I just returned with my tour group of 45 Switchback fans from Dublin, Ireland last Thursday. For a week, I had the pleasure of being in Ireland, back to County Mayo, back to the graveyard of my great-grandfather, Michael McCormack and his wife Margaret Trench McCormack and my great uncles and aunts in Ballinasmale Abbey. A chance to walk again briefly on the ground they had and where my grandfather, Luke, played, worked on and eventually left for Chicago. That land is about 80 acres of the townland of Bolinree. I was grateful to see it once again.
I played music at Matt Malloy’s pub in Westport and enjoyed a pint at the Field Bar in Lenane. Driving across Achill Island and then across Ireland herself to the beautiful Wicklow mountains. I made my usual stop to the Oval Pub in Dublin for their seafood chowder and a Smithwick's. A final farewell concert at the Summerhill Hotel came much too soon, it seemed. Visiting, sightseeing, eating, drinking, performing and falling in love again with Ireland. All of it swirling by quickly, almost a dream of joy that jolts me awake with that last day to head back to Chicago.
The line at the airport, the duty-free purchases and then that economy seat on the flight, listening to a couple from Milwaukee seated behind me, coping with the serious colds. Neither could hear each other through their clogged ears and so, after a series of sneezes and throat clearing, one would say “what did you say” to the other. They got into a bickering match over who couldn’t understand who, sneezing, snorting, throat clearing so much that bit by bit, the reverie I was clinging to was worn away. .
On the long flight back, I try to sleep to escape. To try to get my mind into that state, a sort of euphoric daydream to make the miles go by quickly and fight the inevitable jetlag. Leaning my head on the window of the plane and ignoring the coughing people, crying babies and bustling cabin crew.
Keeping my eyes closed and daring a dream to come creeping into my weary brain.
I started to have one dream, a room of pictures of people I had known all my life. Weird epitaphs written beside decaying photos of faces long gone. That was not euphoric. I opened my eyes to see a crew member staring right at me. I was startled. He had a tray and wanted me to cooperate now that I was awake. I can tell he is anxious to get this part of his job finished, merely four rows away from the tail of the plane. I turned down the inflight meal of mac and cheese because the chicken was consumed twelve rows ahead of me. It seemed unfair to me. He came back to tell me they have one chicken left, but the cellophane on the container is partly missing. I smile and wave him off. A guy who was sleeping in front of me, heard the conversation and awoke. “I’ll eat it,” he said.
It is better for me to be sleeping or pretending to sleep perhaps than eating, I rationalize. I glance around the plane. People are eating, with earphones on, watching the movies on the screens directly in front of them.
The video screen on the seat in front of me has a problem. The screen is dark except for one line that reads “please wait, the system is being adjusted.” I tell my brain the same thing-- that I need to consider it nighttime, even though it is bright daylight outside. I try to find that euphoria. I turn my head ever so slightly so my left ear can be inundated by the white noise of an engine outside the thin wall of the plane, thrusting us forward at over 500 miles an hour. This time I do have dreams, pleasant dreams about writing a song. The song starts with this odd melody, and I tell myself I have to remember it. I start to memorize it when I am awakened by an offer of a box of warm pizza, by the same crew member. I open my eyes and he has the box about six inches from my face. I politely wave it off to his disappointment. We are now over Canada about to cross into the United States. About an hour to landing, I reason. I look at my video screen still dark, but this time, there are only two words in capital letters: PLEASE WAIT. I wonder if there is a sign wrapped in all of it. I lift the window shade. A huge cumulus anvil cloud is making its way over Michigan. It is a monster storm cell, with lightning slicing from one side to another and big explosions of light that flicker over the various parts of the cloud itself. The whole scene is set in a fading orange glow of the recently set sun. The plane moves to avoid the big storm and off in the distance, little glowing lights of other planes scurry past the behemoth as it slowly moves eastward and away. I crane my neck to catch its last magnificent display of light. It is out of my view and once again, I try to sleep.
Then the bustling of the cabin crew again. We are on approach to Chicago. We finally land at O’Hare and its bewildering, chaotic stew of blue lights, runway signs, planes moving this way and that, construction cranes building some new terminal. All is a mess as that big cloud over Michigan had disrupted the airport hours before. For over an hour we slowly moved forward, inching slowly toward the gate. Pleasant deplaning music plays and then silence as the track of the music runs its course. The captain apologizes for the slow progress. “We can literally see the gate we should be at” he says in a voice devoid of any annoyance, but obviously annoyed. I lean my head again and try to sleep as there is no sense of doing anything else at this point. The plane finally lurches forward and we slowly, painfully make our way into the gate. I watch my fellow passengers, when the “cross-check” is finally checked by the crew and the cabin door is opened, standing up and doing nothing. They are staring toward the front of the plane, trying to will their fellow passengers to move faster. I imagine if this is what purgatory is like, knowing that you will get off the plane, but waiting, especially us really sinful people past aisle 40. Nobody moves for 20 minutes. Finally, I can see a person ten rows up begin to gather their overhead suitcase. Soon it reaches our area, back in the steerage. I wait and watch the last four rows behind me in the tail section scurry past me, including the couple with the cold. Why they are rushing, I really don’t understand. I know the odds are that I will see them all at the luggage carousel. It’s in our human DNA, I reason, thinking that somehow if one moves fast enough, one will get out of the airport first. Is it a sense of self-preservation, I wonder. I finally get up and watch as the crew gather their belongings. A cleaning crew comes storming onto the plane, which will be cleaned as fast as possible, recrewed, turned around and flown back to Ireland. I walk past the crowd waiting in the terminal, frustrated at the late arrival, but also eager with the anticipation of heading over to Dublin. Someone will have my seat in less than an hour. They will settle into it and perhaps lean their head against the window, hoping for sleep. Or they will stare at a dark screen that reads, “please wait, the system is being adjusted.” They will have no choice but to allow whatever that system is, to adjust itself again and again and again and again.
READ MARTIN'S OTHER BLOG HERE.