I remember when my mother and I first visited the Cape Henry's. Stopped at the gate by a lovely woman, she began to ask us the familiar questions,while another guard ran a screening devise under the car. The final question was "Are you carrying any weapons?" to which my mother replied:

"Nothin' but our teeth!"

The guard smiled and waved us through.

Your 'non-encounter' with the gate guards reminds me of an event I had while traveling a few weeks post-9/11 to Baltimore for the 2001 Reunion.

The local and national news were showing photos of the soldiers carrying weapons at the BMI airport and the screening equipment in use at the concourse entrances.

I had a brand new Nikon digital camera and, after passing through security, I turned and snapped a photo of the screening area.

I was immediate accosted by one of the guards and asked if I had taken a photo. I acknowledged that I had and they said they would have to confiscate my film.

I explained it was a digital camera (relatively new concept at that time) and they said they'd confiscate my camera.

After about 10 minutes I asked for a supervisor to be brought into the 'discussion.' I pointed out that there were no signs prohibiting photography and that pictures of this same kind of activities were on the national and local news programs and in the papers.

I educated him about $750 digital cameras and memory cards, etc. And I talked about my reason for coming to Baltimore, etc.

After about 30 minutes, we reached an agreement that I would delete the 2 images I had taken while the supervisor watched me do that. Then the supervisor himself scrolled through the images on the camera to make certain they were, in fact, deleted.