CRONICLING AKRON-CANTON AIRPORT
Burr managing editor Morgan Day gets to know a few characters at the airport

Story by Morgan Day

I can tell Ronny Nolen is my kind of people.

He’s the first person I meet at the airport, and he’s surrounded by a buzz of business people in pressed dress pants, trench coats, ties and heels, cups of coffee in hand — the whole work day get-up.

Not Ronny. He’s in faded blue jeans and a matching jean jacket. No coffee, just a bottle of Coke and some chips. Exhaustion has taken its toll on the poor guy, making him oblivious to Akron-Canton Airport’s arriving and departing passengers who drag their clunking, rattling luggage over the tiled floors behind him.

Three more hours until Ronny catches his connecting flight to Atlanta. Three long hours.

For the past 20 minutes, he’s been sitting in a brown leather chair, dozing off as he distracts himself with CNN’s “Ballot Bowl ’08” on the airport’s flat-screen TV.

He tells me he’s been in Ohio, mostly Salem, for four days learning how to use a label applicator for his job. Those tired eyes are barely visible beneath his black Chevy ball cap. It’s been a long week.

But, it’s Valentine’s Day and he’s got something to look forward to after a tiring week out of state: getting back to his wife in Nashville. I was curious what Ronny’s hot Nashville date would entail.

“We’ll see,” Ronny said in his strong southern twang. “I mean, after all ... I have been gone all week.”
Three more hours. Good luck, Ronny.

Passing time

A college-age man with scruffy brown hair wearing a tan corduroy jacket paces with his eyes to the ground near the entrance of the airport. He sits, only to carry on with his pacing minutes later.

I want to go ask him what the nervousness is about, but I let him be. It seems he has enough on his mind without someone bugging him.

Meanwhile, two slender young women entertain twin toddlers seated snugly in a side-by-side stroller. They’ve chosen the Delta Connection luggage claim as their picnic site. “Brown Eyed Girl” plays in the background as the children eat, and the airport is filled with “sha la la’s.”

“It’s kind of different from a french fry,” one woman tries to persuade LuLu to take a bite of a Chick-fil-A waffle fry. “They’re only cut differently.”

I approach the group, eager to get some background on these cute kids and their fashionable guardians dressed in slinky dark jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. Alas, they’re too busy for me, what with “a man waiting for them in the car” and all.

What I get is that one woman is from New York and the other Canfield. I watch as they wipe off crumbs, lace up shoes and whisk the kids out the door.

A few minutes later, a gray-haired male employee with a slight limp and “TSA” on the back of his shirt walks through the waiting area in the center of the airport. He stops about 10 feet away from me, listens to the news for about 30 seconds and shuffles away. A woman in a bright pink cardigan — the norm for female information desk employees — catches his eye. He stops halfway to the gift shop and gives her a point and nod as if to say, “Catch ya later.”

This guy’s a stud. Trust me. Probably in his late 60s, but a stud nonetheless.

That pacing young man walks out the door embracing a young blonde in a bomber jacket. She’s clutching a white teddy bear to her chest.

Now a man in a camouflage hat and hunting boots rounds the corner of the waiting area and spots his friend in a gray business suit waiting for him. “Hey, Dan! Every single one of the last four flights I’ve been on has been early. When does that happen?”

The morning rush

There are peaks and lulls when it comes to airport traffic. But no other time of day compares to the (disgustingly) early mornings when there are a concentrated amount of flights preparing for takeoff.

Nearly every airline has a flight departing. Really. One after the other. 5:37 a.m. Then at 5:45. 6 o’clock. 6:20. 6:25. 6:35. 7.

This is probably the most chaotic place you’ll find in North Canton before the sun rises. People inch through lines. (There might be no line a half hour later.) Cars file through the drop-off area.

I drive through the parking lot about 6 a.m. one morning and see a throng of “lucky” people who had to catch a plane hours before they normally would have gotten out of bed. They’re silhouetted under the bright fluorescent lights of the building.

Ask anyone — it’s way too early for lights half that bright.

The blue searchlight revolves in the tower that stems from the middle of the elongated building, casting an on-again-off-again flash into the dark sky. I’d say the whole scene looks surreal, but you’d just say I’m not fully awake yet. That’d be a fair statement, too.

