Fewer 'ordinary' Americans will experience the Champs-^BENT^00C9^EENT^lysees if air fares stay high. Baz Ratner/ASSOCIATED PRESS Visit the Photo Place

The marvelous era of cheap airfare is over

Date published: 6/29/2008

DALLAS--

Go! I told her, and don't even think twice about it. The door is closing on a marvelous era, and such pleasures should be savored while they can be.

The era of cheap airfares is over. The head of British Airways said so, and who can possibly doubt it? I took the news surprisingly hard, because my children likely won't have the opportunities I did for exploring the world.

As a country boy visiting my great-aunts Hilda and Lois in their cabin, I would sit between them on their red leather couch, with a weathered Rand McNally atlas splayed across our laps. Those old ladies showed me the places in Europe they had been as Red Cross nurses in the Great War.

Using my finger as a pointer, we would take imaginary trips, with my elderly tour guides describing the people and places I'd see if I were there. Eccentric Hilda once read my palm, tracing with her long fingernail a line in my hand that prophesied a future of travel.

Well, I certainly hoped so. But people like us didn't go to Europe. In 1974, when I was 7, Mr. Bickham, the wealthy farmer who lived down the road, took his wife to Paris. Had they gone to the moon and back, I could hardly have been less dazzled.

Ten years later, I was standing on the Champs-Élysees. Our family hadn't gotten rich; rather, in 1978, the airline industry had been deregulated. Suddenly, ordinary people could afford to fly to Europe. I started buying inexpensive, off- season tickets and traveling frugally and frequently. Until I started a family and could no longer afford it, I went at least once a year.

Europe changed my life. One example, among many: On that first trip, as a teenager, I stood in the magnificent medieval cathedral in Chartres, utterly overcome by its beauty and complexity. What kind of religion builds such a temple to its God? I thought. I staggered out of that Gothic pile a different man, walking a new road.

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Date published: 6/29/2008