Pan Am Unbuckled: A Very Plane Diary (12 page)

Homes were being heated with something like peat moss…with dense smoke coming out of the chimneys. Even though it was winter, most of the children were barefoot.

One evening, a group of three-or-four of us were in front of our hotel relaxing after dinner, and a bold young teen-aged man came up and started talking to us. We got on the subject of music and he loved The Beatles. When I told him I had a Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club album in my suitcase, he offered me $100 for it. Needless to say, I went up to my room and got the album and sold it to him right then and there. I ended up giving the extra Levi’s that I brought with me to Regina— who bartered and exchanged them on behalf of her Lithuanian family members, whom she eventually reached by phone. She wasn’t able to see them, but did manage to talk to them by phone while there in Moscow.

Flying Car

It was while based in New York that I bought my first car— a 1969 Opel GT—direct from the factory in Frankfurt, Germany while on a layover there. The manager of the Frankfurt Intercontinental Hotel—a subsidiary of Pan Am and our crew layover hotel — gave me permission to park my new sports car in the hotel’s underground garage until I was ready to ship it to the US. The reason I was not immediately ready to ship the car was that if I brought the car back into the US as a ‘used vehicle’ —which meant that I had to get 500 miles on the odometer before shipping it—my import taxes were much lower than for a ‘new vehicle’.

So, for the next month I did nothing but bid trips to Frankfurt. On my layovers, I drove the car around on the Autobahn— putting as many miles on it as I could. But, even better than the decreased taxes, was the discounted shipping rate I got as a Pan Am employee. When I finally had the requisite 500 miles on the odometer, I drove the Opel GT to Pan Am’s cargo hanger at Frankfurt International Airport. By showing my Pan Am employee ID card, all I had to do was fill out the paper work and a ‘bill of lading’ and the car could go as stand-by freight – for free — to NY. The Opel length just fit within a single cargo holder on a 747 plane. I would have to wait for it, but eventually it would be put on a flight when space was available. Within two weeks, I got a call from JFK that my car was there.

A few months later, I drove the Opel across country when I made the base transfer from New York to San Francisco. Two years later, I was transferred from San Francisco to the first-ever London base – so, Pan Am flew the Opel back over the pole to London. I was based in London for 18 months and at the end of that time, and with a 2,000 pound free-shipping allowance (the weight of an Opel GT) Pan Am, once again, flew my Opel back to San Francisco. It was an incredible employee benefit. But, then, one has to wonder why Pan Am ended up going bankrupt…

Kibbutz Eilat

Because of my free Pan Am passes, and ability to take extended time off, in October 1971, I worked on a Kibbutz near Eilat, Israel. When I arrived in Tel Aviv, there wasn’t’ any room at the only youth hostel I knew about. So, I took my bright orange Sears polyester sleeping bag, and threw it out on the beach—near the harbor in Haifa.

Right before day break, I was rudely awakened by two young men screaming and poking me with the bayonets on their riffles. They were members of the Israel Defense Forces on beach patrol— and they were as angry as hell at me for giving them the scare of their lives. They told me in halting English that I was within seconds of having been shot by them, because what else were they supposed to think I was— but the enemy on the beach? Why would anybody in their right mind—especially an American—sleep on the beach in Haifa? I meekly told them that there was no room in the youth hostel. They adamantly told me to get the hell out of there, and for my safety sake “Don’t ever do anything like that again!”

My kibbutz assignment coordinator told me where to meet the caravan the next night— for transport to Eilat. At that time, NO ONE drove around the countryside in Israel during daylight hours— for fear of aerial attack by Egyptians or Syrians. So, caravans were formed to be escorted by the Israel Defense Forces across the desert to Eilat—in the middle of the night, with no headlights on. I didn’t feel scared to be in one of the busses, but I suppose, in fact, it was very dangerous. When we got to Eilat, there wasn’t much of anything there—not like it is today, with built-up resorts.

