Y'all fly with us agin soon!

I found this article, "Abandoned change adds up for TSA" in USA Today.* It says the Transportation Security Administration "has collected — and kept — more than $1 million in the past three years from airline passengers who forget coins at checkpoints." The top jackpot location was Los Angeles International Airport "...where passengers left behind $89,375 from Sept. 30, 2004 to Oct. 1, 2007...." And this was especially interesting to me: "The cash laggard: Chattanooga (Tenn.) Metropolitan Airport, whose 300,000 departing passengers in 2007 left just $1.20."

My analytical muscles started twitching, and my delight in seeing Chattanooga in non-crime-related national news and my desperate need to get laughs from theoretical total strangers (my readers) drove me to compose this explanation:

According to the stereotypes and popular misconceptions many people probably have about the city of my birth, there’s no change left at the Chattanooga airport because…
· We give it all to the guy doing shoe shines.
· The airport is practically empty; we all take the Choo Choo.
· After purchasing our tickets, we always have just enough change for the RC Cola and Moon Pie machine.
· Our beggars are very persuasive…bless their hearts.
· We put it all in them little binoc’lars on poles up ‘ar at Rock City. Looky, honey, I kin see the outhouse from hyear!
· If it ain’t Confederate money, what good is it anyway?
· We don’t use money; we prefer to trade via the barter system…’course, a fresh-killed hog don’t go near as far as it used to when a feller finds a gal he wants to git hitched to.
· Airport…whut’s ‘at?

In reality, there’s almost no change left at the Chattanooga airport because we natives throw coins at people who call it “Chatt-nooga” (like saying that one extra syllable would kill a person. Dang Yankees!).


*(via comic Suzy Soro's blog).