The Caribbean Islands and South America

This is a copy of a newspaper clipping from the local Aberdeen newspaper. Both R and I attended college in Aberdeen, Scotland.

H(German), Mu(English), Ma(American) and myself (Scottish) found an apartment in Kew Gardens Hills in the borough of Queens, New York. It was a brand new garden apartment with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, kitchen and dining area. We furnished the apartment with some beds that had been donated by H’sfriends and some old stuff that we picked up cheap at the Salvation Army thrift store. It was quite a walk from the apartment to the Q-10 bus stop, a bus that transported airline employees to their jobs at Kennedy airport. I wasn’t thrilled with the walk or the bus because we had to carry our flight bag, suitcase and handbag, as well as teeter along on high heeled shoes, but it was doable until such times as I could ease up and pay for a taxi cab.

I had just enough money left to pay for my share of the three months rent in advance, a deposit for the installation of a telephone and the cost of the furnishings. There was only enough money left to pay for my bus fares to and from the airport for a week and to buy a small amount of food, until I received my first working paycheck. My funds had never been so low since I was fourteen years old and it was not a good feeling to know that I’d soon run out of food if I didn’t get a flight soon. We did receive a small stipend during our training, but it was gobbled up fast by the expenditures we had to make. We were all on stand-by duty for the first month and it was not long before I found myself alone in the apartment because the other three had been assigned flights. Fortunately for me I met some boys who lived in the apartment next door and they kindly fed me until I received my first assignment.

We stewardesses received our first working paychecks after two weeks on the job and over the next few months we were able to buy a few more essentials for our apartment. As time went on I purchased a bedroom lamp, a bedside table, an attractive set of bedding and two warm blankets, I felt rich indeed. I had never owned furniture before and I had never had my very own bedroom to sleep in until now. Life seemed good and I made my bedroom into the one room in the apartment that was cute, cozy and comfortable. Because I could sew, I hand stitched some pretty turquoise colored, cotton curtains for the windows. I antiqued the old dresser and bedside table that came from the Salvation Army Thrift Store and I scrubbed the second hand rug until it was creamy white. The turquoise lamp matched the curtains and the cheap bedding set was a brilliant orange flecked with turquoise flowers. Things were beginning to pick up and I managed to get some flights under my belt that first month when I was on stand by.

Because we were all on stand-by duty, most of the flights awarded to us during our first month in New York were to San Juan, with a brief one-hour respite in the San Juan airport restaurant, before returning to New York. These flights were always full and we had to work hard, but Pan Am, without any personal cost to us, allowed us to order whatever we wanted for lunch in the airport restaurant. I loved the black bean soup that they served, the fresh Cuban bread and the strange spicy concoctions of the Latino cuisine. I began to gain a little weight and my health improved drastically.

There was one occasion, on the return flight to New York, when I was sure that I heard a chicken squawk. I walked up and down the aisle a few times before I found the source of the noise. There was an old woman sitting very quietly by herself in a window seat. She was clutching a basket that had a cover on it but the worried look on her face gave the game away. When I asked to see what was in the basket she tentatively lifted the lid to reveal two white feathered, full grown hens. What could I do? I could do nothing of course. We were airborne and the poor woman was frightened to death in case I took her hens away from her. When I related the story to the other stewardesses, we laughed and one stewardess who spoke Spanish went to calm the nerves of the old woman who was taking the hens to her son as a gift. The other passengers seated near didn’t seem to mind about the hens in the basket.

Many flights were smooth sailing but once in a while we had a flight that was problematic. On the same flight from San Juan, I strolled up to the back of the 707 to investigate a commotion that was going on. My mind boggled at the sight of a middle aged man who was trying to open the rear entry door in the mistaken belief that it led to a bathroom. The situation was soon resolved and there was no danger. Due to the differences in air pressure it is physically impossible to open the door of an aircraft during flight.

On arrival at the airport we, the crew members were told that the flight to Brussels was delayed. I had not slept well the previous night and by the time we boarded the flight I was feeling tired and cranky. We had been kicking our heels in the airport for four hours before the flight was finally ready for boarding, and we had a long seven hours ahead of us. The flight was full and the passengers were also upset with the delay.

