Riding my bike down Las Olas Boulevard yesterday evening I noticed that On the Go Travel had gone out of business, its windows covered in brown paper scribbled with the promise of another hair salon.
The Sun-Sentinel was a client of On the Go until the Tribune made us use the corporate travel agency. Tina - who died of cancer about eight years ago - used to come down to the newsroom with a stack of plane tickets. If you weren't around, she'd leave the envelope somewhere in the vicinity; it was a great thrill to come back from lunch and find a ticket to Saigon waiting on your chair.
She spent most of her time in the sports department, but occasionally she'd have something for me, including abuse for wherever it was that I was heading (which was never any place where she would want to spend vacation). She was the classic feisty broad with a heart of gold, and she treated us like her sons (we were mostly men).
One day she told me of a trip she'd taken years ago to the Keys. She had stopped for lunch at a waterfront restaurant and ordered conch chowder. When the soup arrived, she put her spoon in and lifted it to her mouth. Just as she was about to take her first sip, she heard a voice come booming from the other side of the room: "YOU CAN'T EAT CONCH CHOWDER LIKE THAT!" Suddenly, the man walked over with a bottle of sherry, and poured a little bit into her bowl. Tina looked up and said: "I know you. You're Ted Williams."
