Wilmington airport

In Wilmington airport Thursday morning there was a cinnamon sticky bun flavored coffee. This struck me. I mean, French Vanilla or Hazelnut, sure. Old hat. But cinnamon sticky bun had quite the exacting air to it.

Over the entrance to the airport is a sign that reads 'Welcome to Southeastern North Carolina.' Three years ago, when passing through this airport, I ran into one of my first roommates from the city.

He now lives in Los Angeles where he is a big producer. His family was renting a beach house on the coast of North Carolina. He had flown in from Los Angeles for a few days to visit.

Little airports like this can tell a lot about the world we live in. There's cinnamon sticky bun flavored coffee. There are Hollywood hotshots visiting family in podunk towns.

There's the glass case that displays a grisly assortment of contraband items on aircraft. One would expect to see tweezers and nail scissors in this case. After all there are still people who forget that they cannot take these things.

They were there, in one corner. But there was also a collection of more, shall we say, obvious items, such as pistols, brass knuckles, various daggers and clubs.

"Are you serious?" my brother said when we first arrived at the airport, "You can't take those!?"

Due to the way the ferries run between the island in North Carolina where we were staying and the mainland, I had about an hour and a half to kill in this airport before my flight home took off Thursday morning. I wasn't looking forward to it. Talk about a boring airport to be stuck in, I thought.

But once there, cinnamon sticky bun coffee in hand, the place began to grow on me. Sort of like an old house with exposed beams, this tiny little airport had a soul to it that isn't so easy to find in mega-modern strip mall airports.

So I hung there for that time, and got into it. And then, a few hours later, I was back home.