The six of us worked hard on that flight and by the time we arrived at our hotel in Brussels, I was exhausted. I placed my soiled uniform, blouse and smock into the large plastic bag provided by the hotel and put the bag together with my shoes, outside the door of my bedroom for cleaning. The hotel maid would deliver my clean uniform to me one hour before the wake up call for our return flight to New York. We had a two-day layover but I saw nothing of Brussels except what I saw through the windows of our limousine.

I crawled into the big comfortable hotel bed, wrapped the snowy white, goose down comforter around me and slept for three days. One morning I awakened to hear knocking on my door and when I jumped out of bed to open the door, the maid handed me my uniform and said to me in English, “Pickup in two hours.”

I was confused. Had the layover been cancelled?  Quickly, I phoned the front desk and asked them to tell me the time and the day and I was dismayed to find out that I had slept for two days and two nights without waking up. After showering and getting dressed I felt rested and in good health but extremely annoyed at myself for missing out on three days in Brussels because I had planned to visit the museum and a very exclusive shopping mall that I had discovered on my previous trip to Brussels. The only good part of that episode was that I didn’t spend any money and was able to cash in my ‘per diem’ allowance for dollars, when I returned to New York.

After the four of us completed our first month of stand-by duty, we were able to bid for flight routes and although junior stewardesses were always awarded the worst routes available, occasionally some good fortune came our way. I sported a permanent tan in those days because for the first six months my flight schedules were mostly trips to the Caribbean islands. I liked it when there was a good layover as opposed to a quick turnaround. Aruba was my favorite because of the beautiful, family owned hotel that we stayed in. The rooms were beautiful, the pool was beautiful and the food in the restaurant was magnificent. The crew rarely left the hotel area because although we were near the ocean, we were quite far from the beach, but it was extremely pleasant to sit around the pool under the palm trees, while handsome waiters served us Peña Coladas and Banana Daiquiris. There was even a musician who sang and played Spanish guitar under the thatched canopy of the poolside bar.

At night we went to the hotel restaurant where once more the singing waiters entertained us and served up anything our hearts desired knowing that Pan Am would foot the bill. The only items that Pan Am did not pay for were alcoholic drinks, but they were so inexpensive that it didn’t matter. Sometimes the captains ordered a few bottles of wine for us to enjoy and the captains usually paid for the wine. My favorite meal was Lobster Thermidor. The way it was prepared in that restaurant has been unsurpassed to this day. How delicious it was.

Martinique was another favorite island of mine to visit. All the hotel accommodation provided by Pan Am for its crew members was exceptional, but in Martinique the hotel had an open air night club where we danced the night away. It was in Martinique that I purchased my first French bikini and thereafter whenever I needed a new bikini I headed on down to Martinique where I was sure to find one at a price that was much cheaper than if I had purchased it in France. I tasted blood sausage there (yuck) and on one visit we were invited on board by the crew of a large ocean schooner that was anchored nearby. One of the crew members came from the same town that Rcame from and he and I teamed up for a tour of the ship. Months later I met up with R and she told me that the ship had sunk at sea and all on board had drowned. I gave R a copy of a photograph that someone had taken while he and I were dancing, to give to his mother back in Scotland.

 Martinique January 1969. J was lost at sea later that year.

Bermuda was great although we never stayed the night. Instead we had a half day layover in a magnificent hotel on the beach. I always stocked up on British candy bars and confectionery whenever I was there, and ordered English afternoon tea before getting ready for the flight to Boston.

I returned to San Juan many times during that first year where I enjoyed the night life, the food and the drinks. I developed a taste for ‘escargots’ in San Juan cooked in garlic of course and really enjoyed my sightseeing trips around the island.

