Screeching In

       More Letters From Paradise
           Screeching In
If you are old enough to be reading this, you must remember as we all do, what took place on September 11,2001. The tragedy unfolded on television and in newspapers for all to see. But what was not seen or talked about was the rerouting of thirty-eight jets to Gander, Newfoundland stranding seven thousand passengers for up to five days.

Gander had been a refueling stop in the days before long-range jet travel. When the airport opened in 1938, it was one of the largest in the world. The town had less than a population of thirteen thousand,and five hundred hotel rooms.

The town's mayor Claude Elliot declared a state of emergency. Elementary schools housed the newcomers. the Salvation Army and the Red Cross made lunches. The hockey rink became a walk-in refrigerator. They ran out of underwear and so more came from St. John's two hundred and seven miles away. People on the planes came from ninety-five countries. Kosher meals were required, and a place for Muslim passengers to pray. The town's vet took care of animals carried on the planes.

The Royal Canadian Legion Hall initiated the passengers as honorary Newfoundlanders in a ritual named "screeching in." Visitors were made to wear yellow sou'westers, eat hard bread and pickled bologna, kiss a cod on the lips, then drink the local rum, called screech, while on-lookers banged an "ugly stick" covered in bottle-beer caps. the mayor recorded that they "began with seven-thousand strangers and finished with seven-thousand family members."

This event is now a new Broadway musical, "Come from Away." The information for this article is from the New Yorker magazine March 27, 2017 written by Michael Schulman.

    Aloha
    Grant