Author: smart1967

Boomers fondly (or not so fondly) remember family vacations. I wasn’t one of those kids. Summers passed in our household void of getaways and memories. I watched neighbors leave on summer vacations – wondering what it was like. There are a lot of you out there with the same story. Struggling single income households with little for anything else or parents who were just not motivated enough to even consider a family vacation.

Our suburban Washington, D.C. household was both – neither the cash nor the motivation to vacation.

My father was not a family man. He liked his time alone. His thing was watching the ball game and reading his James Michener novels while puffing on a cigarette and sipping on a cold can of Bud’. My mother used to refer to my father as a “man’s man…” To this day I am not sure what that meant aside from understanding he was never up for family life. That’s what I knew as a child.

I don’t begrudge my parents for not taking vacations. We simply could not afford them. I suspect we were like a lot of families – too cash tight to take a vacation while struggling to make the monthly bills. It was a second marriage for both parents coupled with a birth father who didn’t understand the importance of child support. Our stepfather did the best he could under very difficult circumstances. We also lacked the unity of a family who wanted to be together. We lived under the same roof but lived separate lives.

Does this sound like the life you may have had growing up?

You may be able to relate to this – or perhaps you can’t. You can choose your friends – however – you can’t choose your relatives. Never more has this been truer than in the complex relationships we have with our siblings and our parents. The emotional scars you receive in childhood can last a lifetime. Time and time again, we meet people who were brought up under similar circumstances.

This was why family vacations were so important when we were children – even if it was a short day trip to the beach or to the mountains. Family vacations were a way for families to bond and – more importantly – to remember the good times. This is undoubtedly the greatest gift you can hand your grandchildren today – especially if you never made these memories to begin with. It is never too late to make new memories in a different kind of family vacation you can take today.

Our nation’s highways and byways have become exceedingly more dangerous in recent times. Back in the day, the most you had to worry about was an extended middle finger or a bloody nose. These days, you’re fortunate to make it home alive.

We’ve become a nation of hot-tempered, trigger-happy souls who settle their differences with guns, knives, and motor vehicles used as weapons. Motorists are getting shot dead at the wheel with great regularity because they have somehow offended someone else with a screw loose. I’ve seen vehicles ram other vehicles or have clipped others because they were hell bent to be first. I’ve even been passed up by crazies…young bucks doing 130 in their buzzy imports on the shoulder in great exhibitions of speed. When is all this mechanized insanity going to get the attention of law enforcement? It is like law enforcement has given up and is looking the other way.

Where is law enforcement? The California Highway Patrol (CHP) used to be all over the freeways maintaining a presence to slow speeders down. People are so bold today that they will roar through a radar trap at 80 mph. With all the negative media attention, lawsuits against police departments and municipalities, tiresome paperwork, and great risk to their own lives, police officers are choosing to stay out it. Law enforcement agencies are having a rough time recruiting new police officers. The consequences for a traffic stop are too great.

I think it is time for self-reflection in all of us because we’ve become collectively dangerous. I’ve learned a lot about myself as a driver in recent years too. My anger level is high with these crazy circus stunt acts, mostly by young people who perceive life is one big video game and the agenda is to win at all costs. These acts make my blood boil, which makes me just as dangerous as they are.

So, what about that?

It has often been said your temper can cost you a fortune.

A friend of mine has been involved in a couple of road rage accidents that got him in serious trouble. Humbled by the second accident, he decided to look at his own behavior and how dangerous he had become at the wheel. My friend is a rarity because most of us like to blame others instead of accepting responsibility for our own foolishness. This is known as cognitive thinking, which means taking a closer look at how you reaction to situations.

With each of my own dangerous experiences at the wheel, I realized it doesn’t matter what the other driver does – it matters how I respond. In each of these situations, I responded with anger and rage. I was coming onto the freeway when a pickup truck tried to run me off the entrance ramp. I responded with fury and chased the guy. As he exited the freeway, I came down the exit ramp and went around him on his right. My mirror clipped his mirror without damage – but there was utter shock in what I had done.

More recently, some idiot made a lane change in front of me right across my front bumper. Enraged, I hit my high beams, which naturally enflamed the situation. He slowed down. I made a lane change across four lanes and roared past him on the right. Next thing I knew, he roared past me on the left and jumped in front of me, which was when it became scary. He wanted a piece of me – and worse yet – I was taking my wife to a surgical procedure.

What the hell was I thinking?

