My personal Pan Am photos are in the above trailer.
No matter when you were born, I’m sure you’ve heard of the expression; “Coffee, Tea or Me?” It came from the popular 1968 book; Coffee, Tea or Me. The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses. There was also a TV show with the same title, but not based on the stewardesses lives. It starred Karin Valentine who plays a stewardess married to two men, one who lives in Los Angeles and one who lives in London.
People often ask me what I thought about that book, and although I merely skimmed through it years ago, my answer is always the same; “Well, in my experience parts of it seem real and other parts seem like it’s made up.”
Come to find out, I was partially right and partially wrong. In fact, it seems that most of it was made up, and you’ll be surprised who made it up. I’ll get to who the real author was in a moment, but first a little back-story on it, in case you weren’t around in the late ‘60s.
If you were a teenager when the book was published you might have secretly ‘borrowed’ the book out of your mom or dad’s stack of ‘secret books’ hidden behind their Encyclopedia volumes, the last place your parents might figure you’d search for it. Written by two stewardesses named Trudy Baker and Rachael Jones, they hid that book from you because in those days it was considered “pretty racy stuff”.
That book started the myth of ‘The Mile High Club’, which your imagination can figure out faster than my explanation. The book has funny stories, such as the passenger that thought the luggage rack was an upper berth to sleep in. Sexy stories, like the captain that was “as subtle as a 747 when he was on the make”. A list of celebrity “bad boys”. Generalizations such as “Spaniards are the best lovers” and “actors are the most foul-mouthed”.
Well, brace yourself. There was no Trudy and Rachael. The writer was in fact a man named Donald Bain, who got a ‘thank you’ in the original printing and now gets a full credit ‘with Donald Bain’ on the new reprint.
The new re-print edition has a cover with a drawing of two Playmate-type stewardesses standing in front of a group of leering, male passengers. One stewardess is serving martinis, the other one is bending over to stow luggage. Surprisingly in this new reprinted version nothing has been edited out. If that book were given to a publisher today, it would be highly edited for its political-incorrectness, or not even published at all.
The inappropriate chapter on gays entitled ‘They Looked So Normal ’ wouldn’t get past an editor today with the use of the “F” word that is so hurtful. Nor would the remark, "Women of Saudi Arabia are not attractive by any stretch of the imagination.” One only has to look at Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel of Saudi Arabia to put that statement to rest.
So if you’re looking to read a Jacqueline Susann-type of fiction written by a man, who in fact did interview two stewardesses but needed to pad out the rest of the book with his fantasies, then enjoy it from that point of view. The author Donald Bain went on to ghost-write the ‘Murder, She Wrote’ mystery novels and perhaps should be congratulated for his concept, title and writing a best-seller. Maybe he’s a better writer for it, I’m not judging.
The reason I bring that book up near the beginning of my own book, I was a Pan Am Princess of the Sky, is to let you know, dear reader, that my book is a true account of many adventures that I had and witnessed while flying for Pan Am. And if any Coffee, Tea or Me-like stories creep into this text, they are all true . I tell you this in advance so I don’t have to keep repeating “This is really true ” or “Yes, it happened just like that.” Because what happens in my book, really did happen, truly.
View the samples to see my Pan Am photos.
On Kindle link below. Also on iTunes: http://goo.gl/dyNR9
Barnes and Noble Nook: http://goo.gl/5k6Tl
