It was exciting. It was fun. He had never been on a plane before, but on a whim Higdon left a summer job before his senior year to fly with a co-worker to Europe. I flew 100,000 miles that year. I've worked for an airline most of my life since.
Travel is the spice of life.
Even the full-time jobs at Yellow Freight and Emery Worldwide that followed had a touch of the exotic for Higdon. He was a sales manager for the local office of Emery parent CF Airfreight when UPS won landing rights in Japan and hired him to run the Louisville office of its new UniStar cargo company. His charge was finding enough freight customers to fill the overnight package-delivery jets flying to and from Japan. I never went into a position where I was replacing somebody. He has a knack.