Not only did I scare her, but he also stayed quite close to us – side-by-side in a stare down – with no idea what was next. Imagine if he’d had a firearm or tried to ram us. That was again when I realized I was not only a dangerous driver – but also the ignition source for two instances of road rage that could have gotten us killed.

It is important to recognize our own weaknesses in all of this. A positive way to look at this is how we respond to others while at the wheel. We respond with rage because all most of us see is a vehicle. We don’t see the person inside. We would never respond with rage to their faces.

Back in the 1960s, the National Safety Council used to run campaigns and the words, “Watch Out For The Other Guy…” Never more has this been more important than it is today because we have greater distractions and a lot more people on the road. Before you react at the wheel – get calm and think about the consequences.

There’s a reason for springtime much as there is a reason for three other seasons. Perhaps you live in a part of the country where it is virtually impossible to tell the difference from one season to another because you live where it is mild most of the time. Although Southern California has two seasons – cool and hot – the change of seasons is very apparent in the changes in foliage. We actually have autumn here – in December at the cusp of winter.

Forget seeing New England colors here.

If you live in Florida, there are two seasons – warm and muggy and hot and sticky with a chance of mosquitoes, gnats, and love bugs. When I lived in Central Florida in the 1980s, I was there long enough to wonder what winter felt like. You knew winter had arrived with the rich aroma of woodsmoke from fireplaces up north.

At its coolest, Florida feels like springtime.

A rare exception to warm and muggy in Florida was January 1986 when Shuttle Challenger exploded, killing the seven on board. It was a bitter cold Florida morning with temperatures around the 20-degree F mark. Unusually cold, prompting the day’s headlines. I was headed across Tampa Bay on the Howard Franklin Bridge to St. Petersburg when Shuttle Challenger exploded in my rearview mirror 120 miles away. It was then I realized just how cold it was in Florida. I think most will agree it was too cold to launch that morning, and with catastrophic results.

I am an East Coast boy lost in a place called California where I have been for 30 years. You become spoiled by the abundance of pleasant weather here where the sun shines most of the time. However, there isn’t a day when the sun doesn’t come blazing through the bedroom window when you long for a cloudy day with rainfall. And, when you live on the desert, the sun breaks the horizon early and sets late unless you live in the shadow of mountains.

Being Washington, D.C. born, I miss the magic of spring when trees and flowers begin to bud where the sweet smell of clover and honeysuckle permeate the air. The springtime Cherry Blossoms around the Potomac give our Nation’s Capitol an extraordinary ambiance unlike anywhere else in the world. When you’ve spent months inside in the warmth protected from the cold, those first refreshing days of spring are intoxicating. You feel alive again.

In my youth, my friends and I would load up our cars and head for Ocean City, Maryland in what are now classic cars – Chevelles, Mustangs, Roadrunners, GTOs, and a host of other mid-century marques. In those days, these classics were just old cars to us. We never even considered air-conditioned rides because that would rob you of horsepower. We headed across the Chesapeake Bay bridge and cruised Route 50 to Maryland’s Route 404 to Rehoboth and Ocean City. Spring had arrived and hormones were flowing. It was a wonderful time to be a teenager coming of age.

And this is what spring was all about in our youth. It was about coming alive amid second chances and a fresh start in a new year. Summer was right around the corner and we couldn’t wait.

Ever find yourself lost in a childhood daydream – at 65? When we were kids, we’d daydream about the future. Today, we daydream about the past – our childhoods. Imagination is remarkable because it can take us anywhere we want to go.

I love daydreaming – closing my eyes and reflecting upon a cold winter night 55 years ago, gazing into the darkness through frosty glass dreaming of the future, wondering what was out there waiting for me. I’d stare at the streetlights and think of how lonely it must have been out there in the cold. Lights in neighbor’s windows, wondering what was going on in there. Was there peace and happiness or was there chaos and unrest?

Troubled homes…

I’d watch our neighbor’s power antenna start revolving on its motor drive and wonder what they were watching. In those days, we had four channels not including UHF – Channel U. The power of that antenna didn’t mean much because there was so little to watch – yet we enjoyed TV even more than we do today.

We didn’t have cable TV then.

Today, I think of that frosty glass and wonder what that same spot is like today. What would it be like to sit in that same bedroom on a cold winter night and take in how different the place is in the here and now. Back in the mid-1960s, I’d pop Herb Alpert onto my portable photograph and listen to the Tijuanna Brass, wondering what Los Angeles was like. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 29 years and have passed the old A&M Studios on Le Brea Boulevard dozens of times in three decades. It has often been challenging to make the connection between what I heard on those TJB albums and the old Charles Chaplin Studios at that same address.