Instead, all I could see were about half-a-dozen single-story buildings for the kibbutz…and the avocado orchard.

The daily routine was— get up early, work hard, eat well, and get a good night’s sleep. The setting was rather eerie. We worked out among the small, young, short trees— surrounded by fences and speakers that were on tall posts at each corner of the property. Ironically, the speakers looked like surplus WWII, German concentration camp. When they weren’t blaring out a warning signal or safety instructions of some kind, they were playing music. One of their favorites was the rock opera
Tommy
by ‘The Who’.

The breakfasts at the kibbutz were so wonderful. We dined at 5am on fresh fruits, tomatoes, yogurt and granola. I had eaten ‘real Suisse yogurt’ at my boarding school at the Pensionnat le Manoir, but this Israeli yogurt was much more tangy and sharp and I loved it.

One incident, in particular, will always stay with me. That was the day we watched a Syrian fighter jet approach low over the Gulf of Aqaba. It looked like it was coming in to fire on us. It had gotten very close to us when two Israeli fighter jets came from the opposite direction and shot it down. We stood and watched the whole thing play out—transfixed! It happened so quickly. Probably less than a total of 5 minutes—but it felt like a lifetime. I was sobered. It began to dawn on me— the seriousness of the conflict and that I was in the middle of it.

The Kibbutz sent me off with a pack of rich memories, and I left them the fruits (no pun intended) of my hard work—-and a few decks of Pan Am playing cards.

Nepal

The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation recruitment of airline employee volunteers took place in San Francisco—which made it very easy for me to interview to volunteer. At the time, the Dooley Foundation had programs in Laos and Nepal that used primarily airline employee volunteers. By recruiting flight attendants, the Foundation got volunteers whose transportation was free, who had some basic medical training, AND ones who could access extended periods of time off.

I interviewed to be a Dooley volunteer without expectation that I would be selected—mainly because they were overwhelmed with applicants from US and foreign airlines. Therefore, I was ‘over the moon’ when I was selected to go to Nepal. My mother, on the other hand, was not so excited when she learned the details. Originally, they needed workers for their orphanage, and that, my mother liked—the image of her daughter helping these poor, small children. But, then, they needed volunteers on a project tracking diphtheria. Again, my mother liked the idea that I was volunteering for a job that helped small children. It ended up, however (and this my mother did NOT like) that I was assigned to assist with the epidemiological study on the incident rate of tertiary syphilis in the Nepalese male population between ages 15 and 55. How was she ever going to tell the bridge club that?

It was, in fact, a very interesting and rewarding experience. The medical science part of it— and working and living from November 1974 to March 1975 in Pokhara, Nepal— helped take the sting out of how mad my new husband was at my taking off.

I soon convinced him that it was the opportunity of a lifetime for him, too— as I arranged for him to go to Australia to spend time with Renness Mary, then rendezvous with my parents in Bangkok before joining me to trek in Nepal. I explained to him that I was assigned to the Gondahki Zonal Hospital in the Annaparna Range of the Western Himalayas. He eventually warmed up to the idea and when he joined me there, he totally got enthused about the trekking.

My volunteer work meant a lot of trekking for me too. I trekked with a team that went out for two weeks at a time to remote villages. Our team consisted of a doctor, two medical assistant volunteers, a driver and two or three bearers with a back-up Jeep, where possible. As one of the medical assistants, I carried a back pack of about 30 pounds of lab equipment, plus one small pouch of “personal items” (a toothbrush, a bar of soap, a spare pair of glasses) and a single change of clothes and three pair of socks. I wore a bandana on my head, hard toed hiking boots and overalls.

I later figured out that flexible tennis shoes were actually much better for the trails. And, I became proficient at maneuvering declines with my legs bent—to avoid “Memsaab knees.” When we set up in a village to take the blood samples, we donned old Pan Am serving smocks that had been donated to the Dooley Foundation about twenty years before.