RIVER CITY JOURNAL: FLYING, LIKE CATS, DEFIES MY FEEBLE LOGIC

How can you explain riding through the air on something you can't lift when it's on the ground? I'm referring, of course, to airplanes, not cats.

There is, I suppose, much to be said for modern travel. This week I had to be in Chicago for an 8:30 a.m. meeting. I could have caught a very early flight in St. Louis that morning, finished the meeting and returned to St. Louis by shortly after noon.

The flying part is a snap. Getting to the airport and getting from the airport in Chicago to the meeting place have to be taken into account.

Here's how it went:

I left the day before the meeting. The drive from Cape Girardeau to the St. Louis airport takes me two hours. I know other folks do it in less time, but I don't see how. There were six police cars in one quarter-mile stretch of I-270 stopping speeders who were headed my direction.

I always get to the airport too early, but I'd rather be early that misjudge how long it will take to find parking or fix a flat tire. So there's an hour waiting at the airport. Total time elapsed so far: three hours.

The flight to Chicago, which was on time, took 44 minutes. Getting from the airport to the hotel in a Chicago suburb took 48 minutes in rush-hour traffic with an overturned semi on the main highway, which meant a fairly long detour.

I was well-rested for the 8:30 a.m. meeting, but I got to the meeting room at 7:30 a.m. to meet with a couple of computer technicians about a special Internet hookup and a computer-image projector that would be used during the meeting.

The meeting started on time at 8:30. It finished promptly at 9:45, the appointed time. I caught a ride back to the airport at 10 a.m., which took 27 minutes without the detour or the overturned semi. I was nearly two hours early for the flight back to Kansas City, but a helpful ticket agent booked me on an earlier flight, which took 44 minutes. I was back in my car and headed for Cape Girardeau at 12:30 p.m., almost exactly 24 hours later than when I arrived at the airport. And don't forget the two-hour drive to Cape Girardeau, which was disrupted a bit by I-55 construction south of the I-270 interchange.

So, there you have it: 28 hours from start to finish -- all for a meeting in Chicago that lasted an hour and 15 minutes.

I still marvel at airplanes. One of the in-flight magazines had a humorous listing of organizations with offbeat purposes. One was something like the Society for Staying on the Ground. It was dedicated to the principle that planes fly, but humans stay on the ground, if they're smart.

That reminded me of the oft-quoted anonymous British spinster who said, "If God had intended for man to fly, he wouldn't have invented the railway."

My fascination with airplanes was passed along to both our sons, who travel everywhere. Our younger son is a pilot now. Both of them arrive at airports minutes -- seconds, even -- before their flights are supposed to leave. They spend much less time traveling than I do, because I am so overly cautious.

Part of my caution, I think, is a result of my anonymous-British-spinster mentality: I'm still not convinced flying is something God intended. Like the margarine commercial of a few years back, I tend to agree that "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

I vividly remember seeing airplanes when I was a child. On the playground at Shady Nook School in the hills of the Ozarks west of here, all activity during recess came to a halt as large formations of fighter plans flew overhead just a few short years after World War II and just as the Korean War was heating up. Our teacher would get a worried look on her face. She probably was concerned about the pilots and other crew members who might soon be in combat situations. The worried look on my face was because I was afraid gravity would do its duty and pull the planes out of the sky and into the woods, which would catch on fire and burn out of control until the inferno reached our farm and burned down the barn and the house and the privy and even the woodshed.

Yes, I was a worrier. Still am, I suppose.

The only other planes we ever saw on a regular basis were the Conservation Department single-engine planes that would loop back and forth over the wooded hills when forest fires broke out -- not caused by downed fighter planes, mind you. Those were the days when many hardscrabble farmers burned the woods every spring to promote the growth of grass for the skinny cows that were permitted to roam at large -- free range, it was called. The Conservation Department, on the other hand, worried about timber destruction and soil erosion.

I don't have a fear of flying, but I do have a healthy respect for the mechanics and pilots whose skills keep machines weighing several tons floating in the air.

There was a man on the flight back from Chicago this week who yelled -- out loud, and loud enough to be heard throughout the plane -- every time we hit an air pocket. The other passengers grew tired of his yelps and started to show their annoyance.

I, on the other hand, thought to myself that maybe this guy knows something we don't. I faked calmness, but actually I was holding on to the arms of the seat -- and lifting. I thought I should do my part.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.