Los Angeles is so very different than my native Maryland and Virginia. I sit at my desk wondering what the Mid-Atlantic is like today. It is surely quite different than it was 55 years ago.

Life is one big irony after another. We always long for where we are not. We are here and we want to be there. Wanderlust never really dies. It keeps mankind on the move. As I slip into my twilight years, I think less about wandering and more about staying close to home. It is the vulnerable nature of being older, and remembering what it was like to be young.

Do you remember the post-war building boom of the 1950s and 1960s with the sound of hammers, construction machinery, and the smell of fresh cut lumber? This was what we did as kids for entertainment aside from kickball, hide-and-go-seek, listening to records, and watching “Popeye & Friends” after school. We messed around on construction sites and found new and innovative ways to get into trouble.

The parents would round us up to go look at new model homes and wander construction sites. Looking at model homes was a great American pastime a half-century ago. It kept kids occupied and out of trouble – that is if you didn’t wander beyond ropes across the doorways or potty in a dry toilet.

Remember that? It got your hand smacked.

I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. in the Maryland suburbs in the 1960s. Housing developments and apartment complexes were popping up all over the place. In my hometown of Bowie, Maryland, there was developer William “Bill” Levitt and the Levitt & Sons organization that changed the rural landscape overnight.

Levitt bought up rural farmland all over the mid-Atlantic to develop self-contained all-encompassing planned communities where homeowners could go to housekeeping, raise kids, enjoy life, and feel safe. He provided swimming pools and tennis courts along with dedicated locations for places of worship and public schools. If retailers weren’t available locally, Levitt provided shopping facilities. Levitt even opened the Belair National Bank because area banks weren’t willing to locate “way out there in Bowie…” Bowie was a 30-minute drive from Washington! The masses (and businesses) followed and rural Bowie became suburban Washington.

Bill Levitt was more civic minded than most developers of the era. He respected the area’s history where he built communities and retained historical integrity. Levitt’s “Belair At Bowie” community was built on a 1700-acre estate known as “Belair” just south of Bowie proper. There was a 18th century mansion and horse stables to name two assets on the property. He allowed the City of Bowie to annex all that land, which helped the city’s tax base with more than 9,000 homes built in nine years. Levitt sold the Belair estate to the City of Bowie for one dollar in 1964, which became historical museum. What’s more, Bowie, Maryland was the fastest growing community in the United States in 1966.

An unpleasant sidebar to this history lesson was the policies of real estate developers at the time – including Levitt & Sons. Blacks were not permitted to buy homes in the Belair community in the 1960s. Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it wasn’t until 1968 when Levitt & Sons, then owned by ITT, dropped this policy. Today, Belair At Bowie remains a racially diverse community with robust real estate prices.

I remember the excitement of a new home – the aroma of oil-based paint and building materials gassing off. Not good for your health but we took a deep breath anyway. In due course, the smell of a new home wore off along with the magic.

Proof everything new becomes old again.

I remember the thrill of moving into a new Levitt home in 1965. It was a traditional Levitt Cape Cod and I had my own room upstairs away from everyone and everything. What made it particularly exciting was it was Christmastime in a new home, and it doesn’t get more magical than that. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired for the first time that December.

It was an exciting time to be a kid.

Of course, the years passed, I became a man, entered the military, and moved on with a life of my own. Decades passed and my hometown became a distant memory. Life has done that to a lot of us who remember a different time and the innocence of the place where we grew up.

I returned to my hometown a few years back and it reminded me of older communities located closer to Washington along the District Line. Those pre-war neighborhoods looked so “old” to me when I was growing up. When I returned to Belair, it affected me the same way. Belair had grown old.

Isn’t it remarkable the way the passage of time affects each of us?

Boeing’s game-changing 707 jetliner connected the world like nothing ever had before. Another registration number for the history books….N748TW…a Boeing 707-131B workhorse from the time it was birthed from Boeing’s Renton, Washington plant at the cusp of the 1960s to its end in 1980.

Hard to fathom now – but the 707, the 727, and the massive 747 were all 600 mph airplanes and they could do it at 39,000 feet. Today – the average is 550. Thanks to the vision of Pan American’s Juan Trippe and Boeing’s gutsy CEO – Bill Allen, Boeing birthed the “367-80” jet demonstrator – aka the 707.

