An excerpt from the 1958 Disneyland TV Show episode entitled Magic Highway USA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jZtwRJnRs
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Aviation History - NY Times Article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/nyregion/26american.html?_r=1
January 26, 2009
Lobster on the Menu And History in the Air
By ANDY NEWMAN
The flaps deployed, the landing gear descended and the gleaming Boeing 707 touched down on New York asphalt. More precisely, according to a contemporary account, the jet “settled like a snowflake on the icy runway at Idlewild Airport.”
It was a few minutes after 4 p.m. on Jan. 25, 1959, and aviation history had just been made by American Airlines Flight 2: the first transcontinental commercial jet trip, from Los Angeles to what was then known as Idlewild, and is now known as Kennedy International Airport.
It was not the first commercial jet flight (that was B.O.A.C. from London to Rome in 1952) or the first nonstop transcontinental flight (T.W.A., Los Angeles to New York, 1953) or even the first commercial long-haul jet trip (Pan American, Idlewild to Paris, October 1958).
But it was still a major milestone back in the giddy dawn of the jet era, cutting more than three hours and many decibels off the bone-rattling ordeal presented by cross-country propeller-plane flights, and was therefore cause for considerable celebration. Passengers who rode on the return flight from New York to Los Angeles later in the day recalled on Sunday that nearly everyone was tipsy, and the earlier flight from Los Angeles seemed to be, at the very least, an intoxicating experience.
“The shrinking effect of the jetliner upon geography distorted the earth’s face,” wrote The Los Angeles Times’s on-flight correspondent, Cordell Hicks. “The plane’s enchanting quality consists precisely of its capacity to displace shapes, categories, images and events.”
Fifty years later, cross-country jet travel has lost some of its luster, but for those lucky enough to have gotten in on the ground floor, rubbing shoulders with celebrity passengers like the actress Susan Hayward, the sports tycoon Jack Kent Cooke and the poet Carl Sandburg, fond memories linger.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Anne Breyton, 77, a flight attendant on the westbound debut flight, said on Sunday from her home in California.
Daniel Solon, a transportation journalist who in 1959 worked in public relations for American Airlines, credited Ms. Breyton and her colleagues for the trip’s success.
“The flight attendants were extremely attractive,” Mr. Solon, who is also 77 and now lives in Spain, said. “They all made it a good party. I know that sounds a little frivolous, but we had a very good time, and five and a half hours later we were on the ground in L.A., and having a good time there.”
The scene was straight out of “Mad Men.” Alcohol and cigarette smoke flowed freely. The flight attendants, who would have been called stewardesses, wore heels with their snug blue uniforms — “Most people wouldn’t fit into it today unless you were anorexic,” Ms. Breyton told a radio reporter in 1999 — though they were allowed to change into flats during the meal service.
And the food! No record of the inaugural repast survives (though Mr. Hicks noted that “breakfast was served at 10:15 a.m. over Grand Junction, Colo., cocktails at 11:26 a.m. over Des Moines and lunch at 12:30 p.m. over Cleveland”). But Ms. Breyton dug up a list of the rotating menus American offered on the route. Highlights included fresh Maine lobster with capers, filet mignon, herb-buttered fan tan rolls and macaroon ice cream balls with brandied apricot sauce.
Ms. Breyton said the menus were for first class, but, hard as it is to believe, Mr. Solon said that in those days the same food was served in coach.
Today, American’s domestic cross-country coach passengers may buy a 5.75-ounce package of Lay’s Stax potato crisps for $3, or, if they’re famished, an Asian chicken wrap ($6).
Of course, the ticket itself was relatively expensive. A round-trip in coach in 1959 cost $238.80 — that’s $1,743 in today’s dollars, or about 6 times the price of a bargain coach fare on American today.
On the other hand, the earlier flights were not just cushier but faster: 4 ½ hours eastbound and, because of headwinds, 5 ½ westbound. In today’s stacked-up skies, New York-to-Los Angeles flights typically take an hour longer in each direction — if they land on time. On Sunday, the first two American flights into Los Angeles from New York arrived 24 minutes and 85 minutes late, respectively.
Ms. Breyton recalled that opening-day festivities began well before takeoff. “They’d been to a cocktail party before,” she said. “When they got on board, everybody was feeling good at that point.”
Mr. Sandburg, who was 81 when he took the flight, seemed particularly moved. In an article for Ladies’ Home Journal, he rhapsodized:
“You look out of the window at the waves of dark and light clouds looking like ocean shorelines, and you feel as if you are floating away in this pleasantly moving room, like the basket hanging from the balloon you saw with a visiting circus when you were a boy. You remember how the man in the balloon basket wore red and gold tights, and was bright against the sun as he jumped out of the basket, and how a big white umbrella opened up over him, and you heard the other boys holler, ‘That’s the parachute!’ ”
“You have let your mind wander again,” the essay continued, “and you wake up now in this room where you move through rain and come out of it into a clear blue sky with a cloudland below you, and you say to yourself, ‘My, that’s purty to look at.’ ”
Ms. Breyton said that the poet appeared to be well in his cups.
