My First Flight Experience

I grew up in Illinois and as a child of the 1960's took my first flight with my parents when I was about age 7. That flight on Ozark Airlines set in motion a lifetime love affair with flying off to farflung places around the world. But this very first flight was particularly memorable and some of what I learned then has served me well to this day.

The Stewardesses were beautiful, perky, polite. The Captain of the plane was like a god-like man who commanded everyone's attention and respect. Just like Peter Graves does in those silly movies with Leslie Neilson like "Airplane".
Out family flight was from Springfield, Illinois to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where my dad was to have some kind of pow wow with GM execs in charge car dealerships and financing through GMAC, the branch of GM that most middle class Americans for four decades used to finance their auto purchases through. I was going to get to fly on a huge prop jet, see the Land of Lakes and go to a Minnesota Twins baseball game. What could be better?
The Stewardess showed me the plane and let me hand out hard candies to the "guests". Wow, they actually called us guests then. She gave out chewing gum, too, so we could make our ears pop. And then there were the free drinks and a hot meal on the plane, too. Wow, this was really living. But the real coup d gras was when I got to meet the pilot and go into the cockpit. He gave me little airplane wings, something that to my knowledge only Southwest Airlines still does for kids.
I don't remember much about that baseball game, but I remember the flight coming and going. And I remember my dad asking me shortly after the trip home what I wanted to be when I grew up. I announced happily that I was going to be an Airline Stewardess and see the world. Well, I never put in for the flight attendant part, as they are now called, since men also do this job. But I have managed to jaunt around the world to countries as far flung as Scotland for college, Nepal, Thailand, Croatia, New Zealand, Fiji, Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Canada among others.

Thank you Ozark Airlines for helping give me the life I've come to know. If only Airlines could inspire folks today in the way they did back then, this would be a better world for it.