Pan Am Unbuckled: A Very Plane Diary (10 page)

The second thing I wanted was a piece of rose-gold jewelry. I had a string of pearls— which was the only piece of jewelry I wore with any regularity— and now I wanted a bracelet. In Beirut, Lebanese jewelers designed a large-chain that they made out of beautiful rose-gold— and I had to have one. All the jewelers in the Souks were selling them at similar prices. Eventually I found a guy who seemed nice enough and I started bargaining. I got to half of the original price and asked, as I had been told, “What is the Pan Am discount?” He got furious. He said he had already given me the Pan Am discount. When I asked how he knew I was with Pan Am, he said “Because of your uniform purse!”

I hadn’t yet figured out that the Pan Am logo was so readily and universally recognized. My crew purse had ‘branded’ me. The Souks shop keeper ended up coming down a tiny bit more and I went away with the beautiful rose gold bracelet. It was made of large, classic, half-inch loops that hung loosely on my wrist. I was as happy as could be and kept staring at it on my arm. I had gotten exactly what I wanted and for a really good price—and still had traveler's cheques left over.

As I walked through the Souks, dragging a large suitcase, letting my arm dangle out in front of me so that I could see my new bracelet— I realized I needed another purse. I saw a little store that sold leather goods—the kind that was very popular from Beirut and the Middle East. The purses were like saddle bags that every hippie in America would LOVE to have. Here I was, standing in front of a store with hundreds of them hanging on ropes from the ceiling—just waiting for me to pick one out.

I bought one with an extra- long, detachable shoulder strap that I could use across my shoulder or chest. I had noticed that in NY, women were wearing cross-the-chest straps to deter purse snatchers. The purse was light brown with four pockets on both sides with little brass closures like one would find on a saddle bag. The whole thing measured about 15 inches long. With the long strap I could wear it across the front or back.

I learned that there is one un-escapable downside to certain cheap leather goods—one that is evident to everyone around me at the same time it is evident to me. The first rain storm I was caught in, the purse smelled AWFUL. Like camel urine. Because THAT is how the leather is cured.— in camel urine. So much for the perfect shopping experience! Oh well, the rest of it was a lasting success.

When I retrieved my room key from the front desk at the Phoenician, I learned that my roommate had been re-routed and had already left. So, I had the room to myself. I cleaned up, and then spread out all of the things I had bought, on her empty bed. It was disappointing that I didn’t have anyone to share my purchase excitement with. I was fingering my gold bracelet—basking in the glow of the find— when my phone rang.

When I answered it, a man’s voice—with a foreign accent—said I should open the door to my room. My mind raced through who I knew in Beirut. There were just the hotel employees and the Souks shop-keepers—and none of those would be calling me. I couldn’t understand who he was and could not understand what he was actually saying but felt uncomfortable about the tone of his voice. My self-assuredness that had been so strong earlier that day, was suddenly being nudged.

I asked him who he was, and instead of answering me, he said again that I should open my door. I instinctively threw the phone down and rushed over to check the lock on the door. It was latched. When I picked up the phone again, he was repeating his request to open the door— in Lebanese. I told him he had the wrong number and hung up. A bit unnerved, I rang for the Pan Am Station Manager. This is what we had been taught—and I was finding usefulness for all those things we were taught in training school.

The person at the hotel switchboard, put me straight through to Pan Am OPS at Beirut International. By the time the Station Manager got on the phone, I was practically in tears. I think I was more concerned (having been raised in the south) that somehow I had done something wrong, and that I was signaling the wrong message.

Apparently, a clerk at the front desk had given my room information to a wealthy Lebanese businessman who thought it would be just wonderful if he came up to my room for while. I was very, very naive about the world, but I wasn’t stupid. This was my first encounter of this sort.

As well as I could, I told the station manager what had just happened to me. He laughed, and then I just fell apart. It may have been the jet lag. Perhaps the confusion…a little bit of everything. I blurted out a whole paragraph about how horrible this was. “I am a new hire, I’m tired, I’m trying to buy clothes for this long trip, I’ve been in Beirut before and know my way around, I was trained to react this way in training school—to call him if something was wrong—that I’ve done everything right, and this is your problem.” It all came tumbling out.

To his credit, he calmed me down, and apologized to me for laughing and asked me to please not to say anything to my captain and said he would take care of it. He said I had done it right, that it had happened to other women crew members and he thought he had taken care of this with the Phoenician staff. He would look into it and get back to me. He offered to change my room, but I didn’t want to. He explained that “Yes, this kind-of thing happens, but I usually don’t hear about it as the girls go along with it or they are older and know how to handle it.” But, because of my newness and youth, he would take care of it. I asked if I was safe and he assured me “Absolutely.”

It turned out, that for the right amount of money, wealthy men were able to enjoy the benefits of a Pan Am stewardess while at the Phoenician Hotel. I didn’t tell anyone about the incident until many months later. It always struck me how my reaction did fit the profile of women who have been assaulted. To the victim, it is really humiliating.

However, ever after, in traveling around the world, I felt completely fine in the bubble of the Pan Am world. The station manager, the OPS, and the crew were readily accessible at a moment’s notice—and there for me. I felt secure and safe. That night, however, I had become a desirable commodity — alone in a hotel room. I was learning more about crew life and even about some of the crew I was flying with, perhaps—that we are a clipper team with varying ethics and values that we ‘fly by’. I was not there to judge theirs—nor they mine.

