Southwest Is A Funny Company

April 2, 2011

Back from Santa Fe and the Thom Ross-Due West Gallery art show on Friday night. Great time. Flew over yesterday morning and came back today. A full report and photos to come.

Stayed at Paul Hutton's house and he drove me to the Albuquerque airport at seven this morning (flight was at 9:15). On the way, I got an automated phone call on my cellphone from Southwest Airlines telling me my flight was being delayed for two hours and would now leave at 11:15. Evidently, a flight from Phoenix to Sacramento had part of its fuselage come off and had to make an emergency landing in Yuma (I overheard a tech guy say they grounded 81 of their planes to be safe).

The automated call was cool. So, rather than sit at the airport, Paul took me to breakfast at the Range and we talked about the state of history and Dixxy Diamond, my new cowgirl super hero idea. Paul had some great input. Got to the airport at 10, went through security, got to gate 11, walked up to the podium and asked the woman at the counter if my flight was still good. She smiled and said, "We were waiting for you, hon."

I absolutely loved this! First off, she was being totally politically incorrect (by calling me "hon"), which, in the current culture is nothing short of brave, and second, she was being funny which I really appreciated. I told her I was quite appreciative of the automated phone call that warned me of the delay and I also told her how much I appreciate Southwest's sense of humor. It got me to thinking: is Southwest the last big company in America that actually still has a sense of humor? I think it might be.

Oh, and on the flight back to Phoenix I sat next to a retired pastor, who was with his wife of 51 years and I asked them if they thought their relationship might work out. The laughed. His wife said a sense of humor is essential. The Reverend Dale then leaned over to me and told me someone once asked Billy Graham's wife if she ever thought about divorce and she replied:

"I have never thought about divorce. Murder, yes."
—Mrs. Billy Graham