Coffee, Tea or Me? (20 page)

Johnny Carson
—You can’t get tired on a trip with him. He tells us to come up and be on his show. I bet if we showed up he’d put us on the air.

Jack Benny
—You know he really is thirty-nine.

Phyllis Diller
—I thought I’d see something out of a crow patch when I heard she was coming aboard. Actually, she’s one of the most charming, attractive women you could meet. Love her sense of humor.

Merv Griffin
—You can’t top him. He talks to us the way we like to be talked to, understands what a tough job we have.

Miss America
1965—If she hadn’t been crowned Miss America I think she would have wanted to become a stewardess.

Lucille Ball
—One of the most delightful people I’ve ever waited on. She’s just precious and I love her flaming red hair. She’s got talent she’s never even shown to the world.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
—I panicked when I heard they were to be on the flight. How would I look? How would I act? Would I please them. Please, God, don’t let me ask for their autographs. Don’t let me spill a drink on them. Well, I found them just wonderful. Elizabeth Taylor is probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. You have to see her close up to realize how beautiful she is. Both of them sat there quietly, a perfect couple, never asked for anything special. I guess she sensed I wanted their autographs but didn’t dare ask them. They both wrote their names on a piece of paper and handed it to me, and I nearly fainted when I saw it said, “To one of the nicest stews we’ve ever traveled with.” I treasure that paper with my life.

 

Other good-guy celebrity travelers are:

The following celebrities have also flown with us:

“I got a memo, too,” Rachel told me when I showed her mine. “Wow! Sounds like we’re going to work a special party or something with Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite and all those people.”

“Let’s call Dan and see what he knows about this. He must know who Mr. Craig is.”

I dialed the number of Dan Lindgren, our airline’s public relations representative at Kennedy Airport. We’d met Dan one day when he was frantically trying to find two stewardesses to pose for a publicity picture. He’d dragged us out of the snack bar, only after Rachel made him show his airline ID card, and herded us over to the fountains in front of the International Arrivals Building. We took off our shoes and stockings and were wading around in the pool portion while a news photographer snapped us from every angle. It was supposed to be a cooling picture in the midst of New York’s record heat wave.

Things went nicely until a Port Authority police car drove up and arrested Dan for trespassing in the pools. Dan managed to talk the cop out of confiscating the film, but was taken away from the scene to explain things at headquarters. Despite all the police nonsense, the picture made the papers, and we proudly sent many copies back home to parents and friends.

We’d run into Dan occasionally after that in the terminal. He was usually with a big, handsome fellow named Sonny Valano, the airline’s official photographer. It was Sonny who answered the phone when we called.

“Sonny?” Rachel asked.

“Yeh.”

“This is Rachel.”

“Who?”

“Rachel Jones. Remember the pool . . . And the cops?”

“Oh, yeh. How’ve you been?”

“Fine.”

“Good. Wait a minute.”

There was a moment of silence. Then we could hear Sonny screaming profanities at a messenger who had obviously arrived late. Sonny muttered as he came back on the line. “OK, Sally,” he said, “What can I do for you?”

“This isn’t Sally. This is Rachel. Rachel Jones.”

“Oh, yeh. How are you, Rachel?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

More silence. I broke it this time.

“Sonny, this is Trudy and . . .”

“Who?”

“Trudy. Trudy Baker. I was in the pool, too.”

“Oh, yeh. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Sonny, we’ve gotten special assignments for some press flight. We’re supposed to report to a Mr. Craig on Tuesday morning. Do you know what it’s all about?”

“Sure. I requested Rachel and Trudy.”

“How could you request us if you can’t remember our names?”

“I keep a file.”

“Oh.”

Sonny excused himself again to take some prints off the dryer that were about to go through for the second time.

“Sorry, Trudy, but . . .”

“This is Rachel.”

“Right.”

“I was saying, Sonny, about this press trip and wondering who Mr. Craig was.”

“Jeez, I left a roll of negatives in the soup. I gotta run. Here’s Dan.”

Dan Lindgren got on the phone and we all went through the identification process again.

“Dan, we were asking about Mr. Craig. Who is he?”

“Yuuk.”

“Oh.”

“But don’t tell him I said that. We work for him.”

“OK.”

Dan explained about the trip. “It’s to introduce our new 727 service to Atlanta. We fly a whole planeload of press types down there and wine ’em and dine ’em and bring them back the same night. Big drag but Sonny thought you’d like to work the trip.”

“We’d love to go. Just the two of us?”

“No. Sonny got a third girl. I think her name is Betty O’Riley or something similar. Know her?”

“Yuuk.”

“Oh.”

“But don’t tell her I said that.”

“OK.”

“How’ve you been, Dan?”

