Chapter I ☯ Departure
Braniff International Departure Lounge, New Orleans Moissant Field, Aug. 6, 1966, 18:00
I’m sitting in a chair in an airport. Waiting on yet another flight. Taking a drag on a cigarette, trying to read the States-Item. Hard to concentrate since it’s been such a long day.
The best routing the travel agency could give me home to Minneapolis is a Braniff hop via a torturous route: Shreveport, Fort Smith, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Omaha. At least it’s a pretty comfortable jet, not one of the old prop jobs hopping around the sky. It’s a new British type, a BAC 1-11. The one sitting on the tarmac, my ride home, is painted bright orange and glows like a fireball in the early evening steamy Louisiana sun.
I’m Sean Donnelly. 42 years old. Single. What they used to call a ‘confirmed bachelor,’ wink-wink. I’m a journalist working for the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis. Not a star or anything, but I do pretty well and mostly have fun. I could still be back in Iowa, slopping hogs and mucking out barns, but I’d rather be clean, seeing different sights every day than just an endless procession of cows’ butts. It pays the mortgage, and, being single, I can save and take a nice trip every once in awhile. This particular one was a reward to myself after working over two years with only Sundays off. I have no life outside the press room, really. A colleague convinced me to go south, even though it’s August, to take in the jazz scene and kick back. The fare was reasonable and Pete Fountain and Louis Armstrong were in town.
I loosen my tie. It’s going to be a long evening after a long hot day, mostly spent walking around dripping with sweat, killing time before the flight. It’ll be nice to get back up north where it’s not a hellish jungle. I loved the music and food, but I’m thinking next time, I’ll come in mid-January.
A guy in a blue uniform walks up to the desk, starts talking to the gate agent. Four-striper. I can hear them because I’m sitting close so I can be one of the first on board so I can get a drink before take-off. I treated myself to a first class ticket for this one, as well as a few nights in one of the better hotels. It’s only money and what else do I have to spend it on? Yeah, pathetic, I know.
The four-striper introduces himself to the agent as Captain Don Pauly. They talk about weather and what happened in the hotel near Bourbon Street last night. They talk about how many passengers will be on board. Only a couple of lucky saps like me are with them for the hoppity-hop all the way to Minneapolis.
Two giggling stewardesses come walking up in new, brightly colored pastel uniforms. Things look like they’d glow in the dark. They walk up to the counter and start flirting with the Captain. Two minutes later, another pilot walks up. Almost instantly has his hand on a stew’s ass. He’s tall, younger and good-looking, but obviously not a player for my team. Captain looks like he’s pushing 50, mostly all business, but with a sense of humor. Looks like three stripes on the other guy’s uniform, so he’s obviously the first officer for our flight.
I look around the rest of the lounge. The usual suspects, nothing particularly striking. Smattering of cajuns and military types sitting around waiting for the first hop to Shreveport and either the Red River Arsenal or Barksdale Air Force Base. A hillbilly family who will probably get off in Fort Smith, take off their shoes, and head for the hills. Some businessmen. A woman and her daughter, who is holding a rag doll and reading a book, chewing a wad of bubble gum.
The lounge is decorated in the same shades of pastel colors as the stewardesses and the airplane sitting out on the tarmac. Braniff proclaimed the “end of the plain plane” and made everything cool and mod and hip and with it and coolio, daddio! I don’t care what it all looks like. It’s my ride home.
The flight crew, still giggling and pinching each other, walk over to the gate and down the jetway. The captain is smiling, but remains a bit apart from the other three. They disappear and it looks like we’re finally ready to board.
They announce the flight. I’m hop up and get on board. Need that drink. Stew up front smiles, takes my jacket, helps get me settled. I ask for a vodka collins, she brings it. A procession files down the aisle to the coach part of the plane. I sip my drink. 20 minutes later, the stew buttons up the plane and starts her safety spiel. Engines are spooling up and we’re pushed back. I tune out and take a nap.
Samantha (that’s the stew’s name) wakes me when we approach Shreveport. I’m wrong about the hillbilly family. They get off in Shreveport. The rest of the trip is the same. Up, down, coupla drinks, some dinner. I’m the only one going all the way through; by Fort Smith, the BAC 1-11 is beginning to feel like home and Samantha and I are old friends. The others in first are transients.
We touch down in Kansas City and find out there will be an hour wait. Samantha suggests a leg stretch on the tarmac. I walk to the terminal through more steam heat. Not as bad as New Orleans, but still humid. I get some more cigarettes, look around. Nothing remarkable; I’ve seen the scene before. Terminal announcements. Bored businessmen chatting up even more bored waitresses in the bar. Kids coloring or playing with dolls or running around. The smell of jet fuel, the occasional props firing up. I find a restroom. Same as any other anywhere. I’d rather talk to Samantha, so I sweetheart the gate agent and she lets me back aboard.
Samantha talks to me for 20 minutes, during which I learn it all … dickwad boyfriend, signing up as a stewardess with hopes that she’d be jetting off to Paris, but then being confronted with the reality of jetting off to Omaha and Fort Smith, daddy’s girl, girl voted most likely to do something-or-other. She’s flirting, but I’m too tired to care. She’s not exactly my type. Too blonde and too dependent on men. Her daddy, her boyfriend, the first guy from high school, the airline bosses who assigned her to Dallas and not London. I wonder why she chose to work for Braniff in the first place; they don’t even fly to London. I want to ask if Pan Am rejected her, but decide I’ve still got two segments and I’ll need more scotch and sympathy. Don’t hack off the stew.
People file out from the terminal; it’s time for the Omaha leg. After that, home at last. Samantha tells me it’s a light load. There’s 38 of us, three in first, taken care of by four crew members. The Omaha leg features, in first, a woman about my age, dressed in black who is dead silent and hands her coat to Samantha to take care of, then sits down and stares out the window on the other side of the plane, and a businessman who comes in, sits down behind the presumed widow, barks an order for a whiskey sour and then opens his briefcase on the tray table. Samantha serves drinks, mine first, with a wink. She puts his on his tray and walks away. He doesn’t even say thank you or look up. She gets ready for the usual spiel.
I look out the window. There’s a guy in Braniff coveralls sitting on a baggage tractor staring at the plane. I’m not sure he can see me, but I can feel our eyes lock. He slowly stands up on the tug, raises his hand in a farewell salute. The plane is pushed back. I can see to the north; there are flashes of lightning beyond the airfield perimeter. I look back at the guy on the tug. He’s still saluting as the plane turns away and I can’t see him any more. There’s an air of benediction to his act. For some reason, it irritates and unsettles me. Too dramatic.
Samantha comes to check my seat belt. She says the captain told her the flight crew of a Braniff flight which just landed from Chicago said there’s some bumpy weather on the way to Omaha, but he’ll try to give us a smooth ride by flying to the west of the front. I look back out. A series of lightning flashes light up the night, and I can see a line of very dark clouds up north beyond Kansas City’s downtown skyscrapers. It’s a little ominous, but I’m too tired to care. ★
• 1539 Words written by Steve @ 21:53 | 23-Apr-06 in Departure •
Critique It
Start | Next | Archive | Syndicate | View | Link | Ask | Search | Contact
You are here: AirBeagle » AirBeagle.Info » next