MORE SNIPPETS

“My training flight was from New York to Frankfurt. We left six hours late—the first 747’s were full of glitches—so, of course, when we arrived at 3:00 in the morning, there was no crew bus to take us to our hotel. One of the stews had rescued a diminutive cake that no one had claimed from the first-class galley. It looked like an old-fashioned powder puff box and had a glaze you could rap with your knuckles and only hurt your hand. Somehow or other we broke into that cake and devoured it in hunks with our fingers as we sat, stupefied, on our upended luggage, waiting…

“I flew only one charter flight, battling a regiment of soused dentists who ultimately conquered the plane. First they took the aisle, where they played craps, gambling for the duration of the trip, and later the galley, where they raided the liquor and mixed their own drinks. Led by our purser—diminutive, frantic, and as high-strung as a bird—we mounted a gallant defense but were no match for their numbers. One dentist finally pried open our commander’s mouth—which was full of gold—emitted a boozy gasp, then gravely handed her his card.”

MATERIALISTIC

“My purser to Vietnam was a disciple of some Eastern guru who espoused ‘the way of roughage.’ While the rest of us skirmished over the leftover prime rib in the first-class galley, she nibbled beatifically on wilted lettuce from the brown paper bags she carried with her everywhere.

“When I found out the other stews were laying bets about whether my short auburn curls were natural or not, I tipped my wig to the winners.

“Over Vietnam, the landscape from the window of the plane looked as green and calm as a dense-weeded sea floor. The crew was led off the tiny airfield at Ben Hua to a couple of rooms which memory won’t furnish. In one, however, there was a shin-high white ceramic elephant for sale. My purser, reading what must have been an acquisitive glint in my eye, asked what sign I was, then nodded pityingly. ‘Yes, Taurus is materialistic.’ Which is why I didn’t buy that elephant—and still have it trumpeting through my dreams.”