I fight the urge to take a nap in my car and make my way inside. I sit down and see a young father holding a little girl in his arms while they wait in the AirTran line. She’s got a prized possession today: a banana that she waves in the air to show off.

“Your dad gave you that banana?” asks a long-haired luggage carrier who hasn’t yet been fatigued from his day’s work.

“Yeah!” she shrieks, proud that someone noticed. I’m not going to deny that I noticed that banana, too. My stomach growls, and I pack up and move on.

Daylong delay and Denver quarters

At 6:30 a.m., a young man in an Anberlin T-shirt and velvet blazer sits in the waiting area and buries his face in Stephen Colbert’s I am America (And So Can You!). He props his feet up on his oversized luggage.

Tada! A makeshift lounge chair.

Directly behind him at the information desk, a man in a dark blue work uniform props himself up on the counter. His hand is cupped and resting by his open mouth as if he’s shouting across the airport. There’s no sound. He’s sleeping.

Meanwhile, the Colbert fan takes a swig of Dasani water, walks the short distance between his resting spot and Subway and orders a sandwich. He glances back to make sure his possessions are where he left them, but sure enough, I haven’t stolen them. Within two minutes of his arrival to his chair, he devours the sub and returns to Stephen Colbert.

I’ve almost worked up enough nerve to talk to him. I’ve been observing him for about half an hour, which is pretty creepy, right? But he’s really cute and a girl needs some time to get her words straight, OK?

All right, here goes.

“Check out those kicks!” we hear someone directly behind us exclaim. The information desk worker who was sleeping, (Perry, I later find out), has discovered my houndstooth rain boots — and foiled my plans.

“You taking notes on him?” Perry asks me, nodding at the kid I was not-so-secretly taking notes on.

“Uh, no,” I reply, blushing. He doesn’t believe me. I slide my reporter’s notebook off my lap and onto the chair.

“Woke up from your nap?” I ask. My attempt at turning the attention off of me. I think it worked.
“I call that a safety nap,” Perry says, initially appalled that someone would think he was sleeping on the job. He says it’s a precautionary nap to protect himself and others — a grumpiness reducer.

Perry spent the next 20 minutes setting me up with the boy I was observing ... Mark, a College of Wooster freshman. Turns out Mark has been in the airport for nearly 24 hours. He should have left three days ago, but Ohio’s winter storms thwarted his plans, leaving him with two cancellations and an over-booked flight.

A disheveled middle-aged man with strangely pink hair comes up behind us and asks, “Do you have any D’s quarters?” Perry gives Mark an “Are you kidding me?” sort of look. I feel the same way.
The coin expert, dressed in a mismatched flannel outfit, explains that airports usually have quarters from the Denver mint. He had spent the last 10 or so minutes attempting to exchange his less superior quarters with D’s through the vending machine.

I’m pretty sure you get the same quarters you put in — no matter how hard you try. Unless this man is not only a coin expert, but a vending machine expert as well. I don’t ask.
Subhed: The Delta Connection

“Flight 198 to Atlanta, err, to Boston ...” the man in the loud speaker corrects his mistake.
Back at the Delta Connection, older passengers migrate around the luggage claim.

A boy about the age of 14 sits on his luggage, using it as a drum as he pounds the sides along to “Cruel Summer.” His performance turns a little too zealous, and his luggage slides out from under him. No biggie — he climbs back up and continues drumming.

At the same time, a lady standing beside me babbles about a friend named Mike.

“He’s invented a wheel that dispenses those things. He’s got a patent,” she says, putting emphasis on “patent,” as if she were talking about an albino walrus ... or anything else out of this world. She sure was impressed with that dispensing wheel. Wouldn’t you be?

An orange light and startling buzzer go off for about 20 seconds. Warning!: It’s time to grab your luggage.

Purple duffle. Pink bag. Purple. Blue. Purple. Black. It’s a waiting game to see whose luggage arrives through the black plastic strips in the wall.

A little while later, our stud in the “TSA” shirt has a little downtime again and strolls through the gift shop.

“Hey Marky-Poo!” he says to a female employee about 25 years younger than he. She is talking with another male employee while she works the register. “Don’t be sneaking in on my Marky-Poo — she’s mine!” he jokes.

He really is a ladies’ man. Who called it?