After coming to the end of that time and not really having a firm grip on what I was going to do, I heard that Pan Am was interviewing people to become flight attendants.

I had been very stoned one night and I thought this is a great idea. I’ll do this!

So, I went up to the interview still stoned never having wanted to be an air flight attendant. I always loved to travel but never realized that this room was full of people where this is all they aspired to. And, I didn’t realize that only one out of every 400 people was hired. I just was clueless.

I went up and of course had a great time with the interview. They called me back the next day for the final interview because they had narrowed it down.

I guess I sobered up over night and realized I had a chance of actually getting the job so I blew it because I was too serious the next day.

I took six months off and went to work for a florist shop in Santa Cruz because I knew there was six months before you could reapply. During that time I applied to United Airlines, TWA, and World Airways and I was turned down by everybody except World. I refused to go to work with them when I found out I was going to be a scab because they were on strike. So, I was turned down by everybody.

So, then I reapplied to Pan Am and was accepted in March of the following year. I was told that I would probably be based in London. That was in March of 1978.

I sold everything I owned. I was living in Santa Cruz at the time; I sold everything I owned. I had a great old car and a great collection of antique furniture and stuff. So I sold it all and found out I was going to be based in Seattle so I really could have just kept it all, but I got rid of it all and moved up to Seattle and lived there a couple years. I really enjoyed Seattle and got to know the North West a lot.

But I always wanted to come back to San Francisco because I really kind of feel a kindred spirit with the Bay Area. So, I met a guy at the time who was from Seattle but who got transferred to San Francisco and that was my cue. I moved back in 1980.

That guy was Rick, and he and I have remained close even though we split up in 1986. We remained business partners in all of our real estate. We moved up to Portland for four years. He was in radio at that time and he was a morning drive person so I commuted from Portland to San Francisco for four years of my flying.

Then Rick went through a tough realization that he needed to be doing something different. So he went back to school and got his Master’s in social work to become a social worker and is now a vice president of a employee assistance program at Wells Fargo. It was during that period that we moved back down here to San Francisco and I’ve been here ever since.

Even thought I worked in the declining years of Pan Am, Pan Am, we would do nine-day around-the-world trips. We would go from San Francisco to London, then London to Frankfurt, to Istanbul and then Istanbul to Iran, Pakistan, Bombay or Delhi, and then Delhi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and then back to San Francisco. We would do it in one direction or the other and then you’d do two of those a month.

That was the day when you would just say Pan Am to anyone in the world doors would open to you.

I was taken waterskiing and spent the weekend on a family’s yacht in Hong Kong harbor, you know, waterskiing off of the yacht. We were in the Delhi Zoo. That was just when they were starting to get white tigers to breed in captivity so we were allowed to go back and see those cubs. Then I spent time in Africa as well. There were some wonderful, wonderful experiences.

Also it was the time right after that whole mess in Iran when the hostages were taken. Many Middle Easterners had fled the Middle East at that time with their money and yes, we still went back and forth and we had them on the plane. They quite often tipped hundreds of dollars to look after family members.

That was when we still had the dining rooms on the 747s. Flying was still – even though it was changing, it was still very, very luxurious. The people that flew were really what made it. Not so much the planes because really Pan Am was a faded rose. It was the people. We had Jackie Onassis on once and we had made a horrible mistake in Tokyo and didn’t have enough first class seats for her so she said, “No problem, just give me four seats in coach and I’ll stretch out across those seats.” I remember taking care of her in the back, and what a classy person she was.

You know, we had lots of stars and I remember flying one flight from New York to Washington, D.C. and it was just a 727 but in first class we had the Henry Kissingers, the David Rockefellers, and the David Brinkleys – all three couples.

Now I think a lot of those people might tend to go on private jets. It was sort of a transition period. It was really quite extraordinary. While I welcome change and I embrace it, it is sort of sad to think of those days as gone.