The first winter in New York, there was a huge snow storm that hit the east coast and shut down Kennedy airport. I had a layover in San Juan but when it was discovered that the return flight was cancelled we had to be moved to a different hotel. Because of the storm the only rooms available were the pent house suites in the San Juan Hilton right on the beach. We stayed in the Hilton for seven days until Kennedy airport opened up and it was a wonderful, all expenses paid vacation. On my arrival back at Kennedy airport I took a cab back to my apartment but the snow was so deep that many of the side streets had not been cleared. The cab driver took me as far as he could but finally had to drop me off about half a mile from where I lived. I was so disoriented with all that snow that I couldn’t find either my street or the apartment that I lived in. Finally I knocked on someone’s door to ask for directions and made it back to my apartment, weary but suntanned.

Pan Am paid for another pent house suite for me but this time I was alone. It was a special assignment to deadhead to Boston on a domestic airline, in order to work a Boston Bermuda flight that was missing a flight attendant. When I arrived at the Boston Sheraton hotel, no room had been reserved for me and so they put me in the pent house for one night.

I loved my job with Pan Am and I always volunteered to work in the first class galley whenever I could, because to me that was the best station. On some of the flights to the Caribbean islands we flew on Boeing 727s with only four stewardesses, but on the larger aircraft Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s we had six. A lot of stewardesses tried to avoid being assigned the first class galley because it was quite a strenuous job if the first class cabin was full, but I liked it. I liked being in charge of all the food and I liked the challenge of having to prepare an eight course dinner for up to twelve first class passengers. The dinner menu for long flights always listed filet mignon, roast beef and a host of other entrees that were very delicious.

An eight course dinner for twelve first class passengers was quite a complicated affair. Before the flight even took off, I turned the galley ovens on and as soon as we were airborne, the silver tip, roast beef was placed in the oven. It was carefully timed, twenty minutes on high, twenty minutes on medium and twenty minutes on low. The second task was to open the fifty dollar can of Beluga caviar and place it, surrounded by garnishes, in the center of an ice tray. The ice tray was then carefully placed onto a cloth covered serving cart. Another stewardess pushed the cart into the center aisle and served the passengers. Quite often none of the passengers or crew liked to eat caviar and rather than throw it out, I ate the whole can myself.  I relished the taste as I piled the sweet delicacy mixed with chopped egg whites, chopped egg yolks and minced onion onto Melba toast and then sprinkled it with lemon juice. Beluga caviar was my dinner of choice.

Sometimes we served soup, usually consommé, and sometimes we served a seafood appetizer that had been previously prepared. My favorite was Coquille St Jacques, scallops in the half shell surrounded by piped, creamed potatoes covered in mushroom sauce. To this day I still make this dish and serve it to dinner guests any time I want to impress them with my cooking skills.

By the time we cleared the appetizers it was ready to dish up the entrees. First we served the roast beef which was placed on the serving cart and sliced in front of each passenger who had ordered it. The roast beef was very popular and we served it with parsley potatoes and au jus gravy. The filet mignons were seared in the oven and cooked to order and other entrees such as Moussaka, Beef Stroganoff, and Stuffed Squab which had been previously prepared were ladled onto beautiful china plates and served piping hot.

Most of the time the dessert was Cherries Jubilee which is a dish of vanilla ice cream topped with piping hot, plump, deep purple cherries. Dessert was followed by a cheese tray that offered a variety of expensive cheeses and crackers and shortly afterwards we offered the passengers their choice of fruit from a fruit basket that was laden with whatever was in season. The dinner service lasted for approximately two hours and chocolate, after-dinner mints were always available when we poured the tea and coffee from our heavy silvered coffee pots.

The best French wines were available as well as French champagne and of course all alcoholic drinks for first class passengers were free. Over indulgence in alcohol only posed a problem for me twice in my career. The first time was on a night flight to London and the second was on a charter flight to Seattle.

The dinner service was over, the lights were dimmed and everything was cleared away so that the passengers could sleep. We had passed out the hot, lemon scented wet towels, eye masks, slipper socks, pillows and blankets and I was walking down the aisle, checking that everything was okay. All of a sudden one of the first class passengers who had stretched out on two seats, (sleeping I thought) grabbed my arm and pulled me down on top of him. I struggle to get free but he wouldn’t let me go so I had to punch him in the groin, hard. I told the purser about the incident but never reported it officially. It was common practice for male passengers to try their luck with the stewardesses.

