590600 - Something about Not Much of Anything

In early June 1959, at the end of my birthday-trip to New York, I flew back to Mexico. My Forest Hills playmate, Brooks and his mother, Sue, accompanied my aunt Marguerite and me to the airport. We must have taken a cab because Marguerite's red MG would not fit us all and, besides, it was always breaking down. Not reliable when catching a flight.

Farewells said, I boarded my plane, a Lockheed 1649 Super Starliner, one of the later iterations of the three-tailfin, Constellation series. I had first flown a Super G to Europe the summer previous and I thought the three fins looked cool. I was pleased a bigger plane had been assigned to my flight. 

I settled in in the usual manner, waving occasionally out the small porthole while waiting for the plane to taxi to the runway.... and waiting.... and waving... and waiting and feeling silly ... until the captain announced that there would be a short delay, due to some technical difficulty. I gave up waving, checking instead every now and then to see if Marguerite, Brooks and Sue were still standing at the departure window. Finally, the captain announced that, due to unresolved technical difficulties there would be a longer delay than anticipated. Since it would be more convenient for us to wait in the waiting room, he apologetically requested us to deplane until the “trouble” was fixed. So back to the waiting room, where we milled around speculating about what the problem might be and how long it would take to fix it.

After a while one of the stewards announced that it looked as if the technical difficulty might take a little longer to fix than thought, so we were free to amble about the airport for another hour. Once again, Air France offered its most sincere apologies.

At this point, people began to ask questions and eventually the information wrung from the crew was to the effect that the problem wasn't anything that prevented flying to Mexico, it was just felt, in an abundance of caution, that it would be better to fix it. One of the engines had a broken something or other or one of the fins didn't swivel properly... something like that.

We were all now getting quite bored. Brooks who had surely been more interested in seeing planes take off and land than in saying good bye to me was by now acting “cranky.” Once again, the captain. He announced that the fixing of the technical difficulty had proved to be more problematic than thought. Air France was trés desolée and invited us to be so kind as to pass over into the restaurant where Air France would pay for our dinner, again with apologies for the inconvenience.

And so we ate. Not only did I -- the paying passenger eat -- but of course those who had accompanied me as well. And since I was technically in custodia Francorum two stewardesses and a steward ate with us also. Of course they were just doing their job and I was only 12, but my recollection is that it was all quite affable.

Eventually, the technical problem got fixed or (as my memory suspects) the plane got switched and I was finally off. There was another meal on the plane to, because it was by now supper time.  

Little did I know that when the much anticipated jets arrived, all this gentillesse would be tossed overboard.

(And yes, the matching shirts -- Sue's idea -- were a horrible anticipation of the 1970's. Children like poor dogs have to put up with whatever ridiculous ideas their owners come up with.)