My Trip to Missouri

August 10-11, 2001

I am scheduled to speak to the Missouri House Republican Caucus on Friday evening in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri which is a very, very nice place to have to go in the summertime. Especially since (a) Your Nation's Capital is in the throes of a heat wave and (b) I want to escape the avalanche of e-mails regarding stem cell research which, in Friday's Mullings, I appear to have irritated the OTHER half of the 22,000 or so subscribers whom I missed irritating in the column regarding immigration.

That is not entirely true. There were many who were irritated by both.

My flight leaves from Baltimore-Washington International airport which is, as the name suggests, just outside Baltimore, Maryland. Washington, DC is blessed with three airports. Reagan National, which is seven minutes from my house; Washington Dulles which is about 35 minutes; and BWI which is about ten minutes further.

The nature of airline pricing these days forces the savvy traveler to check all the airports in a region (San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco in the Bay area, for example) before deciding on which flight to take.

As I am a good corporate citizen and, as some worthy GOP organization is paying for it, I try to get the lowest fare possible.

Hence, my trip to BWI where the round-trip fare to St. Louis is a little over $300 and doesn't require a Saturday stay-over. The fare from DCA (Reagan National) was about a thousand dollars for the same itinerary.

On my way out of Old Town, Alexandria I stopped at Starbucks to get my usual Grande Mocha or Mocha Grande, I can never remember which comes first, the "mocha" or the "grande." A year or so ago, I wrote about this and a young man told me, the next day, "the secret, sir, is not to care."

This morning there are hundreds - thousands - of people in the Old Town Starbucks most of whom have, it appears, never seen a Starbucks before and/or have never dealt with American money. And they are all wearing t-shirts which proclaim the glories of some burg in central Pennsylvania. They have cunningly hidden their buses which will later block traffic on side streets designed in the 1700's for horses and buggies, not the armada of "Mel's Scenic Tour Lines" buses, so I am parked and in the Starbucks before I realize my error.

They not ordering the standard "half-caff-skinny-vente-double-shot-no-foam-marchiata" which, for regulars, trips off the tongue as easily as the girls in college used to be able to say "I can't. I have to wash my hair that weekend." They are asking what each menu item entails. Then they are discussing each item with the other 657 people in their party. Then they are discussing whether they want a cranberry scone or an apple muffin. Then they are pooling their money to make the most efficient use possible of the pennies and nickels which have fallen to the bottom of their (God help us) fanny packs.

Then they change their minds and start again.

For a place where the central item for sale is a stimulant: caffeine, I am amazed that there are not more fistfights - if not gun fights - in Starbucks around the nation. Especially since I go there a lot. If I still lived in Texas I guarantee you that my local Starbucks in the Highland Park Village would have long-since installed magnetometers to make sure I wasn't armed when I came in.

The morning coffee-maker-woman knows me and signals me with her eyes. I mouth "Grande Mocha" which is, it turns out, the proper order of those words, and she nods and grabs a grande-sized container, marks it, and puts it on the shelf in front of her behind several other orders ahead of me.

When I finally make it to a cashier, I tell him I have already called in my order and he gratefully takes my $3.55 for about twelve cents worth of ingredients, rings me up, and gives me my change.

I fight through the milling hordes of Pennsylvanians and, as I make my way to the pick-up station the woman calls out "Grande Mocha!"

I add two packets of equal, stir the whipped cream into the liquid below, grab a half-dozen napkins and fight my way through, as W.C. Fields once describe it "a wall of human flesh" until I shoot through the front door to the relative safety of South King Street where the Mullmobile patiently awaits me right next to the four dogs tied to the parking meter who patiently await THEIR masters.

I get on the Capital Beltway which leads to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway which, about 45 minutes later will lead me to the airport.

Shortly before I get to the exit, I decide to multi-task and prepare to toss the now-empty coffee container onto the floor in front of the back seat.

Café Mochas, I have learned from experience, tend to have the chocolate sink to the bottom during the drinking process leaving a narrow pool of sludge which will - I guarantee you - find a way to leak out of that little hole you drink though on onto the carpet.

