THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701170148
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 82 lines
THE LONG LINE at the airport snack bar stretched into the hallway, a bad omen for the already moody crowd of holiday travelers.
But we finally got some sandwiches and made our way across the lobby to an area of metal benches. Somehow we found two seats next to each other, and we collapsed into them while still perspiring under our heavy coats.
We were to wait four hours for our flight out of New York's JFK. But, in an airport, you can always find someone in a worse circumstance. The young man seated to my right said he'd been waiting since 8 a.m. for an 11 a.m. flight to Puerto Rico, now postponed to 5 p.m. And he had a connection to catch to another Caribbean island.
Like many passengers confronting the prospect of long airport waits, I began mulling my limited options for shutting out the discomforts of cramped quarters and wailing children: lose myself in a book I'd brought along or burrow my mind into a sort of half-sleep.
Just then, I heard the strumming of guitars. Two rows away, three men were tuning their instruments. I learned from the young man next to me that the musicians had been playing on and off since midmorning. ``People were getting hostile until they started,'' he said.
Sure enough, the guitar men, now full blown in song, were igniting smiles and rhythmic hand clapping from other travelers. Even a couple of harried-looking maintenance employees began to grin.
Like a wave, various rows of travelers turned to watch, with many joining in or pointing their video cameras at the musicians and each other.
A boy, about 12, parked himself at the feet of one musician and began drumming on a guitar case.
A woman professed she did not know the songs, all being sung in Spanish, but she occasionally mouthed the words as she swayed with the music.
A man with graying hair and beard, but a young face, and sporting a uniform of New York Yankees pinstripes - shirt hanging out - imitated a batting stroke, with his hips moving to the rhythms.
Some bystanders played imaginary guitars.
An older man, mustachioed and balding, drew a round of cheers and applause when he rushed back to the waiting area, holding aloft two plastic containers of breath mints and rattling them like maracas.
After every song, he brought a container to his mouth and swigged some of the white pellets.
Not all welcomed the music. They had other diversions from this purgatory of airline scheduling.
The young man next to me said the music was not so bad that he couldn't read his magazines. He put his head down again, his chin on his hand.
A teen-aged girl plugged herself into a radio headphone to listen to a football game. Every so often she surfaced to report to her friends, ``He was just sacked at the 30'' or yank off her earphones and exclaim, ``I can't take it anymore! The Pats are trashing them!''
Occasionally, businessmen in suits and ties would pass through the waiting room on way to their flight gates. They'd cast an odd look toward the musicians and the people singing along.
By 3 o'clock, most of the crowd was so into the music that they no longer stopped for announcements over the public address system.
But a few must have thought they heard something. A small ripple began in the room. People looked toward the door to the boarding gates, and suddenly the guitars vanished and almost everyone stood up.
The young man next to me shrugged and muttered, ``This place is mayhem. Mayhem.'' But he stood, too.
The door to the boarding gates opened. An official-sounding voice from a body rendered invisible by the pressing crowd announced that they were moving the business-class customers to a more comfortable lounge.
A moment of deflation.
Then one man returning to his seat began some rhythmic clapping and swaying and chanting something like ``aye aye aye yo rumbo aye yi yi.'' In a moment, the guitars had reappeared, and the room was alive again with music, song and swaying bodies.
Epilogue. Sometime after the flight to Puerto Rico finally boarded, the waiting area again had filled.
The metal benches that held the guitar players now were occupied by a young man working on his sketch pad and another man listening to headphones. The second man carried a violin-sized instrument case, but he kept it closed. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MIKE KNEPLER
People waiting for flights at New York's JFK Airport joined in when
a group of guitarists on their way to Puerto Rico began playing and
singing.