Strange?

Going to Bennington, we more often than not take Turnpike Road where we always slow down to wave hello to friends. Another white donkey lives across the road.

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It’s horse companion is nowhere to be seen lately, so it is alone which seems sad but no doubt there is a reason the donkeys are kept apart.

Occasionally, in addition a gaggle of domestic geese patrols the road. While I am delighted to see them, I can’t imagine why they are allowed to wander around at large.

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We often see chickens and ducks freely grazing beside the road, as if this is perfectly normal.

To me it seems strange and a good way to lose your fowl.

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In Bennington we passed by the Mile Around trail where the hedges were just coming into leaf.

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The favourite lone tree was not as far forward.

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PlantNet identifies this as Blackthorn.

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Down the road, across from the coat hanger factory, the flowering trees were not quite in bloom but they made a splash of colour and I liked the shadows.

Coat hanger factory? Those nasty metal things you get from a dry cleaner. I never imagined that they might come from a place like Bennington. They appear still to be in business. I haven’t used a dry cleaner for years, but I wonder who can afford one these days.

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You have to get the timing right to catch flowering trees in bloom. These were near Walmart.

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The shape of trees seems to me to suggest personality.

This one a bit frantic, like harassed check-in staff dealing with over-sales at a busy airport.

Over-sales! I remember the day when I discovered that the airlines do it deliberately! I’d expected to deal with delays and cancellations and to have to argue about excess weight charges, but I could never come up with an acceptable excuse for denying a passenger the seat they had booked weeks or even months before.

Later we had a good deal of trouble with passengers who demanded to be upgraded. They had no leg to stand on, but they could be very obnoxious and wasted a lot of time.

Annoyingly, it was those who could easily afford it that were the most persistent and frequently did get a free upgrade. Perhaps it was why I sought out more deserving people when we needed involuntary upgrades to free space in the economy cabin.

My way of equalising.

Not long before I retired, all of these things started to be monitored by Head Office. If a passenger came to the gate with hand baggage that was not acceptable and must be hold loaded, you had to add it to their checked pieces, which likely triggered an excess charge. The logistics of collecting payment at the gate in that particular airport were complicated and with time running short, it was expedient to waive the charge but then you were obliged to explain. Delay the flight – explain that!

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By then I had really had enough of the whole thing and began to think seriously of packing it in, but after so many years I felt being an airline employee was my whole identity. In retirement I would be a nobody. Also, I thought I should at least complete 40 years.

As luck would have it, my spine collapsed and I went on sick leave from which I never returned. It was cowardly, but I couldn’t face a last day and I retired after 38 years.

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There were good times and many good people through those years, but I do not miss the chaos, nor the uncertainty of it all. On any given day the whole operation could be upended in any number of ways.

Weather problems. Mechanical delays. Strikes. Political upheaval. Earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions. Fuel shortages. Crashes! Once the airport ground to a halt when someone drove the school bus he’d hijacked out onto a runway. Those I can remember off the top of my head.

If cancellations continued, when any of the above were prolonged, we could expect lay-offs, which made life uncertain. As you get older, the prospects of alternate employment diminish along with your self-confidence. At the same time, if you have invested years into a future pension, but not yet enough to make it count, the need to hang on is crucial. So you would need a fill-in job for an unspecified length of time. Good luck with that!

You lived with anxiety. What will today be like? How many times will I get shouted at? Will I keep my job? We had to re-bid our shifts twice a year, so that was another worry. It wasn’t until I retired that I realised how much anxiety I had carried for so long.

It was an experience which had benefits but I do not miss it.

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If I can caption animal pictures, why not trees?

It’s no stranger than letting poultry run around on a highway!

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