Page:The Fun of It.pdf/130

106 “Why, they can serve meals in those big planes; they have parcel racks like trains; passengers can read—surely they can’t be so bad.” This was about the thought process hoped for. Second, it seemed logical to stress the point that air travel would not be so unpleasant as the majority of airports looked. And last, but not least, the high fares in effect at the time had to be justified in the eyes of prospec­tive patrons. The more one pays for a car, the more nickel trimming one expects!

My next step, then, was to join one of the pi­oneer passenger lines. Transcontinental Air Trans­port, in the traffic department. My job was to sell flying to women, both by talking about it and by watching details of handling passengers, which were calculated to appeal to feminine travelers. Justly or unjustly, air ticket sellers accused women of being the greatest sales resistance encountered. They wouldn’t go up themselves, said these men, and they wouldn’t let their families do so. One phrased it, “Father won’t fly, if Mother says he can’t.”

In my work, I did considerable flying over the Line on the regular transports, and in addition ful­filled my speaking engagements here and there, the country over, in my own plane. On these flights I sometimes took my mother with me. To her, flying became so commonplace that she took along a de­tective story in order to keep awake when we were in the air for long periods.

With the very rapid development of aviation, a