We're back from Kaua'i; what a great trip in a beautiful place.
Here's the special "travel edition" of "will miss, won't miss."
I won't miss the old Midway International Airport. Or as I used to call it, Midway Imitation Airport. It's like they took an old high school and converted it into an airport terminal. It really used to be the smallest, goofiest airport ever. Like, the Duluth International (Canada) Airport is more immediately recognizeable as an airport compared to the old Midway. It was so small, and the main part of the terminal was a big gym-sized room that literally looked like it was a soundstage set up for a 80s sitcom scene in an airport, like where Vanessa would be complaining about missing the prom for a trip to Hawaii, and Rudy would get lost after riding the luggage carousel or something.
It's always been nice because if you can fly out of Midway, it's usually much cheaper than O'Hare, but it's also about an hour's drive from where I live (whereas O'Hare is about 30 minutes away)... and if you're taking public transit to Midway, plan on at least an hour and a half.
Still, one of my favorite memories of my freshman year was driving a North Park van down to Midway to chauffer the Jazz Band off for some trip. I had never really driven in the city before, and I didn't know where we were going so I had to follow the guy ahead of me pretty closely. He knew where he was going and was doing about 80 on the freeway. But that story is more about driving and not about missing Midway.
Several years ago, they did a lot of great improvements on Midway and so now it's really quite respectable. But in the old days, boy howdy.
I will miss O'Hare. O'Hare International Airport, formerly O'Hare Field, airport code ORD, newer than Midway.
Many people think that the ORD is from O'Hare Field, but it's actually from the name of the old North Side millitary WWII-era airport it replaced -- "Orchard Place." It was named O'Hare after Butch "Bucky" O'Hare, a WWII war hero who was the son of one of Al Capone's lawyers. The legend has it that he turned informant and quit the mob because he didn't want that life for his family and was bumped off. Incidentally, Butch O'Hare was shot down by friendly fire in 1943 in the South Pacific. Or was it a mob hit? You decide.
I'll miss O'Hare for that story, but also because as a kid I was wowed by the fact that O'Hare was the busiest airport in America. I always wondered what that must be like, and then one day I moved to Chicago and went to O'Hare all the time. It seemed like a cool thing to me; it made me feel important, or that I had arrived somewhere. It's funny what we think is important.
Anyway, O'Hare really is a great airport. I'll miss catching cheap flights -- the kind that are always at the last gate at the end of the last terminal, about 10 miles from where you parked. And I'll miss that crazy underground tunnel with the neon, people movers, and piano music (a variation on the theme from Rhapsody in Blue, which United uses as a theme song). If a space age tunnel doesn't say big, important airport, I don't know what does.