“Terrible, Sonny and I were out here until two this morning working with a gang of faggy photographers and lesbo models. They were doing a brassière ad. You know, broad in bra on wingtip under moonlight? And I’ve got to be here tonight to VIP a columnist’s dog. It’s a poodle, I think. And we’ve got a news-caster up in the club getting boozed up. He’s flipping because his flight was delayed an hour. And Sonny has to shoot a retirement dinner for some captain. And, let’s see. On, yeh. John Craig, the guy you have to see, our boss, is coming out tonight to meet his wife. They’re going to LA for the weekend. And boy, do I dread seeing him. He’ll smile at me and pat me on the back and ask how my family is. I’ll tell him everyone is great. He figures that’s all he has to do for me for the next six months. He read at Dale Carnegie or someplace that you always ask your employee how his family is. Then you can knife him for another six months. He’s really bad news. But he’s the fair-haired boy of the new VP and he’s swimming in power. Oh, I almost forgot. An African starlet is arriving at eleven and we have to do a picture and a release. And some circus lions and tigers are being shipped to Memphis on air freight. More pictures, if they can get the model to put her head in the cat’s mouth. See? That’s how I am.”

“It’s a shame I asked.”

“Anytime. Have fun with Craig. He’s really not very bright, and you can put him on easily. See you on the trip.”

We saw John Craig on the appointed morning. He was kind of seedy-looking in a corporate way, a refugee from the low-paying city rooms of newspapers to the higher-paying conference rooms of public relations. He liked girls and he told us so. It was disconcerting to talk with him; he seemed to go into deep thought before every sentence, even a simple one like “Hello.”

“Hello,” we said back.

“I saw your picture in the paper and thought you’d be perfect for this press flight. I always appreciate a good-looking couple of stewardesses.”

“But Sonny said he was the one who . . .”

Craig cut Rachel short. “Yes, good old Sonny. Good boy. OK, here’s what we have planned. We’ll have a meeting with Mr. Looms in about ten minutes. He’s our vice president for public relations. Brilliant man. I think he’ll like you. It’s his first press trip and he’s a little on edge about it. He’s never been in the aviation industry before. Lots of PR experience, though. He’s been with eight different companies in the past seven years. All of them as VP. That’s quite a record.”

It obviously was, but we didn’t know how to take it. It sounded bad to us. Anyway, we were still thrilled with the thought of serving all those big names of the press. And management was certain to notice us. What worth such notice would bring was dubious, but it seemed important nonetheless.

The meeting was held in Mr. Looms’s spacious office. The carpeting was thick, and we enjoyed sinking into it with each step as we took chairs across from the massive desk. Behind it sat a head, a huge, balloonlike head with red, wavy hair. Below the hair was a large, forced smile. He looked like a clerk who issues marriage licenses.

Other people started coming in, including Dan Lindgren, Sonny Valano, John Craig, and an assortment of men and women of the PR department. Looms swiveled around so his back was to the people. When everyone became very quiet, Looms spun about in his chair and slammed his fist on the desk.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he began, his tone extremely angry. It seemed a strange way to start a meeting. “I want a perfect press trip next Sunday. A perfect one. I won’t tolerate any mistakes. Understand that?”

Heads went up and down.

“We’re really going to sell this airplane. Atlanta is just the beginning. Pretty soon, we’ll be offering it to passengers coast to coast.”

A big man interrupted. He was obviously his own person as he blew his nose in a red railroad handkerchief. “Stewart,” the man said, “this airplane will never fly coast to coast. It can’t. It doesn’t have the range. It was never meant for coast-to-coast travel.”

Looms obviously didn’t like this kind of factual back talk from a subordinate. He slammed his fist on the desk again and yelled, “Scotty, stop trying to destroy this project.”

“But Stewart,” the big man went on, “it’s silly to talk about coast to coast for a 727.”

“Goddamn it,” Looms screamed, “you know what I mean. I need straighter thinking than that.”

The big man, Scotty, sat back with a sigh, a look on his face indicating thoughts of other and better places to be at the moment.

“As I was saying,” Looms drove forward, “I wont tolerate any mistakes on this trip. I want this whole project to have magic, drive, sparkle. Got that?”

Everyone wrinkled his brows in thought except Scotty, who just blew his nose in nasal defiance. Then, Mr. Craig raised his hand, a silly smile on his face.

“Mr. Looms, I’ve been giving this whole project a great deal of thought. Even on the weekends, when I’m with my family, I want it to go off right. I think the key to its success is to try our hardest to put some magic, some drive, you might even say sparkle into it.”

Looms’s face lighted up and he became excited. “That’s the kind of thinking I mean,” he proclaimed to everyone. “That’s exactly what I mean. You do see what I mean, don’t you, John?”

John Craig assumed a semi-humble pose and said through his smile, “Yes, I do, Stewart. Yes, I do.”

“See,” Looms said to the group. “That’s the kind of thinking I’d like to feel I’m surrounded with. You’re all paid enough to think that straight.”

Scotty belched and said he had something to do. Looms’s eyes followed his imposing form out of the room. Dan Lindgren leaned over to me and whispered, “There goes the smartest guy in this whole damn airline. Looms hates him for that.”

Looms stood up for the first time. “I know what you’re all thinking. You’re all thinking I’m a bastard and a tough guy. Well, I am. But I know how to get the most out of my people. Always have, everyplace I’ve been. And we’ll have a perfect press trip.” His scalp was beaded at the edges of his red hair.