Yo-ho, to Grandma’s we go

I’VE spent half my life waiting for flights at Gate 47A, part of that crazy, crowded pinwheel of gates at the end of the American terminal at LAX.

Here, departing passengers slump-sleep in their seats, in travel comas. A meteorite could crash through the roof and fall at their feet and they’d just shrug: “That’s gonna cost us 20 minutes,” the passengers would say to themselves, then go back to gazing absent-mindedly at nothing and wondering if they’d still catch their noon connection to Newark.

Into this orgy of goodwill, enter the toddler and I. These days, getting to your departure gate feels like passing the velvet rope into an exclusive club.

“Ya-HOOOOOO!” screams the toddler when they announce our flight.

“Try to pretend you’ve done this before,” I whisper to the little guy.

“Ya-hoo,” he whispers back.

It’s hard not to celebrate. In the belly of the plane, his Halloween pirate suit is stashed away, along with a little bracelet we’re bringing to the grandma he hasn’t seen in a year. Yep, we’re happy and headed for autumn in the heartland. Norman Rockwell may meet us at O’Hare, probably in a sleigh full of good bourbon.

Until then, we board our flight and snuggle into seats 10E and 10F. Within an hour, we are airborne.

Up on the TV screen, there’s that chatty Julia Louis-Dreyfus yappin’-yappin’-yappin’ about something -- does she ever shut up? -- followed by some Jennifer Aniston movie where she allegedly lives in Chicago with Vince Vaughn, a tour guide. It’s an interesting movie, and I recommend “The Break-Up” even if you don’t have earphones. Some films just transcend the need for sound.

I do find it odd, however, that Aniston gets tanner as the movie goes on, despite the Chicago setting, and that she wears only flimsy little tops, as if honeymooning in Bora Bora. In Chicago, she would’ve either frozen to death (fall, winter, spring) or been consumed by mosquitoes the size of power drills (summer). But that’s a detail only a native might notice.

After landing, we are whisked off to the vibrant northern suburbs, where there are a lot of very nice homes for sale, by the way, some for a mere half-million dollars. In the stagnant Chicago real estate market, sellers have taken to including new cars or Hawaiian vacations as sales incentives. Buy-buy-buy, is my advice.

Anyway, we don’t have much money to invest, so I spend most of the time hanging around my boyhood home, doing odd jobs for beer and sort of half-fixing a slow bathroom drain.

“I think it’s working now ... I think,” I tell the toddler.

“Good job!” he says.

On Saturday, we watch a bunch of his cousins play soccer on wind-swept prairie fields that most So Cal soccer leagues would kill for and then gather with aunts and uncles who holler at the Trojans on TV while slurping chili and canned beer.

On Sunday, we watch Da Bears. Da most memorable news story of the week is defensive demigod Dick Butkus telling da papers that linebacker Brian Urlacher is a terrific player but lacks crunching power. Finally, a voice of reason. Butkus for president in 2008.

Then there’s Halloween. The little guy sits by the front window waiting for darkness to arrive so he can go door to door to meet the pretty moms. He’s a handsome pirate, all smiles, with actual freckles on the bridge of his nose, like the markings of a young deer. It’s almost unfair. As John Prine once wrote: “Youth is a costume.”

“Trick or treat,” the toddler says when we hit our first house.

In this particular suburb, once a little village of railroad men and boilermakers, they have restricted trick-or-treating to the hours between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., an odious attack on civil liberties, another sign of do-gooders run amok. Lincoln himself would be appalled and probably declare some sort of war. And there’s no telling what Butkus will do once he’s elected.

Still, a great day, Halloween. I dress up as a sarcastic, middle-aged white guy -- it’s good to stretch -- and Grandma goes as herself, an 82-year-old babe, full of fire.

“We done?” the toddler asks after the very first stop.

No way. Pirates don’t quit after one house. We’ve got an entire town to plunder.

“We done now?” he asks after the eighth house.

I’m chilled and in the painful early stages of what might be frostbite. At the top of a hill, a half moon grins over a nearby cemetery, as if it’s seen this all before. A stand of maple trees -- all bones -- sits off to the west, awaiting the first flurries of winter.

“I think we’re done,” I finally say.

Ya-HOOOOO!

Chris Erskine can be reached at [email protected], or at myspace.com/chris erskine.