The year was 1966. April, 1966...... M. was pregnant and due this month, so said the gods at Long Island Jewish Hospital. I was called into the personnel office to be interviewed for a new job. In the meeting was the VP of Operations for North America. I was briefed on the subject of SAS being granted the landing rights into Seattle, WA. and would this be of interest to me. The job was said to be one that could eventually lead to bigger and better jobs. My reply was simple, could I talk this over with my wife and I promised to get back with my reply within 2 days. As I left the building on my way back to JFK, thoughts ran rapid through my brain, how would I tell my parents, that I was picking up their only grandchild, even though not born yet, and moving 3000 miles to the other side of the country. More importantly, will M. want to go? I called Margot from the airport and told her what the meeting was about and I could immediately hear in her voice........YES!!!!!. BUT LET ME do some research on the city. That evening we talked about it at length and we both decided that this could possibly be very good for us. By that time Margot had done some checking and had found that Seattle was a small city of less than a million people located on the shores of Puget Sound, a warm water inlet fed by the Japanese current. WHAAA? OH YAH, I remember being there for the worlds fair in 1962. Well, without waiting the 2 days I had promised, the very next day I told the VP I was interested. Only one more thing to do......there were several other applicants and they had to check all of them out. The following week, I was brought back into the Queens Bldg head office and advised that I had been selected. I should make all the arrangements for the move and since SAS was paying for the total move, I was to coordinate this with the Manager of Personnel. My date that I was to be in Seattle was just given as July 1966 and we had to more or less be up and running for the inaugural flight on Sept 2,1966.
Well, Lisa arrived in April, as planned. A beautiful little bundle, so dependent on whatever decisions we made, ( that, by the way, changed a few years later......another story, another day). Margot and I started planning for our move and tried to include my parents as much as possible, so they didn't feel that they were totally being pushed out of our lives....that in itself was one big chore. My parents, especially my mother, understood the importance it meant to our lives but....but...but her granddaughter, how would she take it. Mom, the kid is 2 months old, she sleeps, eats, and leaves the remains in a piece of cloth wrapped around her bottom. She'll never know, until it's to late. At any rate, Margot and I agreed that since we would have no place to live, it was best for her and Lisa to go to Sweden, when I left and I would contact them and arrange transportation to Seattle, when I had picked out a house. SSSOOOOO....In July, the two of them were off to Sweden and I was off to Seattle. That year saw a tremendous strike including about 7 airlines and my trip to Seattle was quite interesting. I remember having to fly to Montreal, Canada, getting permission from Lufthansa German Airlines and the Canadian Government to board a flight destined for San Francisco, CA. reason being that Lufthansa had no traffic rights to board passengers in Canada to fly to the United States. Under the circumstances, permission granted. In San Francisco I transferred over to Western Airlines, one of the few carriers not on strike. Finally, Seattle was in my sites.
Arriving Seattle was indeed culture shock coming form the Big Apple. The terminal was so small .....home to only 7 airlines..........the airport police all dressed like "Smokey the Bear" guys with boy scout hats, parking was limited to any car that could park outside the front doors of the main terminal, including not only passengers but employees, which on one hand was good for me, since I hated to walk but on the other hand bad for the passengers with a lot of baggage. There was a separate level for arrival and departures, as there is today, but in mini size. Two restaurants, a very expensive one (for those days) and a coffee shop. It did have an employees cafeteria, but I think the food was made in the coffee shop and sent downstairs to the employees restaurant, so it took some time to get hot food. Later they put in a grill etc so hot food could be made downstairs.
The first day in Seattle, I checked in with the airport authority to find out where the SAS ticket counter was going to be. I was shown the area and was happy to see it was at the end side of the building, first airline counter you would come to. Also found out from one of the Police officers, I became friendly with, that there was a minor shoot out with a person about a month before right at the sight of the ticket counter. OOHHH!!!! crap, do you think this guy will come back just for revenge?? I was assured by Officer Montana, a 6'6" black (politically correct for that year) guy built like a 380 lb. New York Giant lineman , that was not an option , that person will not come back. Wonder what he meant by that??
Several things I noticed the first weeks in Seattle. One....there was some kind of law....I think they called it the blue law, whereby you could not purchase any alcoholic beverages on the week-ends. This forced us to pool whatever money we had on Friday to run across the street from the airport and buy a couple of cases of beer. They also covered up the meat cases with white sheets and you could not buy fresh meat. So you either bought packaged cold cuts or only ate vegetables for the week end. Well, no big thing.........until Margot arrived, then we needed meat for her Swedish meatballs.
Two... I never heard a auto horn, which made me suspicious to the fact that either I was loosing my hearing or the people just were not able to locate the horns on the cars. As a matter of fact. I was reading a map one time sitting at the red light. The light actually turned green twice and the guy in back of me just kept sitting there. He did come over after that and tell me it was OK for me to go on green.........but in a very courteous way.............Now, if that was New York, I would have been wearing his hood ornament up my butt. To this day, horn blowing, is kept to.00001%. Either it's a young kid that doesn't know better or some old crazy, that just made a mistake. Those people usually keep waving to you for 2 minutes, it's their way of apologizing for waking you up. Have you ever noticed how they now have on the new cars a little raised picture of a horn on the steering wheel ? Is that used for braille????
Three, people were very layed back. In New York I would go into a barber shop for a haircut. It was a shop that played a lot of Spanish music, the barbers were trained to cut hair to that music, so I usually left with my new haircut within 6 minutes and the word cha cha cha cut out of my hair. Here, though, they sat me in a chair told me all about what they had for dinner the night before along with the weather forecast for the next 10 days and I left 30 minutes later and I didn't even have the words cha cha cha carved out of the side of my head.
Last but not least everyone, including the checkout girl at the local Safeway were always so polite. I would stop on the way home from work to pick up a quart of milk, I could actually leave the car running if I wanted, the people seemed so honest (of course I never did). These gals would keep me there to run down the list of all the sale items for the day and to check if I noticed that the tomatoes were ripe and if I had noticed the nice yellow shade of the banana's...........WHO CARES!!!!!! JUST let me pay and get out. Oh, those days changed some 10 years later......but seem to be coming back for some unknown reason. Now the lines are so long in the markets that I decided recently to open my pint of ice cream and start eating it while I was still in line. When I finally reached the check out, the ice cream was gone but the empty carton was still in my basket. The young lady asked where the ice cream was and after I explained that while the person in front of me was taking out a new mortgage on her house with her , I decided to eat the ice cream, I guess she didn't find that so funny. SSSSOOOO....... then I thought I would try something else. I told her that since my ice cream melted away to nothing while waiting that I did not think I had to pay for it. That, apparently she found funny since she laughed and charged me $2.37.
There are so many things that were different from my east coast bringing up. Didn't people out here realize "time is money". We'll talk more about that.................later. Right now I have to make a right hand turn on a red light . Now, that's progress.
