A while back I did a post entitled “Things That Make Me A Geek“. If you missed it – I highly recommend you read it, and read allll of the comments. If you have ever felt weird or alone because you were insanely obsessed with some small obscure thing – this post should let you know that, rest assured, you are not alone!
In the comments to that post, CW wrote: “”I am THE geek of Pan Am!”
I love that. The geek of Pan Am? Like: WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN????
In this post, CW explains what Pan Am means to him.
GREAT post.
Check this guy’s blog every day, if you don’t already. You won’t be sorry.
Crap.
I’m just an “Eastern Airlines” geek.
Million-miler, Executive Club lounge lizard and perrenial favorite flyer of the blue and gray airline, I have letters from Frank Borman, astronaut and Eastern’s CEO for nine years thanking me for my loyalty, appologizing for nearly killing me, and commisserating over lost baggage.
Seriously, it was a great airline. I still have the Boarding Pass from the flight from Richmond to Atlanta, where in seat 15-D I met, and decided immediately to marry, the woman in 15-E. That she still loves me, and that I adore her, is a testament to my wise choice of air transportion.
Without meaning to sound like the old fogey I am (50), those of you who only know of airline travel after de-regulation, will never know that “service” was something that an airline held out, particularly to its best customers (read: “full fare”) to keep them coming back. No more, brother. No more. Now, I drive there.
Hey, I’m nowhere near as old as you, spd rdr, and I remember Eastern…vaguely. ;-) And Pan Am as well, for that matter.
You are an absolute sweetheart red… thanks as always for the kind words.
I am no geek of Eastern – but I do know lots of folks who were at Eastern until the end. Eastern was actually older than Pan Am, and was one of the original “big 5″ majors (Pan Am, Eastern, TWA, American, United) who had the original Air Mail contracts (Pan Am was international, the others were domestic).
A little known fact about Eastern is that they carried a LOT of cocaine from South America in the 1980s, a practice which contributed significantly to their demise. I have a friend who was the chief of maintenance at Eastern’s hub in Miami at the time. He did quite a few years of hard time because of it, and now drives the courtesy van between the terminals at MIA.
“The Geek of Pan Am” sounds almost like some sort of Eastern mystic. Or a 1950′s B-movie version of an Eastern mystic.
Or it’s a version of Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters.
“I am the Gatekeeper.”
“I am the geek of Pan Am.”
Another Instant List
Now that the election’s over, I can start having some fun with blogging again. Not that covering the elections and saving democracy and beating the barbarians back from the gates (kid=love) wasn’t a gas, but it’s time to relax just…