Same name, but wrong destination

One of the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossings in Washington state was temporarily closed recently when authorities discovered a grenade in the glove compartment of a car leaving this country.

The driver, a Texas woman, was questioned and released when it was determined that she had not known the grenade was in the car. Turns out she didn’t know much of anything, including where she was. The lady told border officials that although her car may have been headed in the general direction of Vancouver, British Columbia, not far to the north, she had actually meant to drive to Vancouver, Wash., which lies nearly 300 miles in the opposite direction, on the state’s southern border with Oregon.

Oops.

When I read that item in Tuesday’s newspaper, I was reminded of something that is alleged to have happened to a former Bangor Daily News stablemate some years ago when he left Bangor to accept a job with a Charleston, W. Va., newspaper.

He boarded a plane headed south, and after the plane landed in Charleston and he had retrieved his luggage, he hailed a taxi. Ahoy, my good man, he says to the cabbie (or words to that effect), please deliver me at once to the Charleston Gazette.

“Say what?” the man asks.

“The Charleston Gazette. The newspaper. I am supposed to meet my new employer there in 20 minutes,” my guy replies.

“Ain’t no Gazette in this town,” the cabbie says. “You want the local newspaper, pal, you want the Post and Courier.”

“What do you mean, the Post and Courier. This is Charleston, West Virginia, isn’t it?” the BDN alumnus asks.

“Hell, no, brother. This is Charleston, South Carolina,” the cab driver responds.

Oops.

Another friend once flew to Jacksonville, Fla. when he should have flown to Jacksonville, N.C., for a visit with his Marine son stationed at nearby Camp Lejeune. (Hey. What can I say? The crowd I run with is somewhat geographically challenged, especially wherein it pertains to the Carolinas. Stuff happens.)

The young Marine had told his dad to fly in to Jacksonville and he’d meet him at the airport. The kid didn’t say which Jacksonville, and old pop – disregarding the very first thing they teach you in Journalism 101, which is never assume anything – assumed that the kid meant the only Jacksonville that a northern snowbird had ever heard of.

Oops.

.

Closer to home, even the natives often confuse the Woodland up in The County with the Woodland in Washington County, which, technically speaking is not Woodland at all, but Baileyville. And if we’ve got one Round Pond or Eagle Lake scattered amongst the pristine wilderness that the limousine liberal crowd from away would turn into a national playground for the idle rich, we’ve got a dozen of each. Originality in the place-naming game apparently was not the strong suit of our Yankee forefathers.

Sometimes even when you know where you want to go and by what route, the airlines will balk on the supposition that you are too numb to fend for yourself and couldn’t possibly mean to travel to Location X via way of Locale Y.

In 1972, when I was but a mere lad and international terrorists had not yet perfected their aircraft hijacking technique, I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of attending the Olympic Games which that year were to be held in Munich, Germany. (As it turned out, the terrorists spoiled the party in Munich anyway, as you will recall. But that’s not our tale for today.)

After arranging to meet friends in Frankfort to drive to Munich, I rang up Lufthansa, the German national airline, where a no-nonsense gal by the name of Erika efficiently answered the phone. I told her I was going to the Olympics and I wanted to know what Lufthansa would charge me to fly from New York to Frankfort.

At that, Erika, whom I pictured as being impossibly blond, statuesque and rather full-bosomed, worked herself into a state of high dudgeon. With Teutonic assertiveness leaving no room for possible exceptions to her rules, she issued her command better than any hard-boiled obergruppenfuehrer in Hitler’s Wehrmacht could ever have hoped to. “If you are going to der Olympics you vill not be going to Frankfort. You vill be going to Munchen,” she fairly screamed at me.

Well, I wound up flying to Frankfort, as planned, although with another airline. I wasn’t about to fly there with Lufthansa and have Erika the Prussian Drill Sergeant From Hell find out that I had violated her direct order to proceed straight to Munchen.

No way.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward’s e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.