The Plan was for me to be back in South Carolina Sunday night. It didn’t work out because of a little time-travel anomaly: My flight out of Pennsylvania last night got delayed, and delayed again, until it wasn’t even leaving until AFTER my connecting flight at Dulles would leave.
So I stayed over a night, and ended up going to Chicago (cue overdub, w/voice reading Sandburg poem). Which means I got to play this game:
Mike Fitts answers his phone; I say, "Hey, could I speak to Mr. Rooney? This is Ferris Bueller. I’m sitting in a bar in Chicago watching the Cubs’ season opener." Which was true. Unfortunately, when I told him the score was nothing to nothing, he failed to say, "Who’s winning?" so that I could say, "The Bears." Other than that, it was perfect.
Since MIke’s a Cubs fan, it pleased me to tell him that so far, they were having a perfect season. Of
course, it was the first inning. Before there were three outs, the Reds would score two, prompting the crusty guy next to me (I think he was some kind of cousin to Slats Grobnik) to laugh and say, "The Cubs not being behind only lasted about five minutes."
A few minutes later, I left to go check on my flight, saying I hoped the rest of the season goes better. The Grobnik guy laughed again and said, "Thanks, but I don’t really care." He was more interested in insisting to the barmaid that since this was Monday, it was supposed to be bean soup for lunch, not lentil. She said she ran out of beans. So he said he’d take the lentil, with less levity than he employed in accepting the fate of the Cubbies.
At that moment, I was supposed to be in Augusta at the Masters practice round. I had never been before, and was only going this time because my brother-in-law from Memphis couldn’t use his tickets. But thank to the airline, I missed that. So I got what enjoyment I could out of my little unplanned Ferris moment.
All of this helped me appreciate the editorial I read in the Trib I had just bought — coincidentally on a fateful day. Meanwhile, guess what else is up for sale in the City of Big Shoulders?
Related Posts
