Tuesday
Here I am at Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport. It is a
drizzly, cool day. I am heading off to fly to Knoxville, Tennessee,
on a US Air flight. I have an uneasy feeling and now I know why.
The smiling ticket agent who has been processing my ticket suddenly
looks up from her computer screen and tells me the bad news.
“Your flight has just been canceled,” she says.
“Do you mean it’s delayed?” asks the meek passenger.
“No, I mean it’s not going,” she says cheerily.
“When’s the next flight?” I ask.
“Ten p.m.,” she says, “but that one might not go either. Our
flights have been getting canceled all day.”
Oh, great. US Air is a fascinating airline. Incredibly terrible
service and incredibly high fares. Good combination. The flight
attendants and ticket clerks are fine, but the people who arrange
the service don’t really care a lot about us passengers.
Anyway, I called my driver, Bob Noah, who had just dropped me
off. He raced back and scooped me up and off we headed on Route 66
and then down mighty highway 81 into the Shenandoah Valley toward
Knoxville. What a great guy he is. No clothes, no reservation, just
changes his plans on a dime for little me. What a GREAT GUY!!!
The truth is that I love being driven. I’m like a dog. I love
going for rides with my human driver, in this case, Bob. Plus, the
Shenandoah Valley is beautiful. Green rolling hills. Valleys.
Passes. Small towns with cute little gas stations. We stopped at
one in the tiny hamlet of Buchanan, which, for some odd reason, the
man at the gas station pronounced “Buckhannon.” Oddly, even though
it was early April, snow fell on and off, along with a cold rain. I
took videos from the back seat of the scenery and sent them to my
pals with my fabulous Verizon Voyager handheld phone computer
miracle machine.
I slept for a really long time and soon we were in the outskirts
of Knoxville. Well, not that soon. It took eight hours. But what
the heck? I didn’t have to drive, so no problemo. Actually,
Houston, we do have a problem. We got very lost. The directions
someone had printed for Bob Noah really were poor and we wound up
in some godforsaken suburb. A kindly Realtor working late in his
office gave us directions to our hotel, but we couldn’t follow
them. Miracle! My Verizon Voyager had a built-in navigator. I
simply entered the hotel’s address and a talking woman in the phone
and a tiny little map showed us the way to the hotel, block by
block.
I had called the only person I know who hails from Knoxville,
the beautiful Kay Kinkaid, and gotten a dinner reservation
suggestion for a place called Chesapeake. Bob and I walked there in
bitter cold rain and had a good meal while watching the hapless
Michigan State squad get killed by the mighty Tarheels. Actually, I
do know someone else near there. A lovely woman named Jennifer who
lives in Maryville, a small town nearby. But I was too tired by
then to call anyone. Back to my room and into a deep sleep.
Wednesday
NOW, THIS IS THE KIND OF DAY a man lives for. I got up,
rendezvoused with Bob, got into his car, and headed off to brunch
at a sparkling new Waffle House. Get this: The All-Star Breakfast
served all day. Two eggs any style. Toast with butter and jam.
Bacon or sausage. Potatoes or grits. Seven dollars and ninety-nine
cents. Made fresh before your eyes. How can you beat it? It is
perfection in a meal.
Then over a scary mountain pass where a middling snow was
falling. Past a million fireworks stands and motels. Into a forest.
Then down the mountain and into Williamsburg, Kentucky, and the
University of the Cumberlands.
Williamsburg is a VERY small town with a number of
lonely-looking stores. But the campus is beautiful, with lovely
buildings all of a similar design and a university-owned hotel,
where I took a long nap. I would happily stay at that hotel again;
however, duty calls. I went downstairs and met up with the high
officials of the school, an incredibly friendly, kind, and
good-looking group of men and women. We took a lot of photos
together. Then we had some singing and prayers by a few students
and their music teacher while we had a super good dinner. The room
where we had dinner had immense windows and we could see the clouds
scudding through the sky and brilliant sunlight between them.
