Back When the Skies Were Friendly

Just got home from the West Coast, and I can't stop thinking about the way flying used to be.

When I was a kid, the child of a dad who worked for Delta Air Lines, flying was something only rich people did as a habit; for everybody else, it was a rare treat. As Airline People, though, we flew whenever we felt like it, pretty much, albeit as Non-Revs (non-reservation passengers). Going to, oh, San Francisco for the weekend involved just throwing some things in a suitcase and heading for the airport, where we'd wait at the gate until all the paying passengers got on. Then there'd be this announcement from the gate agent: "Thompson family, party of four," and we'd go up and get our first-class tickets (because First Class was always the last to fill up). Back in those innocent pre-9/11 days, the pilots actually left the cockpit door open at times, and even when they didn't my dad could still stick his head in at the end of the flight to say hi to the pilot if he knew him (and he usually did; most of the pilots of that era were military alums, and my dad had known some of them in the Army Air Corps). The stewardesses (there were no male airline attendants back then) treated us like the British royal family. Meals were served on real china, atop real table linens, with real silver. In-flight movies were shown on a real screen, which was pulled down from the ceiling, and when that wasn't happening the stewardesses were always coming by with some offer. Playing cards? A complimentary cocktail? A small snack? Would the kids like to go up to the cockpit and meet the pilot? (Yes, that really happened). Once, flying to Los Angeles from Atlanta and ahead of schedule because of some extra kick from the jet stream or something, the pilot got permission to deviate from the flight plan, and took us over the Grand Canyon. At one point he turned the plane nearly on its side so we'd get a better view; I remember practically kneeling on the window, awestruck, looking down at this stupendous chasm while a lady about two rows back made discreet use of her mal de mer bag. I was sorry the aeronautic acrobatics made her sick, but it was a view of the Grand Canyon very few people get to see.

Yesterday's five-hour ordeal was somewhat less exciting. We were in economy, naturally, since only Ponzi scheme moguls can afford first class these days, and that meant I had my butt wedged into a space which was approximately 85 percent the actual width of my butt, and I had a view of the head of the lady in front of me which would have been perfect for searching for head lice, had I been so inclined. To cross my legs required the contortionist skills of a Ringling Brothers circus performer; getting out of my seat was practically impossible. And that made it doubly tragic that I was seated on the aisle of a row which contained the Kid With the World's Smallest Bladder, who required no fewer than FIVE trips to the airplane lav. He was accompanied by his mother, who popped her bubble gum like rifle shots as she sat reading some tiny book in gilded Arabic letters....Islam for Dummies, maybe? I couldn't tell. Mom had a friend three rows back who appeared halfway through the flight to stand right at my elbow and conduct a spirited half-English, half-Farsi gossip fest right in the middle of the really bad TV show I was craning my neck to see, in a doomed attempt to make myself forget the fact that I had lost feeling in both legs below the knee. So between my neighbor's gum cracking, the multilingual hen party and the Boy Who Had To Wee-Wee, not to mention the toddler in back who kept kicking my seat and the pre-boarding security pat-down the Department of Homeland Security thought I needed...well, let's just say that air travel has lost a lot of glamour.

Which is not exactly an original observation, but I can remember when travel was a big thing, an exciting thing, something not everybody got to do. It was a privilege. Vast temples were built for travel; the architecture was a recognition of the fact that going on a journey was a potentially life-altering experience. To my kids and their generation, travel is, literally, a pain in the ass. The world has gotten smaller, which is a wondrous thing in a lot of ways. But in making the world smaller, we have lost much of its mystery.