Retirement and Travel…Bah Humbug!

It’s not often in one’s life that they get to drastically change careers three times. I was one of those fortunate enough to do just that.
After a successful career with the G.C Murphy Company managing stores in Ocean City and Wildwood, I opened one of their biggest stores in Court House called Murphy’s Mart.
After 25 years in retail, and supervising over 125 employees at the mart, I was ready for something different. Did I mention that each employee had three problems, two of which were mine?
Mary had a hangnail; she was gone for three days. John had band practice and could only work one Saturday a month. Ah, those were the days.
As Murphy’s was one of the Herald’s largest advertisers, I became friends with Art Hall. We frequently spoke about my frustrations with retail. He offered me a position with the newspaper. It came on a day when Mary was out, and John had band practice, so I jumped on it.
The only thing I knew about newspapers was that they took 75 percent of my advertising budget, and people at that time, still got ink on their hands.
Like most free papers in the country, the Herald belonged to a trade association called The Independent Free Papers of America. Over the years I became very active in the association and served on many of its committees and as its president.
I was using a lot of my vacation time, and some of Art Hall’s, running around the country with the IFPA.
As the association was about to exceed over 50 million audited circulation, I was asked to write a “job description” for an executive director. When I was asked to hire somebody to fill it, my application was on top of the pile.
The position required the person to travel all over the United States and Canada, visiting member newspapers, and seeing how the national association could help them. It also required them to set up nine meetings of various sizes a year. This included finding the hotel, doing the menus, hiring entertainment, programs, vendors, audiovisual and a hundred other things. It was sort of like planning a wedding…on steroids.
The perk side of this was many. As a meeting planner, I got to stay at the best hotels, in their best rooms and suites and dine in their best restaurants. Of course, I was also required to check out the other better restaurants in town, find and play the local golf courses, fish their best spots, watch their nightlife and entertainment, all in the line of duty.
The best perk of all was that I could go to Florida, Arizona, and California in the winter and Canada, Maine and Minnesota in the summer, also in the line of duty.
Three years ago when I semi-retired, I had registered 37 flights in one year. Fifteen years ago I would have enjoyed every one of them and asked for more.
This year I’m down to four, and it’s four too many. Believe me; it’s not that I’m getting old, well maybe that too, but travel anymore has a lot more tarnish than shine.
I would like to know if anyone reading this has had a perfect flight in the last three or four years. I mean on time, no check in problems, seats, security, long lines, careless ticket agents, overcharges, leaving home with three kids at 4 a.m., and the list goes on and on.
For as much as I have traveled in the last decade, I could write a book on problem flights. Some of my more memorable ones included:
* The time they lost my luggage on an Alaskan fishing trip, both going AND coming.
* The time I sat in a window seat and watched my luggage being taken OFF of the plane because they were “overweight.”
* The flight that was delayed six hours because there were” too many birds” in the area. I suggested that they either quit feeding them or request Capt. Sully for a pilot.
* This one just this week. As I have to do some work in Orlando, I checked into a close-by airline site. Wow! A special for dates that I wanted. Perfect.
The flight was $24.99 each way, perfect. I added my seats, my luggage, my early boarding, and one trip to the rear restroom. My total at check-out was $199.16, but the ticket was only $50.11.
Mary’s hangnail and John’s band practice is looking good again.