Flying Pan

[Written yesterday, mid-air.]

My peak experience, commercial flyingwise, occurred when I was in Vietnam. (For that matter, the same is true for non-commercial flying: seeing tracer bullets arising from the jungle to my low-flying gooney bird was bracing; as was hearing ground control call out bandits at our six o’clock while riding in a flying gas tank over Haiphong Harbor. But those are stories for another day.)

On this occasion I was winging toward Hawaii on an R and R flight, while my wife was flying to the same destination, heading West. Knowing a guy in Saigon with some influence, I had been booked into the first class cabin; and this was in the days when first class meant something.

It was a shiny TWA 747. The upstairs was accessed by a spiral staircase, and as opposed to nowadays, it was an adjunct to first class. Namely, a bar, a lounge, a cushiony retreat. Generous and plentiful drinks were served to the brass there, and they looked askance at a guy sporting two silver bars instead of the stars and eagles that otherwise occupied the place. I was a little uncomfortable, but not enough not to enjoy the opulence which stood in contrast to my more humble accommodations back on base.

At dinnertime a cloth was spread on my seat table, wine was poured, after which the stewardess returned pushing one of those shiny steel roll-top steam carts, under the dome of which she dramatically revealed a standing rack of prime rib, smelling of home. “How much,” she asked, and proceeded to carve off an inch or two after incrementally moving her knife along the rack until I waved her to a stop…

I don’t remember it all. Was there a piano in the upstairs bar?

Anyhow, I bring this up as I’m flying to D.C., moments after having been asked if I’d like to purchase a stale (and, by its looks, a decidedly unboiled) bagel for six bucks, and an hour after an unsuccessful search for a pillow to bolster the lumbar region of a particularly uncomfortable seat. Cleaving my elbows tightly to my side to avoid the inevitable ulnar incursion of the brusque battering-ram of an especially unglamorous and opposite-of-shiny container on wheels, bearing crackers and soda pop and really bad coffee.

I should add that I’m in economy class, from which I can see the first class folks. The seats are bigger, but there ain’t no steam carts, and not a rib in sight.

Well, we lost the war. I don’t suppose we deserve anything better.