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Terror in My Heart
| Article
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12521 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1987 |
813 Words |
| Author
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Stan Delaplane
Stan Delaplane is a humorist living in San Francisco. He was
awarded in Pulitzer Prize in 1942, the National Headliners'
Award in 1950 and 1959, the PATA Award in 1964, and the Trans-
Pacific Passenger Conference Award in 1970. His works include
Post Cards from Delaplane, The Little World of Stanton
Delaplane, Delaplane in Mexico, and How She Grew. |
Bullets and bombs and hijackings in Europe the last couple of years. Headline writers rushed into print. Enormous headlines. What they used to call "railroad type."
Everyone in the European travel industry shuddered. Serious economic loss darkened the horizon.
I'm bulletproof. Intend to live forever. So I went to see if the news stories really did keep Americans at home.
I spent six weeks in Europe, looking for terrorism. It was the hotel bills that struck me with terror.
Tourism is the number one business in England. (Used to be Scotch whisky and motorcars.)
I checked in with David Levin, who owns London's posh Capital Hotel. It's on Basil Street just behind Harrods, the famous department store. It's expensive. Its small French restaurant is a Michelin one-star.
When the IRA was bombing important places in Britain, David sandbagged the Capital. The IRA had just blown up Walton's. It was new and had a class clientele.
The police came around and said, "Mr. Levin, we think you'd better protect the front of your place." Basil is a very narrow street. "Your restaurant window is right in front. Somebody could drive by, throw a bomb through it, and be gone in a flash."
David said, "I thought of putting up netting. But the police said, 'They hang the bombs on the nets.'"
So David put up sandbags. Many places would have kept this quiet. But David wrote a piece for one of the popular British magazines: "Hotel Keeping Behind Sandbags."
"It actually increased business," he said. "I think people liked the idea of eating behind sandbags."
David hired a gang of workmen to stack the sandbags in front of his restaurant.
"It turned out they were all Irish," he said. A woman passing by on the way to Harrods asked what they were
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