The Boeing 707 served a long and distinguished career hauling passengers around the world thanks to Trippe and Allen. It saw every corner of the world. Britain’s misfortune with the ill-fated Dehavilland Comet jetliner (crashes from explosive decompression) became Boeing’s good fortune. It sold a lot of 707s and the stubby 707 known as the 720.

N748TW was a domestic 707 void of the telltale antenna sticking out of the vertical tail for overwater communications. N748TW crisscrossed this country every way imaginable from the early 1960s until 1980 when it was surrendered to the Arizona desert in 1980. When the airlines retired 707s – the USAF snapped up every 707 it could find to get engines, pylons, and tails for its KC-135A re-engining program. The KC-135 needed the 707’s more powerful JT3D engines and its improved tail to make them KC-135Es.

You can see N748TW’s remains below at David-Monathan AFB, Arizona in more recent years. Its remains are still there today.

I loved TWA in its best years in classic TWA colors like the black and white image below. My Uncle Dick and Uncle Johnny on the Smart side of the family flew Boeing 707s for TWA. My cousin Steve Bisig is the late Captain Dick Bisig’s son and we have been the best of buddies since 1961. In those days – my uncles flew Connies and ultimately jets for Trans World.

In December of 1965, N748TW was inbound to JFK/New York when it collided with an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1049 or L-1649 Super Connie (Constellation). The Connie was the best looking airliner ever done – period. My God it was sexy. N748TW lost 20 feet of its right wing in the collision and managed to land safety at JFK with a load of soiled underwear on board. Eastern wasn’t so fortunate – it crashed and all were killed. N748TW was repaired and returned to service and flew another 15 years.

On a chilly November night in 1979, I boarded N748TW at St. Louis for the short ride down to Oklahoma City and the 135-mile drive down to Altus, Oklahoma (Altus AFB) where I lived from 1977-81. I had no knowledge of its death-defying history over New York.

N748TW would depart OKC for Phoenix and San Francisco – and that’s what 707s did in those days. They did the milk runs and they flew vast distances. UNITED, in particular, flew the stubby 720 domestically. It was never upgraded to 720B status. They flew the nation. My first ever airplane ride was a UNITED 720 in 1961.

My ride that November night aboard N748TW would be my last 707 ride ever. By 1983, all of TWA’s 707s would be gone. In due course all passenger 707s would be gone – hauling freight or giving up their parts for the KC-135 program.

In the late 1980s – I worked on Boeing 707s for Independent Air – which was a charter from St. Louis down to Mexico. Independent Air had three 707s at STL. Two were former American Airlines – 707-323Bs while one was a TWA 707-331B. As I wrenched on these classic Boeings, I marveled at their history. American’s had been meticulously maintained – pristine. The TWA – not so fortunate. One of them later crashed in the Azores.

To me – Boeing’s 707 was the epitome of what we were as a nation at the time. Our post-war greatness in the Kennedy years. We were headed for the Moon and there was no going back.

They say youth is wasted on the young.

Perhaps…

Throughout our lives are stages….chapters…phases to get through.

Living…

When we are so very young, we cannot fathom growing old. We grow old one day at a time across the decades. One day, we’re looking at photos or perhaps ourselves in a mirror wondering what happened.

I had the good fortune of growing up around old people. I’ve always possessed great empathy for the elderly. I’ve always loved old people and been eager to embrace and reassure them all will be well. There’s depth in their eyes only they understand. Their eyes are windows into their souls and the lives they have lived. There is profound sadness and yet euphoria in their memories.

When I was so very little growing up in the apartments just across the Potomac River from Washington, my grandparents were elderly…in their 60s. I am currently 67. I watched my parents journey through their sixties too. My dad – gone at 72. My mom – 84. And here I am on the downside of my sixties.

Remarkable, isn’t it?

What I love most about my early memories hanging with old people were their many and varied stories from their lives. Hanging with old people is an opportunity to learn something about our past. We are the last generation to hear stories about horses and buggies and those first motorcars. They sat on the lawn behind the apartments watching traffic roar by on Route 50 as they told their stories.

I’d look at Civil War era Fort Myer across Arlington Boulevard and wonder of its history. I’d listen to the old folks’ stories about the World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. I couldn’t relate to any of it. I’ve known people who were on the beaches of Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. Those who saw action and death couldn’t talk about it. They lost close friends – brothers in arms. It doesn’t get any closer than that. They kept one another alive. They grieved over their Fallen.

