Long, long ago when you went to an airport, to fly or to meet someone, it was an event. Unless you are of a certain age, you will never believe this, but people actually wore nice clothes. I mean, Stewardesses (there was none of this "Flight Attendant" nonsense) wore hats! And suits! So, of course, you had to dress accordingly. No one was going to make you take your shoes off or look at you naked in an x-ray machine, anyway.
When Wilbur and Orville invited us to come on down.....oh, wait, it was a few years after that. When Dennis and I were first dating we used to go to the airport for a fun evening. You could dress up and stand around at the gates and kiss each other and everybody who saw you just thought you were saying a fond good-by. For two hours. And it was cheap, too. Good for lots of laughs. Dennis pushed me in a luggage cart, we watched crazy people who were watching us and we never left St. Louis once.
There was a time.....and here is where you will really have to stretch your imagination but it is true....when smoking was allowed on airplanes and even tacitly encouraged. Not only were there no Smoking and Non-Smoking sections, (as if the smoke from the one section would not drift into the other any more than you can pee in one part of the pool and...well, you know what I mean) they actually even put little packs of cigarettes, like those little boxes of crayons you get with a kid's menu at Chili's, on the dinner tray. I am not making this up!
he first time I flew I was fourteen years old and I was by myself. I dressed up, of course, with make-up and high heels. I would have worn a hat if I had had one, and looked very mature, practically as old as the stewardesses. Imagine my excitement when--get this--the dinner tray arrived. You were served a meal on airplanes back then! Boy it has really been a long time.--and there, next to the tiny plate, neatly laid next to the doll-house silverware, was a pack of three cigarettes. They were free. And mine. My mother was not on the plane. My father was not on the plane. I knew no one and no one knew me.
There was just one problem. The stewardesses had accidentally forgotten to include matches with my cigarettes. I was sure it was an accident because they obviously could tell I was much older than fourteen. Everyone else seemed to have matches. They were required to put the cigarettes on the trays. It was Product Placement of the 'sixties, but for some reason they had forgotten my matches.
I was seated in a row by myself. (this was very, very long ago) There was a gentleman in front of me and one behind me. If I asked either of them for a match, surely they would insist on politely lighting the cigarette for me like Cary Grant lighting a cigarette for Grace Kelly. I had no idea how to start the thing. Was it suck or blow? It could prove very embarrassing. I pondered and pondered until the stewardess, still in her suit and hat, came and took my meal tray, full cigarettes pack still on it. I'm not sure why she winked when she went by.
And then we landed and my sister met the plane and I never did get that first cigarette. It's probably a good thing because I did get a first piece of chocolate sometime long ago and I have been addicted to that ever since. Addiction is addiction I suppose. Chocolate is cheaper, though.
And it doesn't make your dressy clothes smell bad should you want to wear them to the airport or somewhere.
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