Airport Lines Can Make Anyone Fighting Mad

It began as an encounter, turned into an incident, degenerated into a confrontation and wound up as a donnybrook.

The scene was the airport in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.

It had been a good tour. Yugoslavia, one of the most beautiful countries in Europe, is trying to rejoin the rest of the world. The accent is on tourism.

There are a few rough spots in the program, but the Yugoslav people are working on them so enthusiastically that you can almost feel the hope in the air. So after a week of touring, our group was leaving the country on a definite high.

In Communist countries, even those that are nonaligned with the Soviet Union, people are generally oriented to lining up for things.

When you’re going to the airport, you line up to catch the airport bus. Then you line up to check in your luggage, for passport control, security checks, seat assignments and the bus from the terminal to the plane.

Now, for Americans, the English and most of the other people from Common Market countries, this presents no great problem. But to the nationals of a number of other countries, lining up (or queuing) is a concept they either can’t understand or won’t accept.

The group made up of such people was next to ours at the check-in counter at the Dubrovnik airport.

We were a line. They were a mob.

When these people finished their business at the check-in line, they would simply turn and walk through our line, pushing us aside and kicking our luggage out of the way as if we didn’t exist.

“Geez, lady,” one of us said, “at least you could say ‘excuse me.’ ” An elderly woman in thick glasses, green suit and a blonde fright wig was elbowing her way through our line and kicking luggage aside.

“Look at that,” said one of us. “The woman’s got no manners at all.” There was an “oomph” from farther down the line as another member of our group was pushed to one side.

Their mob had two clerks checking them in, so they were making better time than we were. As a result, their pushing and shoving was increasing and our resentment was growing.

After all, we were the good guys, the guys in the white hats. We were neat and orderly and law-abiding, while these miscreants--this unruly, undisciplined mob--was getting all the rewards. The veneer of civilization was thinning, and some of us were starting to push back.

“Look out, buster,” one of us said. “You’re not dealing with cattle here. We’re Americans. . . .”

“And Canadians,” someone else called out.

“Right. And Canadians.”

A little voice piped up from somewhere in the back, “And I am woman . I am invincible .”

As members of the mob, including their German tour director, began eyeing us threateningly, our line started to tighten up. “Samsonite and hard cases to the front,” said someone in our group.

“Not the front,” someone answered. “The side.”

“That’s what I meant. And remember, you’ve got umbrellas.”

Banners were rising. War clouds were gathering.

One of “them,” trying to carry three suitcases while herding his wife in front of him, hit our line at about the halfway point. His wife kicked a suitcase and laughed before realizing it was one that we had just forced her husband to drop.

She shouted something that sounded full of dirty words, to which my wife responded, “Oh, yeah?!”, just in case. The woman continued to push but it did no good. Her family’s charge was broken.

But the tenor of the opposing group seemed to be hardening. It looked as if some of them were beginning to look at our orderly line, now a phalanx, as a challenge.

More of them were picking up their claim checks and moving toward us. Dick Wessell, who was sporting a heavy cold, a red nose, a nasty cough and carrying a wet handkerchief like a shield, intercepted two of their number, young men in walking shorts. When he leveled his face at them and coughed, they couldn’t back up fast enough, and one of them even stumbled over a countryman who was tying a shoe.

A large man from the enemy mob and a muscular porter moved forward with determination. The biggest member of our tour group, Don Payne, all 6 feet, 4 inches of him, pulled his stomach up into his chest and stepped in front of them, jabbing his index finger at them.

“No, you don’t!” he said, looking and sounding a little like John Wayne. “You stop right there and go around. Nobody else is going through this line. Not now, not ever.”

At that moment three things happened. The Yugoslav clerk at our check-in desk stood on his chair and shouted, “Please to be all gentlemen and ladies to each other, courteous, or steps shall be taken!” Everybody stood still, probably trying to figure out just what this meant.

At the same time, the woman with the thick glasses in the green suit and the blonde fright wig, apparently having forgotten something, came back through the line from the opposite direction, scattering whatever luggage happened to be in her way.

But the third thing that happened was the most important. A very formidable, mean-looking, one-eyed man with an even meaner-looking wife crashed the line while Wayne Thoms’ wife was bending over, trying to move her bags forward.

As a consequence, Elena Thoms was bowled over onto her own luggage. She looked up at Wayne and said, “Ohhh,” more offended than hurt. With a roar, Wayne attacked the one-eyed man, while Joyce and I helped Elena to her feet.

Both men were swinging, but because they were stumbling around in the suitcases, neither was landing a blow. Once clear of the luggage, though, Wayne’s adversary, who outweighed him by 80 pounds, swung a bag at his head. Wayne jumped to the side and threw up an arm, deflecting the blow.

Then, starting almost from the floor, Wayne began what looked like a perfect roundhouse haymaker.

Suddenly all our lives flashed before my eyes. I could see us all, the whole tour group, sitting in a Yugoslav jail. I could see the headlines. They would not read: “American Tourist Defends Wife in Assault at Airport.” Instead they would read: “North American Tour Group Attacks One-Eyed Man at Dubrovnik Airport.” The sub-headline also jumped before my mind’s eye: “Trial Enters Second Year.”

I grabbed my friend’s arm at about the same instant that the German tour director got his arms around Wayne’s antagonist.

The force of the swing lifted me off my feet, and it looked as if the German tour director was riding the back of his charge rather than controlling him, but the fight was over.

The Yugoslav authorities solved the issue by moving “the enemy’s” check-in counter down to the other end of the building. They complained a lot, but when the mob went, it moved around our line, not through it.

Just when it seemed that everything was over, someone yelled, “We’re being outflanked! Insurgents! They’re back!” It wasn’t true. A porter, trying for a bigger tip, had moved the luggage of a new arrival ahead of us, up to the front of the line. The new arrival slapped his tickets and passport on the counter while his porter put his suitcase on the conveyor belt.

I took his suitcase off and handed it down the line. It was back outside by the taxi stand in seconds, while Joyce ducked under the interloper’s arm and pushed his passport and tickets out of everyone’s reach.

The new arrival was in shock and the porter’s chin was on his chest in astonishment. Joyce said, “You don’t fool with a sleeping tiger, you know.” The clerk nodded, smiled, said thank you and, ignoring the intruder, began processing our tickets.

Other porters approaching our counter paused and then went to the end of the line.

Afterward in the coffee shop, we rehashed the incident, like high school ballplayers replaying the game. Wayne asked me why I’d stopped him. I told him it was to keep us all out of jail. He said, “Oh, yeah, right,” and thanked me.

Don kept shaking his head. “Those guys could have killed me. They could have killed me!”

Dick just kept smiling and wiping his nose. He looked as if he’d learned to love his cold.

Just before we got onto the bus to board the plane I felt someone pat me on the shoulder. It was the porter who’d tried to crash the line. He grinned and held out his hand. I shook it.

“Sleepy tiger,” he said, gave me a thumbs up, turned and was lost in the crowd.