My sister is still going through our Dad's belongings, and over the past few weeks she's been sending me the detritus of his electronic life. Boxes full of diskettes, CDROMs and Zip (!) disks have been arriving with disturbing regularity. They're all coming Priority Mail, which makes no sense whatsoever, other than by spending an exorbitant amount to ship this stuff to me (instead of waiting until September when I'm in Phoenix and can ship the stuff myself), it's her passive-aggressive way of guilting me for not being able to come coming down for Dad's ash scattering last fall.
The other day a banker box arrived and I still don't understand why the postman decided to stuff it into one of the parcel boxes instead of leaving it at the leasing office. I was barely able to get it out and by the time I finally freed it from the box, I was cursing out my sister for spending $25 to send this…whatever it was.
It turns out I shouldn't have been so quick to judgment. While I was initially disappointed when opening the box and seeing Dad's old wool Navy blanket (something I'd told her repeatedly I didn't want), I dug deeper and found a small oil painting Dad had done of me as a baby and—this was an OH MY GOD moment—my old commercial aviation scrapbook from when I was a kid.
This was something I'd completely forgotten about, but seeing it's bright orange cover jogged that memory in an instant. As I gingerly opened the cover and saw the very first page plastered with Airline logos from the late 60s and early 70s, it all came flooding back.
Among the newspaper clippings, hand-drawn airplanes, airline advertisements, box covers from the models I'd built, boarding passes and printed paper schedules, were a dozen or so photographs I'd taken from the observation deck of Sky Harbor Airport. (This was pre-jetway Sky Harbor, when you actually got to talk on the tarmac to get on an airplane; back when there was an outside observation deck!) Being 40-plus years old, the photos were faded and discolored, but through the modern day magic of Photoshop, I was able to return them to their former glory.
And then there was the day the first 747 landed in Phoenix. It was a very big day as I recall, as the mayor came out to greet it as well the full media complement. I had seen a PanAm 747 from a distance when we'd flown through O'Hare earlier that year and I was in awe. How could anything that big actually fly?
You have an "Amelie from Montmartre" sort of a sister.
In the early 70's, mostly 73, 74. You could go to the Burbank airport (I lived in West Hollywood so it was a quick drive over the hill to Burbank) go to the Western Airlines counter. I think they were there, or my choice was always PSA. ANYWAY…we loved going to San Francisco, you could sign up for 'stand by'; there was always an extra couple of seats, and pay only 14 dollars one way. Full price back then was about 28 bucks. Only problem with 'stand by' was that you may have had to wait two or three hours before getting that good deal. I would pay full price and get there as soon as possible. Also back then you didn't have to make a reservation three weeks in advance to get a low price, especially for the S.F. commuter flights.
Very cool pictures. Thank you for sharing.
I lived in El Segundo, two blocks south of LAX when the 707 and 747s were placed into service.
I remember going over to Imperial Highway, overlooking LAX, to realize what the next generation of aircraft was to look like.
Oh, my! got a new meaning.
Those were the daze.
Today, everything is taken for granted.
But definitely heady times in the airline industry.
My next door neighbor was the director of Publicity for LAX, so we got all the inside scoop on nearly everything worthy of knowing.
And those PSA costumes…
Air Cal – well, you had to live in the correct zip code to see those planes.