New Delhi

Our next leg was to New Delhi. I was assigned the back galley where I learned how to cook scrambled eggs and lamb chops in an aluminum foil pan. The crew was so supportive of me doing a good job that I learned the tricks of the trade from practically every crew member. Our big concern in the galley was to keep the eggs from turning green—which happens when eggs are cooked in aluminum, cooked at too high a temperature, or held over too long after cooking.

By the time we arrived in New Delhi, each of the crew had different ideas of exactly what they were going to do on this long layover of several days. A lot of people just wanted to sleep in. Yoko, a Japanese Honolulu (HNL) based flight attendant who had joined our crew in Beirut, and I, had a different idea. Like me, Yoko was also very junior and wanted to take full advantage of being ‘a tourist’ in India. We flagged a motorcycle rickshaw on the main boulevard out in front of our crew layover hotel, and made our way to the railway station in New Delhi. There, we purchased third-class tickets for Agra.

We quickly realized we should have spent the little extra money—equivalent of two or three US dollars more—to ride in first class. We were riding in the middle of a railway car that was brimming with people, their produce, and their live animals. We were in the thick of the real-deal atmosphere on our way to see the Taj Mahal. It was extremely hot, but we were lucky to be on the shady side of the train car. We hadn’t rested in the hotel, so fell asleep right away on our bench seat.

In Agra, the first thing I wanted to do was find something to drink. We turned down offers from the passengers around us and the vendors on the train. In India, the travelers carried containers that they re-filled. We didn’t want to get ‘Delhi belly’ –something we had been vigorously cautioned about by the rest of the crew. We finally decided we could safely drink the hot tea in the Agra Station coffee shop. Later we found, on the street beyond the train station, rows of little stalls of merchants selling sealed water bottles.

The Agra shops also sold a lot of great little stuff…beaded bracelets, tortoise shell rings, glass rings. I started shopping right away. I got a water bottle, but probably bought another 20 items of the little stuff. Agra was rather small and the Taj Mahal was not far away, so we hailed a bicycle rickshaw to take us there. Our rickshaw bicyclist was eager to let us know how lucky we were to get him— because he knew “The best way to the Taj Mahal.” It turns out, that when the Taj Mahal was being built, all of the workmen lived in a separate area just behind the huge wall that was erected behind the Taj Mahal. The workmen’s entrance was through a gate in the wall that was too narrow for normal vehicles, but a bicycle could go straight through. One minute we were racing towards this tall wall, holding tight to the sides of our seats, and the next minute, we are inside the wall—looking straight onto the Taj Mahal.

What a beautiful sight. He biked us around very slowly and tried to tell us about the Taj Mahal, but his English was so poor that neither Yoko nor I could understand much of what he said. We paid him, brushed away ten eager young Indian men posing as tour guides, and started walking around the Taj Mahal grounds. It was an amazing building. The entire structure looked like filigree. After a while, we ran across an English-speaking tour guide who had a dozen American tourists with him, and they invited us to join them. Perfect!

Yoko and I were trying to do the whole New Delhi experience on our per-diem money— and almost succeeded. In the end, we were too hungry and thirsty to hold out— and cashed some traveler’s cheques in order to meet the demands of our hunger and thirst on this very hot India day. And on the way back to New Delhi, we upgraded ourselves to first class—which—oh—had air conditioning. From the train window we watched the huge expanse of the Northern Indian Plain. I thought how very big it was and how many people lived there.

On our second day in New Delhi, some of the crew decided to go shopping, and I went along. At that time, the Indian government sponsored what they called ‘Home Cottage Industries’. In the middle of Old Delhi, there was a building set up, all inside, not hot and not dusty—where each little store had its separate entrance, name, and specialty. I had already bought jewelry on the streets in Agra, so now I was looking at fabrics. I happened on a store that specialized in cloth with crocheted mirrors sewn into the fabric. Boy, was that a find! My hippy-dippy friends in the US thought that kind of stuff was incredible. I bought myself a ready-made blouse and three yards — all in the mirrored fabric.

THEN, I saw a full-size rocking horse— about four feet long and two feet tall—in the mirrored fabric—and I had to have him! My excuse was that I had a new godson. The truth was that Charlie Wiggins never got the horse. I bought it and hoped it would fit in the overhead rack on the 707—which it did. I still own it and have photos of each of my three children riding on it when they were young.

That night, the crew ate in the hotel—on the marble terrace overlooking the manicured grounds, sitting on cushions at low tables. We ate authentic Indian food with naan and lots of curry— and one thing that I recognized—mango chutney.

Hong Kong

We worked straight through from New Delhi to Hong Kong via Bangkok. There were lots of passengers and lots of food service to provide. Our layover in Bangkok would take place on the way back, but because of landing curfews and air space restrictions near the mountains, we were required to land in Hong Kong before curfew.

I was mastering a personal work pace, which included occasionally bending over in the galley and taking a nice, slow, BIG breath. I also discovered it was not the end of the world to get a run in my stockings or to go barefoot down the aisles. Nobody seemed to notice, and it sure made my feet feel good. I swear there were times when I could have served a meal off the galley floor it was so clean.

As we began our descent into Hong Kong, the engineer came out of the cockpit and beckoned me to come. In the cock-pit they had cleared off a space to pull down the ‘observation seat’—which was directly behind the captain’s chair. The first officer climbed over his seat and motioned to me to get in his chair. The cock-pit crew were all smiling. I sat down in the first officer’s seat and looked out the 707 windshield— and saw before me— in the distance— the lights of ALL of Hong Kong. The captain said “We have a tradition that on your first landing in Hong Kong, you get to ride up here.” I didn’t think about how illegal and unsafe it might be…just what a fabulous view.