My job also involved serving the cockpit crew. All stewardesses had a key to the cockpit pinned to their skirt band. We knew that as a preventative it was imperative never to serve the same meal to both the captain and the first officer. This rule was in effect in case the worst ever happened where one of the pilots came down with food poisoning.  The pilots loved filet mignon and it was the prerogative of the captain to choose his dinner first, but the first officer could have roast beef which was just as good or even better sometimes. I remember one captain I flew with quite often who always reminded me how he wanted his filet mignon prepared. He wanted it purple in the center (a chunk of ice was okay), with a red band around the purple dot, a pink band around the red and the outer layer seared to a crisp dark brown. The captains who were usually ex military men, were respected and in complete command of both crew and passengers. Nobody disobeyed the captain except for one first officer who took charge of the flight.

It was on a layover in Martinique and the captain had been drinking in the bar all night. This was against the rules because we had a flight back to New York the following morning. That morning the first officer summoned all crew members to a meeting before we left for the airport. The first officer explained to us that he considered the captain to be unfit to fly the aircraft and he was taking over as commander of the flight. If all went well without any incidents, he would not report the captain for his inebriated state, but he wanted to let us know that if any problems ensued, we would be summoned as witnesses. All went well but looking back, I wonder where his head was. The first officer himself did not act appropriately. He should have let management back in New York know about the situation. Who knows? Maybe he did and they advised him to shut up and carry on.

I was never afraid of flying even though sometimes it was dangerous. Pan Am had a flight route from New York to Haiti. The flight continued on to The Dominican Republic for a two day layover and then back to New York again. We only touched down in Port au Prince in Haiti to unload passengers, but there was always enough time to browse the goods for sale that were scattered around the perimeter of the airport. The black, ebony carvings were beautiful and I bought some for my apartment. I always used to like our layover in Santo Domingo even though the first time there, I was foolish enough to sleep with the sliding, glass door wide open. I wanted to enjoy the balmy night air. I woke up the next morning completely covered in mosquito bites which had swollen up so much that I could barely see past my puffed up eyelids. The purser was so worried about my appearance that she called for a doctor to come and examine me, but fortunately he pronounced me fit to fly. I learned a serious lesson on that layover about the importance of using screening and keeping doors and windows closed in the Tropics.

The hotel was beautiful, the nightclubs were fantastic and the food was excellent. This is where I tasted mango, fresh pineapple and papaya for the first time and I used to order a plate of fresh tropical fruit to be served to me whenever I was lounging beside the hotel pool. I especially enjoyed the ride to and from the airport because sometimes the drivers were willing to stop by the roadside so that we could each buy a coconut. The vendors used large machetes to hack the coconuts open so that we could drink the sweet, fresh coconut milk, all for the price of ten cents each.

The sad thing about The Dominican Republic in those days were the beggar children who besieged us as soon as we exited the airport building, to make our way to the waiting limo.  Some of these children were blind, badly disfigured or covered in sores.

            “Don’t give them any money,” one of the captains growled at me as I reached into my handbag for some coins. “These kids have been disfigured by adults in order to make tourists feel sorry for them. If we keep giving them money, the adults will never stop disfiguring their own children.”

On my last trip to Santo Domingo my roommate and I had gone to bed late. The whole crew had spent the previous evening in a nearby nightclub and then because we weren’t tired she and I sat out on the balcony to have one last cocktail before we retired for the night. Our flight home wasn’t scheduled until later the next day but we awoke early to the sounds of banging and shouting outside our bedroom door. I jumped out of bed, opened the door and a hotel guard yelled at me.

            “Get dressed quickly. Hurry up there’s revolution and you must leave for the airport immediately.”

We didn’t have time to shower. Quickly we dressed in our uniforms, packed our bags and rushed downstairs to the waiting taxis. As we drove to the airport we asked the driver what had happened and he told us that there was rioting outside the hotel and there were gunshots. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at the airport, we heard gunshots but fortunately for us, the Pan Am jet was already fueled up and ready to leave. We ran across the tarmac and although I don’t know if they were really shooting at us, we heard a lot of gunshots together with shouting, yelling and confusion.

