Flying with Cattle and Calm
When I was a curator of paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I went on close to one hundred courier trips. The companion to a work of art destined for exhibition at another museum or bringing a loan back to New York. In some instances, the work of art was near, in my charge—a Tiffany necklace in a box under my seat, precious cargo that could have been See’s candy or lunch or magazines for all anyone else knew. I didn’t even get up to pee on that flight. A briefcase handcuffed to my wrist, with a security detail by my side, inside a miniature portrait of Thomas Jefferson. When that flight from London was delayed by hours, and we had been up all night, I napped on a sofa in a Heathrow lounge, case attached, the kind guard watching me sleep as we both protected the third president of the United States. Maybe Jefferson rested too. When asked to escort Madame X home from a European exhibition, I wondered how I could watch over so powerful a woman, who surely would have rather stayed in Paris, and would not fit under my seat. I watched her, in an elegant crate painted William the Hippopotamus blue, slip into a spacious cargo palette, and then a companion crate slip in next to her and then a small paper box. Dutifully and sheepishly, I asked the cargo manager what was in the other big crate. Dr. Pozzi himself, the renowned and mysterious French gynecologist, dressed in his scarlet dressing gown, his long fingers—implements of surgical precision and sensual dexterity—surely able to unlock his crate, Houdini-like, and climb in with his beautiful companion for the long flight. I asked then about the small box: Range Rover touch-up paint. I mustered my courier code of honor and asked for the flammable cargo to be removed from the palette with the precious works of art. “Honey, if the box blows, it doesn’t matter where it is in the hold, but suit yourself.” I shivered the entire way home in my seat above.
My very first trip was a learning moment. Me with 800 watercolor pictures headed for Seattle, another courier with 1000 steer headed for China. We met in the middle of the night, as was usual, the cargo crew lifted my multiple crates into the nose of the giant jet, through a cap at the front that lifted up and closed, the pilots in the cockpit just above. I climbed into the small passenger area, and the odor of cattle was overwhelming. Dude in boots, jeans with big buckled belt, cowboy hat, and a holster said “when the cabin is pressurized, the smell with go away.” The entire jet moved side to side, as the livestock shifted their footing, two to a pen, head to butt. Nothing in the courier protocol mentioned animals or firearms. I asked about his gun. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I have precious works of art in the front of the plane, should I be worried about your gun?” “Ma’am, you should worry if any one of those cattle goes crazy across America and I didn’t have a gun.” I worried, and dozed with thought of the beautiful Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Thomas Eakins watercolors, only calm when the crates came off just before dawn. We bid farewell to cattle, and realized that the rules of order, in any profession, would require resilience, patience, and trust.
