Surabaya To Iron City Twenty Seven Years Ago

We found Tweedy and headed out to the car. There was a traffic jam on the outskirts of the city and we had to sit on a road outside an abandoned foundry. A thousand broken windows, street lights broken, darkness settling in. Bee sat in the middle of the rear seat in the lotus position. She seemed remarkably well rested after a journey that had spanned time zones, land masses, vast oceanic distances, days and nights, on large and small planes, in summer and winter, from Surabaya to Iron City. Now we sat waiting in the dark for a car to get towed or a drawbridge to close. Bee didn’t think this familiar irony of modern travel was worth a comment. She just sat there listening to Tweedy explain to me why parents needn’t worry about children taking such trips alone. Planes and terminals are the safest of places for the very young and very old. They are looked after, smiled upon, admired for their resourcefulness and pluck. People ask friendly questions, offer them blankets and sweets.

“Every child ought to have the opportunity to travel thousands of miles alone,” Tweedy said, “for the sake of her self-esteem and independence of mind, with clothes and toiletries of her own choosing. The sooner we get them in the air, the better. Like swimming or ice skating. You have to start them young. It’s one of the things I’m proudest to have accomplished with Bee. I sent her to Boston on Eastern when she was nine. I told Granny Browner not to meet her plane. Getting out of airports is every bit as important as the actual flight. Too many parents ignore this phase of a child’s development. Bee is thoroughly bicoastal now. She flew her first jumbo at ten, changed planes at O’Hare, had a near miss in Los Angeles. Two weeks later she took the Concorde to London. Malcolm was waiting with a split of champagne.”

Up ahead the taillights danced, the line began to move.

Barring mechanical failures, turbulent weather and terrorist acts, Tweedy said, an aircraft travelling at the speed of sound may be the last refuge of gracious living and civilized manners known to man.


-Don Delillo
White Noise
1984