Postcard History

The experts, whomever they may be, could tell us there are a hundred shades of blue. There are many blues that have their own name, like “aqua,” “indigo,” and “turquoise,” and there are many more blues that are identified by an adjective – baby blue, ice blue, navy blue or sky blue.

Do you remember the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s? On any given day when the sun was shining, you could look up into the sky and see contrails of jet planes streaking through the blue sky. We would stand for a minute and wonder where the people on that airplane were going. There was no way to resolve the experience of our wonder since there were no interactive transportation maps or flight-check computers. All we could do was envy their journey.

While you think of those decades of more than a half century ago, try too to remember the names of some prominent airlines: American, Capital, Eastern, Pan American, Trans World Airline, World Airways, and there are more. Many more!

And while you’re remembering I’m going to make a statement that is so blatantly obvious it will make you grown: the “Blue Sky” ain’t what it used to be!

I was 24 when I took my first flight. It was to Tampa, Florida, for the express purpose of moving a college buddy back to Pennsylvania. He had just finished his master’s degree at a Florida university, his wife was expecting their first child, and he needed help.

That first flight was aboard an Eastern Airlines jet out of Philadelphia International Airport around nine o’clock on a July morning. I remember trying to act like an experienced traveler, but I knew my heart was pounding like a bass drum and my anxiety was so fierce I worried that the stewardess would find a way to giggle over my fear.  

I have no memory of the next dozen or more flights to places long forgotten, but as time went by, flights across oceans and to foreign lands became part of life’s experience. In the mid-1970s, Pan American took me to London, England.

I was working in Amsterdam as a substitute professor in the spring of 1981. The semester was ending, and I needed a new job. I sent resumés to a dozen universities, one in Belgium, six in the states, three in Egypt, and two in Panama. My phone rang around ten o’clock one night and the voice on the phone asked me if I could be in Los Angeles in three days. I don’t know why I said yes, but I did.

I boarded a TWA Jetstream to LAX. It was a thirteen-hour flight across nine time zones. Suffice it to say, I arrived in time, aced the interview, got the job, and became a Californian. It’s a distinction that I rarely brag about and have never cherished. I stayed in Los Angeles for seven years, and only the last one was under protest.

Please, no offence intended, but after seven years, that summer (1988) I decided that enough was enough. I was tired of the social scene in LA, I was tired of the unavailability of a good (and cheap) meal, and most of all I was sick of the traffic. I updated my resumé and mailed ten. I interviewed at two universities before landing an associate’s position in the philosophy department of a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

The cheapest one-way ticket I could find that summer was $107 to Logan Airport in Boston. It started small, on a Capital Viscount, to SFO, and then onto Boston on a World Airways charter carrying a college football team and a large group of study-abroad students returning from Kyoto in Japan.

I loved working in Massachusetts, except for the winter weather. The students in my classes were there to learn. They were career oriented and only a few had goals other than service professions.

I wrote a book while working in Massachusetts and way beyond my expectations it became a standard textbook in several schools. I thought my “flying-days” were over but in 2001 I was invited to participate in an international conference in Lima, Peru.

In the Peruvian summer of 2002 (February) I walked onto a Aerolieanas Peruanas at Kennedy International for an eight-hour flight to Lima. My “limited” Spanish was of no hindrance; every employee of Peru’s national airline spoke “perfect” English.

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So, dear readers, do you see why I made the remark about The Blue Sky isn’t like it once was? Most of the pictured airplanes are now antique and obsolete and most of the companies that flew them are long defunct or have been taken over by another.

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As I searched the postcards of the planes I’ve been on through the years, I found this card of a Douglas DC-7. Sadly, I don’t remember when or where I went on such an airplane. But, it’s a neat card. The caption declares that it can fly 365 miles-per-hour. By today’s standards that is a big – So what!