The summer of ’69

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Labor Day signals the end of Summer. Spelt the American way since it’s an American holiday.

Spelt rather than spelled because I’m English.

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The complexities of languages that are forever changing, adapting, expanding!

Briefly in college, I studied linguistics and found it most interesting, but it was not something I saw a future in pursuing, choosing anthropology instead – which also had no future, in fact.

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Before being sent to live in the States, I’d encountered an anthropologist who was working where we lived in Thailand. My father thought he was more likely with the CIA and it’s quite possible he was. Whatever the case, he was an entertaining man and it was through him that I learned of the science.

Consequently, when I got to college and found it was on offer as a field of study, I signed up, soon making it my major. Travelling back and forth to various parts of Southeast Asia, I had encountered a fair variety of different people and found them all fascinating.

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In my naive, idealistic youth, I convinced myself that the study of human societies would bring us to an understanding and acceptance of each other and that this was the way to solve the world’s problems. My anthropology professor quickly recognised that I was setting myself up for serious disappointment, advising me that anthropologists would not save the world.

If anyone could, he said, it would be philosophers.

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In due course, I took a philosophy course, as well as sociology and psychology.

Astronomy also fitted in there somewhere. To this day I remember the line-up of the planets, but not much else from that course. Thinking of the Universe has always been more than my mind can manage. I love to contemplate it on a clear, dark night, but dwelling on it too much makes my head ache.

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It’s all very well studying a subject that interests you, but unless you have a focus, it doesn’t necessarily lead anywhere. Anthropological fieldwork was what I fancied, but it was never going to be offered to me.

As time went on and graduation loomed, I had no better idea of what I wanted to do.

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That’s not entirely accurate. I would have liked to join the Peace Corps or the VOS (Volunteers for Overseas Service), but with college loans to pay off, I had to find gainful employment asap.

Through the four years of college, I’d worked part time, assembling printed circuit boards, so I’d become quite good with a soldering iron but not much else. I was keenly aware of my inadequacies and close to panic by the time I got my degree.

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The only thing I did know was that I wanted to travel, particularly as my few family were scattered far and wide. So I drove to Kennedy Airport and applied for a job with BOAC. My aunt had worked for them in the early 50’s and I knew it was a way to get cheap flights.

In the meantime, an employment agency landed me an interview with Pan American during which I was told that I exceeded their weight limitation for a job in uniform, much to my disgust! At the time as I recall, I was not even what you might call pleasingly plump. However, I was granted a job in one of Pan Am’s outlying hangars, processing IBM cards. You could say my heart was not in it!

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For two weeks, I gazed longingly out of the window at traffic going to the passenger terminals which is where I so wanted to be, feeling miserable.

Then one day when I got home, I found out that BOAC had called. My uncle’s mother had mixed up the message, but it turned out they wanted to interview me.

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Shortly thereafter, I gave Pan Am a week’s notice. I’d heard it was the done thing, but I suspect they couldn’t have cared less whether I showed up or not and delaying my start with BOAC turned out to be a very bad idea as there were many new hires that year and seniority came to be extremely important as I very soon discovered.

Before very long – second day on the job perhaps – I realised that working in those passenger terminals was absolutely not the same as being there as a traveller and furthermore, not terribly desirable most of the time.

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That summer, the air traffic controllers were working to rule, which caused horrendous delays for nights on end, just as the flights were full. It was also my introduction to the fact that airlines intentionally, regularly oversell their flights and that came as a nasty shock.

Having inherited my mother’s bad feet, running around the airport for eight hours a day was not only exhausting, but painful and the 28 mile commute each way was often tedious too.

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My uncle who, let’s say, had issues, hated that I’d taken the job, believing that all airline employees were immoral or debauched, so from when I arrived home, until I left for work again the next day, he brow beat me, berating me for every offense he could think up.

It was like living with an irate passenger.

Such fun it was, the summer of ’69!