WEEK
42
God Bless the TSA

Tip on flying . . . Book an afternoon flight. The airport security personnel has warmed their hands already on other passengers.
— Jay Leno

Weight: 201 pounds
Bread bookshelf weight: 60 pounds

I’d like to briefly interrupt the narrative to sing the praises of an oft-maligned group, the TSA Officials who guard our nation’s airplanes. After all, they don’t make the rules, and they, even more than we griping passengers, constantly have to adapt to the changing, often-silly regulations those geniuses in Washington keep dreaming up: Tweezers are out; cigarette lighters in. This week, liquids are banned; the next, you can bring all the liquids—in three-ounce bottles—that you can fit into a single ziplock bag. Shoes are off; shoes are on; shoes are off.

And what do these underappreciated, beleaguered workers get for their troubles? Passengers like me.

In my defense, I was on a mission from God.

As I approached the X-ray machine with my precious cargo, I decided honesty was the best policy. Thus after I’d pulled out my laptop and Baggie of toiletries, I displayed the half-gallon plastic container with a locking lid and said, as casually as if I were declaring chewing gum, “Sourdough.”

I might just as well have said, “Gun!”

Hedging my bets, I had also put a quart of my starter into a small gym bag and checked it along with my suitcase, but I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance it would get tossed when the bag was inspected, even though I’d written “sourdough” in large block letters on it. (I figured “levain” wouldn’t help much.) Plus, if it did make it through, I wasn’t sure what eight hours at forty thousand feet in the cargo hold would do to it. Thus my hopes were pinned on the levain I was carrying with me. Not only had it become indispensable to my bread, but I was hoping that this twelve-year-old starter—my starter, now—might become part of the tradition of the thirteen-hundred-year-old abbey.

Every TSA worker in the terminal chimed in on the discussion while the line built up behind me. Apparently there was no precedent on sourdough. Finally I was rather impatiently waved through the metal detector and asked to wait on the other side. Anne was relieved to see me.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should go on without me. I may be here awhile. You have the address?” Bags continued exiting the X-ray machine on the conveyor belt, but none of them was mine. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. We waited a few minutes more.

A loud male voice rang out from in front of the monitor at the X-ray machine. “What is this stuff, dough? Who’s got the dough?” Jeez, where had this guy been?

“It’s mine,” I called, and I started to head back toward the machine, which, with passengers streaming toward me, created even more chaos.

“Stay right there!” he barked. I froze, then sheepishly headed back to Anne. All this commotion had apparently attracted the notice of a supervisor, who thankfully took charge. “What do we have here?” he asked politely but wearily.

“Sourdough. A medieval abbey in France is expecting it.” I tried to read his reaction, but his trained poker face remained flat. He started to run a wand around the container of levain, which had stiffened into a plastique look-alike. I told him the abbey had kept the flame of civilization alive during the darkest of the Dark Ages but, after thirteen centuries, had forgotten how to make bread. This levain was the link to repair the chain.

Still no reaction. Trying to straddle the line between pressure and humor, I added, “The future of Western civilization is in your hands.”

Just then, Anne, to my horror, opened her mouth to speak before I could stop her. The last time she’d done that in an airport, voluntarily reciting to U.S. Customs, unsolicited, every item we’d purchased and whom it was for, she sounded so forced and nervous that I expected to be strip-searched.

“Bill’s bread won second prize at the New York State Fair!”

“Keep quiet and show some leg,” I wanted to hiss. She was wearing jeans.

Still expressionless, he put down the container. Something else in my bag had caught his attention, something I hadn’t even considered.

“What’s this?”

He held up my small digital kitchen scale. Which, under the circumstances, did a more-than-passable impersonation of a timing and ignition mechanism for the plastique accompanying it. At least I wasn’t carrying any wire. Or razor blades.

“It’s a scale, for baking bread.”

“You need a scale for bread? My mother never used a scale.”

“More accurate than measuring by volume.” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with a TSA Official at Kennedy Airport.

“Hmm.” He took the top off the scale—I’d never even known it came off—and wanded underneath before replacing it.

“Well, you get the prize,” he said, breaking into a smile. “Strangest carry-on of the month. Have a nice trip.”

I slumped into the first seat I saw in the terminal, drained and sweaty.

“That was close!” Anne exhaled.

“Not really.” I pulled out my ziplock bag filled with small, colored plastic bottles labeled “Shampoo,” “Conditioner,” “Lotion,” and so on.

“Did you wonder why I was bringing so much hair conditioner to France?” I asked. “In my carry-on?”

Her mouth fell open. I could see she was a little hurt at being kept in the dark.

“Some things it’s better not to know,” I explained.

Anne, aware of the limits of her own poker face, agreed. “Well, I’m glad that’s over with, anyway.”

“Not quite. We still have to get it past French customs. Come, let’s find the gate. We’re going to Paris!”

I felt a twinge in my back as I stood. Oh well, it was nothing that eight hours in a coach-class seat with my knees jammed into my chest couldn’t cure.