Does anyone ever forget their first airplane ride?
I remember mine quite vividly; hard to believe it was more than 40 years ago.
It was 1958, and I had moved with a buddy to Los Angeles. We were both fresh out of South High and were desperate to seek our fortunes. For Salt Lake kids in the '50s, the only place you could logically do that was on the "Coast." Maybe it still is.
My friend, who was not encumbered with a "1-A" draft card, got a job at Douglas Aircraft. The best I could manage was a pathetic gig clerking at Woolworth's. Not exactly what I had in mind when I boarded that westbound "City of Los Angeles" train six months earlier.
Thus, not having found my fortune in L.A., I decided to return home in style via United Airlines. I don't recall what model of aircraft it was, but it had two propellers.
What I do remember were the stewardesses. There were no flight attendants back then, just "stews," as guys my age called them, and they were right up there with glamor models and Hollywood starlets in the eyes of an 18-year-old guy.
I had about as much chance of dating a stewardess as I did Marilyn Monroe, but I couldn't take my eyes off those lovely ladies as they glided up and down the aisle, their uniforms immaculate, their makeup perfect and their smiles as big as Doris Day's.
Those marvelous memories of the golden age of commercial aviation came flooding back to me last week when I read an article in The New York Times by Randy Kennedy headlined "The Skies Are Blue And The Chips Are, Too."
The story was about Utah favorite son David Neeleman and his attempts to take his New York-based airline, JetBlue Airways, back to delivering the kind of style and flair that has pretty much disappeared in the modern era of overbooked flights, testy flight attendants and lost luggage.
Neeleman has hired Doreen Lawrence, a former Braniff Airlines "air hostess" from the '70s, to teach his flight attendants to walk the Braniff way, which Lawrence told the Times worked like this:
"They told you to imagine a string running from your bellybutton to your chin that you had to keep tight so you would have good posture, an arched back, and to imagine that you were holding a dime with your . . . well, with your rear end. And then when you walked, you had to walk so that your knees almost crossed, which made you kind of swish like a model on a catwalk."
So that's how those stewardesses seemed to float up and down the aisle without their feet touching the floor. Who would have guessed?
But what about telling the passengers where the exits were and what to do in the "unlikely event of a water landing?"
"I suppose we learned emergency procedures," Lawrence told the Times. "I really don't remember it."
Those were the days, huh? Imagine, sexy walking being more important than keeping your seat in the upright and locked position.
Frankly, I wish Neeleman luck in trying to get his 250 JetBlue flight attendants to strut the Braniff way in an age when Lara Croft is a stronger role model for young women than Grace Kelly.
But maybe he can pull it off. JetBlue has a Salt Lake to New York flight, so if any of you readers have a chance to take that ride, let me know if the flight attendants have mastered the Braniff walk.
JetBlue is already making a name for itself as an airline that sweats the details, even though its market niche is the same as Southwest Airlines: a low-cost, no-frills carrier where a beverage and a bag of blue potato chips constitutes haute cuisine.
The Zagat survey for 2001, (mainly a restaurant guide) published earlier this month, ranks JetBlue as the second-best economy airline behind Midwest Express. Not bad considering that Midwest serves real food on real china with silverware and linen napkins.
Passengers told Zagat that JetBlue is a role model for discount airlines with its gray leather seats, each equipped with TV sets offering live satellite feeds and, of course, its blue-uniformed flight attendants fresh out of walking school. The good old days are back!
E-MAIL: max@desnews.com