ever.  Not my second-best, mind you; I have two Best Food Moments Ever, which is allowed because they both involve the same juicy and delicious fruit.  And here we’re gonna tie it all together: my other Favorite Watermelon Memory is of a day out in Korea, which is where the member of our group who’s curating this anthology is currently living.  (Thanks, internet!)  See how it’s all a rich tapestry?

So I’m driving to the airport the other day, in the middle of a six-day stretch, so hot in my black uniform and black car that I’m purposely driving practically in circles to only drive up shady streets, and my favorite local jazz radio station comes through, as they always do, with the perfect splash of musical refreshment. I’ve always felt a certain seasonal affinity with summer.   Ushered into this wide and wacky world on its first day, we’ll consider me, for the purpose of wrapping up this post, something of an expert on the topic of How To Enjoy Your Summer Time The Most:  1. Check out our yummy anthology as it comes together right before your eyes at Twelve Months of Tasty Morsels.  2. Listen to plenty of jazz. And 3. Don’t forget the watermelon.  I do love my watermelon, man.

Get Thee To An Airport: Summer’s Here!

Short final in St Maarten

Short final in St Maarten

This post was originally published in the Glendale – Cherry Creek Chronicle in July of 2009.  I have just arrived home from a four-day trip replete with mechanical delays, duty-time legality issues, and Orlando, that seems to have officially rung in this year’s summer travel season.  After a couple glasses of wine and a good night’s sleep, I am moved to repost.

I have about twenty different renditions of the song on my iPod, sung by everyone from Sarah Vaughan to Angelique Kidjo: “Summertime, and the living is easy.”  Yeah, well, this is my sixteenth summer as a flight attendant for a major airline, and I am pretty sure those lyrics didn’t come to George Gershwin on an airplane. For nine months a year, airplanes are filled with seasoned travelers and million-mile frequent fliers who more or less “know the drill,” and flight attendants pretty much know what to expect.  The off-season traveler means business: he’ll get on the airplane balancing an open laptop and talking on his cell phone, clog up the aisle while he fills up an entire overhead bin with his oversized carry-on bags, and then sit and make comments to the flight attendants about how people need to hang up their cell phones and travel with smaller bags and the boarding process will go more smoothly for everyone.  These passengers breeze through security with slip-on shoes and TSA-approved toiletries, know exactly what they want to drink and how much it will cost, and can be counted on to have the laptop fired up from way before we tell them it’s OK until way after we tell them to turn it off, some of them hard at work, most of them watching Family Guy on DVD.  They don’t bother us, we don’t bother them (certainly not with “service,” not these days), and everybody’s happy.  I’ve got an Us magazine to read, after all. Continue reading →