So, the trick is to stuff some napkins into the empty cup, which is like soaking up a crude oil spill just off shore, and THEN toss the cup into the back.

Unfortunately for me, the top did not come off properly and the container tipped over spilling chocolate all over my pants. In exactly the area you would expect the chocolate to spill if you pictured yourself sitting behind the steering wheel of an SUV and screwing around with a coffee container while driving at 60 miles an hour. All I needed was a cell phone in my ear, and a newspaper draped across the steering wheel to complete the picture.

So, I was in a great mood as I pulled up to the parking garage and saw the sign which read: $30 per day.

THIRTY DOLLARS? A DAY? TO PARK IN BALTIMORE?

And the geniuses who run the airport (the manager of which has recently resigned abruptly but not abruptly enough) have moved the economy parking from about a half mile away from the terminal to its new, handy location just east of Charleston, West Virginia. All right that's an exaggeration, but not much of one.

I pulled in, parked, unloaded my computer, European Carry-All (not a purse), and my roll-along, hooked everything together and went into the terminal.

As I approached the ticket counter I held my computer case in front of me, much in the manner of a sophomore boy in high school who finds himself in an embarrassing state as the bell rings to end fifth period.

I got my ticket. Proclaimed my hatred of BWI to the ticket agent who didn't even bother to feign interest as she had been there since 4:30 that morning and she has to be there every day and why did I think I was in possession of information she had never thought of?

I went to the men's room to sponge off. The thing about chocolate spots across the area of what would be your lap if you were sitting down is this: It is easier to clean them up if you can pat them from the inside AND the outside.

That was not an option in this particular men's room so I used a LOT of water and soap from those dispensers which act as if the fluid they are supposed to dispense is really, really expensive so you have to use the smallest amount possible.

I got myself pretty well cleaned up and the embarrassing chocolate spots had been replaced by a not-at-all embarrassing WET area.

In the end everything dried, I got on the plane which left on time, got to Cincinnati changed to the ComAir terminal which, even though they use mostly jets now, still seems like a bus terminal in Burma.

I got on the flight to St. Louis and a young woman was led down the aisle by the flight attendant. The flight attendant told the little girl that her seat was the window in my row and then asked, "Would you rather sit somewhere else?"

Hey! Had she seen me before the wet spot had dried up? Did I look like a masher who would put the moves on a (as I soon found out) 12-year-old girl in an airplane?

As it happened it was like the Ransom of Red Chief. "Precocious" is a word which comes to mind. Ritalin is another.

Young Melissa was a non-stop talker, a pointer-outer of every really interesting thing in her teen magazine, a constant ringer of the flight attendant call button, a two-time spiller of Sprite (happily on her, not me), and a demonstrator and explainer of everything in her back-pack.

By the time we got off the plane I was exhausted.

The drive to Lake of the Ozarks is about three hours which was uneventful, the speech was pretty good, and the drive back the next day was without mishap.

I had plenty of time so I stopped off in Fulton, Missouri at Westminster College.

Westminster College is home to the Winston Churchill Museum. Why? Because on March 5, 1946, Churchill gave a speech in which the following phrase was uttered:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."

The term "Iron Curtain" was, thereby, placed into the language and became, arguably, the most famous phrase of the next fifty years.

There is a statue of Churchill on the campus which, after they tell you, you notice has no pigeon droppings on it. The reason is, they have electrified the statue and zap the little flying rats if they try to land on old Winny's shoulders.

Gasoline, in Fulton, was $1.25 a gallon for regular.

The rest of the trip was uneventful and it's after 10:00 pm on Sunday night and I want to get the column out.

STARBUCKS Addendum: On Monday afternoon I ventured back to the Old Town Starbucks which was pretty much empty. As I got there a young woman was trying to get OUT of the store with her puppy -- a 3-month-old monster who will grow up to weigh 2,300 pounds. The little guy was very cute but didn't want to leave.

She finally got him out and I went in. The guy behind the counter did a cup of coffee, poured some water into a plastic cup, and took them both outside. A few seconds later he came back in with her credit card which he ran through the drill, took it and the receipt back outside, and returned to ask if I wanted my usual.

It was like going back in time.