“When I addressed him for something, I could tell that he was a little bit feeling good,” she recalled. “But he was not a young man then, and all things considered, he did all right.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
January 26, 2009
Lobster on the Menu And History in the Air
By ANDY NEWMAN
The flaps deployed, the landing gear descended and the gleaming Boeing 707 touched down on New York asphalt. More precisely, according to a contemporary account, the jet “settled like a snowflake on the icy runway at Idlewild Airport.”
It was a few minutes after 4 p.m. on Jan. 25, 1959, and aviation history had just been made by American Airlines Flight 2: the first transcontinental commercial jet trip, from Los Angeles to what was then known as Idlewild, and is now known as Kennedy International Airport.
It was not the first commercial jet flight (that was B.O.A.C. from London to Rome in 1952) or the first nonstop transcontinental flight (T.W.A., Los Angeles to New York, 1953) or even the first commercial long-haul jet trip (Pan American, Idlewild to Paris, October 1958).
But it was still a major milestone back in the giddy dawn of the jet era, cutting more than three hours and many decibels off the bone-rattling ordeal presented by cross-country propeller-plane flights, and was therefore cause for considerable celebration. Passengers who rode on the return flight from New York to Los Angeles later in the day recalled on Sunday that nearly everyone was tipsy, and the earlier flight from Los Angeles seemed to be, at the very least, an intoxicating experience.
“The shrinking effect of the jetliner upon geography distorted the earth’s face,” wrote The Los Angeles Times’s on-flight correspondent, Cordell Hicks. “The plane’s enchanting quality consists precisely of its capacity to displace shapes, categories, images and events.”
Fifty years later, cross-country jet travel has lost some of its luster, but for those lucky enough to have gotten in on the ground floor, rubbing shoulders with celebrity passengers like the actress Susan Hayward, the sports tycoon Jack Kent Cooke and the poet Carl Sandburg, fond memories linger.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Anne Breyton, 77, a flight attendant on the westbound debut flight, said on Sunday from her home in California.
Daniel Solon, a transportation journalist who in 1959 worked in public relations for American Airlines, credited Ms. Breyton and her colleagues for the trip’s success.
“The flight attendants were extremely attractive,” Mr. Solon, who is also 77 and now lives in Spain, said. “They all made it a good party. I know that sounds a little frivolous, but we had a very good time, and five and a half hours later we were on the ground in L.A., and having a good time there.”
The scene was straight out of “Mad Men.” Alcohol and cigarette smoke flowed freely. The flight attendants, who would have been called stewardesses, wore heels with their snug blue uniforms — “Most people wouldn’t fit into it today unless you were anorexic,” Ms. Breyton told a radio reporter in 1999 — though they were allowed to change into flats during the meal service.
And the food! No record of the inaugural repast survives (though Mr. Hicks noted that “breakfast was served at 10:15 a.m. over Grand Junction, Colo., cocktails at 11:26 a.m. over Des Moines and lunch at 12:30 p.m. over Cleveland”). But Ms. Breyton dug up a list of the rotating menus American offered on the route. Highlights included fresh Maine lobster with capers, filet mignon, herb-buttered fan tan rolls and macaroon ice cream balls with brandied apricot sauce.
Ms. Breyton said the menus were for first class, but, hard as it is to believe, Mr. Solon said that in those days the same food was served in coach.
Today, American’s domestic cross-country coach passengers may buy a 5.75-ounce package of Lay’s Stax potato crisps for $3, or, if they’re famished, an Asian chicken wrap ($6).
Of course, the ticket itself was relatively expensive. A round-trip in coach in 1959 cost $238.80 — that’s $1,743 in today’s dollars, or about 6 times the price of a bargain coach fare on American today.
On the other hand, the earlier flights were not just cushier but faster: 4 ½ hours eastbound and, because of headwinds, 5 ½ westbound. In today’s stacked-up skies, New York-to-Los Angeles flights typically take an hour longer in each direction — if they land on time. On Sunday, the first two American flights into Los Angeles from New York arrived 24 minutes and 85 minutes late, respectively.
Ms. Breyton recalled that opening-day festivities began well before takeoff. “They’d been to a cocktail party before,” she said. “When they got on board, everybody was feeling good at that point.”
Mr. Sandburg, who was 81 when he took the flight, seemed particularly moved. In an article for Ladies’ Home Journal, he rhapsodized:
“You look out of the window at the waves of dark and light clouds looking like ocean shorelines, and you feel as if you are floating away in this pleasantly moving room, like the basket hanging from the balloon you saw with a visiting circus when you were a boy. You remember how the man in the balloon basket wore red and gold tights, and was bright against the sun as he jumped out of the basket, and how a big white umbrella opened up over him, and you heard the other boys holler, ‘That’s the parachute!’ ”
“You have let your mind wander again,” the essay continued, “and you wake up now in this room where you move through rain and come out of it into a clear blue sky with a cloudland below you, and you say to yourself, ‘My, that’s purty to look at.’ ”
Ms. Breyton said that the poet appeared to be well in his cups.
“When I addressed him for something, I could tell that he was a little bit feeling good,” she recalled. “But he was not a young man then, and all things considered, he did all right.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Facebook Group - Transportation History Committee
Join the Transportation History Committee Group on Facebook:
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