General Discussion

1965. I came home for a weekend my junior year in college, noticed right away my different dad. Same man, altered TV habits.  “Hi, Dad.”

            He stared at the set, rechecked the channel, then his watch. A few seconds later, at 6:46, a full color commercial aired for National Airlines. A bikinied blonde waded out of surf showing more and more tantalizing tanned leg and less and less inhibition as she grew bigger and bigger on our new 24” screen. When her flesh took up 23 of them she flipped her hair, pouted, suggested flying National and bent over to pick up a sea shell. Her breasts spilled from her top, almost onto our living room carpet. The screen morphed to a National jet’s tail where the same girl’s face, now a logo, took it to the next level.  She winked.  “I’m Sally. Fly me.” It seemed to take a lot of her willpower to say ‘fly’ instead of another word that began with ‘f’ and would seem more expressive of her true feelings.

            “Hi, Dad,” I said again as the tube returned to some quiz show and a man who looked goofy enough to know everything. “What is a mouse?” he said. Before the emcee could respond Dad, still ignoring me, pounded buttons on his new remote control. He waved it, “This thing is great!” he said as the TV channel changed. “Pan Am,” he fixed on the set. “Watch.” Two luscious stewardesses stood at the top of steep boarding steps. The camera shot from a gynecological angle up short sky-blue uniform skirts. The girls waved, the voice-over said, “Pan Am offers you the world.” Two very tiny parts of it held Dad’s attention fast.  The screen became Copenhagen Bay.  The two stewardesses, now topless, caps cocked jauntily, flanked the Little Mermaid.  Their arms linked around her shoulders, their tresses fell just like hers to strategically cover breasts much bigger than hers. Voiceover spoke, “Let Pan American professionals show you all the world has to offer.”

            “Kind of suggestive,” I said.

             Dad checked his watch, “Yeah, except I don’t know what the damn statue is there for.”  He pounded the remote again. A cartoon coyote appeared.  “Oh, shit. Wrong button!” he exclaimed as if he’d accidentally drank poison. He frantically stabbed to the correct network darting his eyes between the remote, the screen and his watch. “Okay! Made it by five seconds.  Get this one.” A Braniff stewardess appeared spinning.  With each revolution part of her uniform came off. The caption said Air Strip.

            “Isn’t she gonna get dizzy before she gets much off?” I asked.

            Dad shook his head, kept his eyes glued to the TV. “No. They got one with real good balance and great tits for this commercial.”

            Dad was right. Seven complete revolutions later the girl was still upright, on Waikiki, and clad in only in a short sarong skirt.  Her final top, a halter, dropped away during the last revolution as she stopped with her naked back to the camera, Diamond Head as a backdrop.  A syrupy voice said, “See what it’s like flying to Hawaii on Braniff. Island girls have got nothing on ours because ours have,” the girl undid her sarong and let it fall, “nothing on by the time they get to the islands.” The camera followed the falling sarong until it showed as much of a woman’s rear anatomy as 1965’s network censors would allow.

            “Goddamn puritans,” Dad said. “No reason on earth they couldn’t have just backed that camera off and got the whole shot. Maybe put a palm frond across her ass for the little kids.” He reconsidered, “Hell no. Little kids know what a woman’s ass looks like. It’s the front part they’re all hazy on. Shoulda’ just done the damn shot and shown how real stewardesses go to the beach.”

            “How’s that, Dad?”

            He pointed at the TV, “Naked, fool!  Haven’t you been watching?”

Chapter Two

         Dad’s obsession with the dressing habits and sexuality of airline stewardesses eventually cost him his marriage and then some. Mom was more than happy to give him his freedom in exchange for the modest house I’d grown up in.  “Get him out of here,” she said, “He’s got our bedroom full of airline travel posters of stewardesses with,” she touched a chest that had done ok by PTA standards but which hadn’t made any men’s magazines, “their boobs all over the place. I’m tired of it.”  

            “Mom’s a great woman,” I told Dad trying to stop the divorce. But it was hopeless. Mom at 54 wasn’t an airline stewardess. They had to quit or be fired at thirty, marriage, childbearing, or 8 ounces over recommended runway model weight. Mom flunked them all, the marriage was history.

            Dad started thinking of places he wanted to fly. I knew what was going to happen, tried to head it off, but the TV ads made it difficult.

            I caught up with him a month later at his company’s picnic. He was working on his boss for a business trip to Miami.

            “But we make dog food, Bill. Why do you need to go to Miami?” the boss wondered.

            “Greyhounds.”

            “You mean at the tracks?”

            “Right. I think I can get us into Hialeah and Gulf Stream. Imagine the advertising bump we’d get from that. PowerCrunch, the official dog food of Florida Kennel Racing.”

            “I don’t know,” his boss said. “I’ll think about it.”

            I didn’t need to. I knew. Dad wanted to fly National to Miami. I took him aside, under the shade of an old majestic oak. He was in for a fall bigger that it would someday take.

            “Dad, you’re 56, of ordinary means. You’re not a pro athlete or movie star or even a doctor or lawyer. You’re a dog food salesman.”

            “Stewardesses don’t care,” he said. “You got to start paying better attention to those TV ads. Those girls are after ordinary businessmen like me.”

            “I shook my head emphatically, “No, Dad. That’s not true. Up at the university our drop-deadest babes, the top Pi Phi’s and DG’s, they go to be stewardesses. They’re after big money, famous guys, a glamorous life.”

            “What’s a Pi Phi and a DG?”

            I looked away. “Give it up, Dad. Stewardess chasing isn’t going to go well for you.”

            “Wanna bet?”

            I should have. It didn’t. But not in the way I had envisioned. I got the phone call the summer after my junior year. “Your father’s had a heart attack.”

            “When? Where? How is he?”

            The doctor’s voice did a rollercoaster down and up. “He’s in pretty bad shape, but he’s pretty happy.”

            I knew, rushed to the hospital. “What airline, Dad?”

            “Braniff.”

            “Where?”

            “At her apartment after the flight home from Hawaii.”

            “How?”

            “It was love at first sight.”

            I doubted it, looked at his personal effects in the hospital drawer, held up the incriminating evidence. “Dad, what’s this?”

            “My money clip.”

            “I know, Dad. But why does it have a wad of hundred dollar bills in it?  You’ve never carried that kind of cash.”            He skipped over the question, took my hand. “Son, there’s so many more out there. So many.”  He glanced at the money clip. “OK, you’re right. I had to use that.” He looked at me with a look a good son can’t escape or ignore. “But you, Derek. You can do it on your own. You’re a good looking boy, got 20/20 vision.”

            “20/20 vision.  What’s that got to do with it?”

            “You can do hundreds of those girls… if…if…” The concept of it thrilled him… “if…”  It thrilled him too much.  He grabbed at his chest with one hand and squeezed mine hard with the other. The color drained from his face but still powerful eyes implored me with his final charge. “Son, become an airline pilot,” he said. Then he died.

            I hugged him, shook him, “But I was going to be a trial lawyer.” Being dead, he didn’t answer. I turned away, the doctor arrived in response to the button I’d pushed. He looked at Dad, shook his head, pulled the sheet up, put a white jacketed arm around my shoulder.

            “I’m so sorry, young man. Is there anything I can do to make this easier for you?”

            I looked up at the doctor. He would probably know because he was probably a member of a country club. “How do you become an airline pilot?”