I had another adventure in the Caribbean on the island of Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela. It was a long, turn around charter flight from New York to Curacao to pick up a load of passengers. We stewardesses slept all the way there because we had taken off around four am. And there were no passengers on the trip down. It was a Boeing 727 and I managed to get up to make some breakfast and coffee for those crew members who wanted it. While I was in the cockpit removing the remains of the meal, the first officer told me that I should wake the others because we would be landing shortly. I looked out of the cockpit window for a view of the blue, sparkling ocean but my instincts told me that there was something wrong. The first officer was making a visual landing, we were coming in too low, and I couldn’t see the runway.

            “Where’s the runway?” I asked him. “I can’t see the runway.”

            “I thought I ordered you back to your seat,” the first officer responded.

            “Where’s the runway?” I asked once again as I nudged the flight engineer with my elbow, into action.

The captain was dozing, the engineer faced sideways in front of the instrument panel and at my urging he leaned forward to take a look.

            “Christ…” he yelled. “Pull up man, pull up.”

Our rookie first officer had mistaken the long, white, sandy beach road for the runway. The beach road ran parallel to the runway.

I ran back to the cabin shouted at everyone to buckle up and we landed safely. I remember the bright red flush that rose up on the back of the first officer’s neck before I exited the cockpit but the incident was never mentioned again.

I did visit many more islands in the Caribbean including St Thomas in the Virgin Islands but my sights were set on travel to Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. I was quite friendly with Maureen O’Hara, the well known Irish actress. Maureen travelled to and from St Thomas frequently, because she was married to a Pan Am captain. She was very personable and made us all feel comfortable in her presence. I still like to watch “The Quiet Man” whenever it comes on TV. John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara starred in that movie and it’s a classic.

Excerpt off the web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_O'Hara

She married her third husband, Charles F. Blair, Jr., on March 12, 1968. Blair was a pioneer of transatlantic aviation, a former Brigadier General of the U.S. Air Force, and a former Chief Pilot at Pan Am. A few years after her marriage to Blair, O'Hara for the most part retired from acting. Blair died in 1978 when an engine of a Grumman Goose he was flying from St. Croix to St. Thomas exploded.

It was still nineteen sixty eight and I missed being scheduled for one fateful flight by only one seniority number. I had already been fortunate enough to be given a flight to Caracas, Venezuela where Hand I spent some glorious time on the private beach where our hotel was located. H went swimming in the ocean but I didn’t want to go in because I had heard that there were sharks in those waters. It must have been a premonition. I had bid for the monthly schedule with flight #217 on December 12^th but a more senior stewardess was awarded that schedule. I was awarded the schedule with flight #217 the following day.

On the evening before my Caracas flight, the telephone in our apartment rang. H answered the call and then I heard her gasp. It was a call to let her know that flight 217 had crashed and because I was scheduled to fly to Caracas the following day, I had the option to bow out. The flight schedulers were prepared to replace me with an older, more senior flight attendant. I declined to bow out and when I checked in at Kennedy airport the following day, the whole crew was taken to a special briefing room.  We were warned that the passengers would consist of relatives of the dead, FAA investigators and Pan Am officials who were flying down to the site of the crash. It was a very somber quiet flight and I learned more about the crash on the way down.

Excerpt off the web 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft#196

December 12 – Pan Am Flight 217, a Boeing 707, crashes near Caracas, Venezuela as a result of pilot error; all 51 on board died.

The aircraft had exploded mid air and they were still trying to retrieve bodies from the deep -water bay which was on the approach path to the airport at Caracas. On arrival in Caracas we walked past special hangars that had been set up for body identification but someone whispered to me that the sharks had had a fine meal that day. It was horrible and to make matters worse I had flown the previous month with the crew who died. Rumors persisted for a long time afterwards. It was rumored that it was not pilot error at all. It was thought that there had been a bomb on board, but it didn’t stop me from flying. I felt invincible because I had the confidence of youth and I still had more of the world to see.