While I wasn’t moving around in hobby circles when FUN – the Florida United Numismatists organization; first president, the late Robert L. Hendershott – was founded during the holiday season of 1955 during a five-day convention hosted at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, my ANA membership dates from 1956 and I didn’t attend my first coin event until 1958 or 1959, at the fall convention of the Michigan State Numismatic Society. I’ve been in attendance at a good number of its events over the past 60 years. This year I was on hand when FUN observed its 69th anniversary at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.
Hitting the road from Appleton well before six o’clock on Wednesday morning, anticipating a mid-afternoon arrival in Orlando, my scheduled 7:40 departure to O’Hare didn’t push back until about 2:40, some seven hours late. The delay was initially attributed to an ice-bound runway in Chicago, later a faulty reverse thruster valve replacement compounded by an engine de-icing problem. Arriving at O’Hare at 3:30, it was about four o’clock when I settled in for a late dinner at the Publican Tavern located near gate K-1, where I was scheduled to depart at 6:30 on my rebooked American Airlines flight. It departed as scheduled and arrived at Orlando at 9:55 rather than 2:46 as originally scheduled.
As I enjoyed the taxi ride to the Rosen Centre hotel, arriving there at 10:50, I found myself pondering my situation. More often than not, over this past year, my air travel experiences have tended to be snake-bitten. It’s not so much an airline problem, it seems to me, but the lingering results of ramped-up economic consequences resulting from the