I had the privilege of sitting near a fantastically successful
local area businessman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Forcht. They are
immense benefactors of the school and had brought me there. Mr.
Forcht told me about his stupefyingly successful enterprise of
radio stations, banks, nursing homes, and newspapers, just for
starters. Wow. But he was very modest and down-to-earth. He gets up
at four every morning to walk his dog. You can’t beat that.
This man was truly impressive. So were the president of the
school and all the high officials and wives I met. We had an awards
ceremony, heard some brief speeches, then off to the auditorium for
my speech. It was a bright, very large gym-auditorium, filled with
enthusiastic men and women and teenagers. A bagpipe group from
Knoxville entertained us. Then we heard more singing of religious
songs and more awards were passed out for meritorious acts to the
state and the community. These people are the salt of the earth. I
cannot quite tell you how much I love them.
I gave my speech, and it was well received. I talked about the
spiritual, moral dimensions of the economic crisis and how the
people who victimized us had to lack an appreciation of the
presence of God in man to have done what they did. It has been an
obsession of mine for some time now.
Then I signed autographs and took photos for about 90 minutes,
and then off to a McDonald’s and then to a gas station for snacks.
At the gas station cash register, a staggeringly beautiful girl and
her fiancé smiled and joked with me.
I loved my visit. University of the Cumberlands. Don’t forget
it. It is the backbone of the nation, just as is Harding in Searcy,
Arkansas. Not Cambridge. Searcy and Williamsburg.
Sunday
WOW. WHAT A DAY. I got up amazingly early— 7 a.m.—swam, got
dressed, ate, and went over to Hollywood Center Studios, where we
used to do Win Ben Stein’s Money years ago. I miss that
even though it was super stressful. Today, I am making a TV
commercial for wonderful Comcast.
I am the co-star. The star is Shaquille O’Neal. Yes. Shaq. That
one. The best basketball player on the planet. Seven foot two. And
a super smart, pleasant, funny guy. A true gentleman. Very pleasant
indeed. I can’t tell you the plot of the spots because they are a
secret, but I can tell you they will make you laugh. They are
really, really funny. Shaq was signing autographs, posing for
photos, just a super smart, fun guy. But it was hot and we had to
keep going in and outside and it was really hot.
At one point Shaq took off his shirt and was doing boxing moves
in his T-shirt. Wow, did he look formidable. I was scared.
We had lunch on a stage where we used to have magic shows when
we were doing Win Ben Stein’s Money. It brought
back a lot of memories.
I really hated to end the day. I know I have told you this a
million times, but life on the set is the best life on earth. It is
worth suffering for.
Wednesday
I AM ON THE PLANED HEADED TO DENVER to drive to Colorado Springs
to speak to a logistics battalion just back from Iraq. They were
there for 15 months. Brave men and women.
I am marveling at Mr. Obama’s idea to put on trial lawyers who
rendered legal opinions that terrorists could be subjected to very
stressful interrogations to save American lives. Punishing a lawyer
for giving his opinion? Is Obama out of his mind? Is there no
Constitution left at all? Punishing lawyers for following a law and
a presidential directive to protect the nation from terror
bombings? My wife worked in that Library Tower skyscraper in Los
Angeles that bin Laden was trying to knock down. The CIA saved her
life by aggressive questioning of terrorists. And Obama wants to
put the lifesavers on trial? I guess he really is not listening to
the right people.
Plus, he apparently wants to have the U.S. unilaterally disarm
ourselves of nuclear weapons, a guarantee of national destruction.
This is old-line ultra-confused leftist thought. What strange
unconscious anger someone close to Obama must have to want so much
to destroy this country. Have us disarm while China, Russia, Iran,
and North Korea have nukes? This is suicide. I am positive Obama
will think better of it. Yes, positive. I am scared, though.
Really, really scared.