My mother was a Washington girl born and raised – sheltered from the Great Depression living in the District where the city was a company town and the masses were employed by the federal government. Everyone had a job. She worked at Agriculture.

As my mother came of age at the cusp of a world war, she watched my Uncle Wayne go off to serve in the Marines in the Pacific. She said he came home a different person. Of course he was… He was a bombardier on B-17s high over the Pacific. He understood fear and lived through the sadness of loss of those he served with. He came home to a different sister too who had grown up.

Washington wasn’t the same place either.

It has always been easy for me to spend time with the elderly. I’ve always loved their wisdom and experience. I’ve always known they’d had it tougher than I ever have.

If I can offer any wisdom – it’s to spend time with old people. Hold their hands. Listen to their stories. Take an interest.

They’ve been there…

Do you remember the old neighborhood growing up? Everyone knew each other. There were block parties and summer picnics. We played kickball and hide and go seek. If you acted up, someone would tell your parents. There was accountability for one’s actions that included consequences. When a neighbor was in trouble, everyone pitched in to help. There was a strong sense of community on a single block.

Whatever happened to that?

I firmly believe we grew up in a better time than our children and grandchildren. We didn’t have video games and electronics. We had only our imaginations and each other. I believe we were more connected than our offspring even though they have cell phones and personal computers.

We lived our childhoods face to face with a lot of interaction. We had sleepovers, plastic army men, dolls, and board games. We watched Andy Griffith and Captain Kangaroo. There was a lot to be learned from both.

Seems every metropolitan area had a Sheriff John or some other children’s programming host on local Metromedia (now Fox) stations. In Washington, D.C., we had WTTG Metromedia 5 with Ranger Hal and Captain Tugg followed by the Three Stooges, Popeye, or cartoons.

It was a great time to be alive.

In winter, we had sleds and ice skates. We learned how to endure the bitter cold and warm up inside to ready ourselves for another trek into the great outdoors. In summer, we learned to sweat, play in the sun, and live without air conditioning. And who can forget the terrific toys and other playthings we had. Every fall after Halloween, there were the teaser toy commercials from Hasbro, Marx, and Mattel. We had to work out a strategy for letting Santa know what we wanted.

Millennials have become sick and tired of hearing about boomer childhoods. However, we had a better time growing up with less creature comforts and entertainment than they have. We were more connected to each other. We addressed our friends’ parents as Mr. and Mrs. We spoke respectfully to them or got our chops busted by our parents. It was about proper breeding or the unfortunate absence of it, which seems to be the core problem today.

If I can offer young people any advice, it would be about exercising mutual respect and keeping insulting, offensive comments to yourself. Social Media has groomed a society of ill-mannered creatures who appear to have more courage at a keyboard than in face-to-face interaction.

The best thing we can impart to our young is to spend less time on a cell phone or personal computer and more time getting to know your neighbors.

There could have only been one Jackie Gleason – and no matter how old you are, you know this great performer whether you were alive during his time or not. Even young people today, who never witnessed “The Honeymooners” or “The Jackie Gleason Show” back in the day know who this man was.

Boomers remember and love “The Great One” for the entertainment he provided at the dawn of television. Gleason also exhibited his greatness on the big screen in a wide variety of diverse roles. Gleason’s very soul and creativity came right out of his Brooklyn, New York roots. He was a street wise city kid who learned the ropes early. He grew up without a father under the love and tutorage of his mother. He understood hard times and learned via raw tenacity how to forge his way to the top.

Gleason understood working class New York and modeled his many characters after the people he grew up with on the streets of Brooklyn. Gleason was Ralph Kramden and Ralph Kramden was Jackie Gleason. Gleason dropped “The Honeymooners” after just 39 episodes because he knew it was time for him to move on.

Most memorable was “The Jackie Gleason Show” developed from The Honeymooners from the late 1950s well into the 1970s. Gleason was Mr. Saturday Night for decades. The show endured well beyond its time as a variety show because we just couldn’t get enough of The Great One. The Gleason show originated from New York’s Park Sheraton Hotel before moving south to Miami Beach in 1964.

Johnny Olson opened the show every Saturday night on CBS with, “Live from Miami Beach, it’s The Jackie Gleason Show!” and boy didn’t we know it. Gleason didn’t do anything low octane. His monologues have kept us laughing as did his many characters for decades. My personal favorite was Joe the Bartender. He did Joe so well we’d forget he was Jackie Gleason. Frank Fontaine would wander in and strike up a conversation after Joe stuck his finger in the middle of his beer foam.

We laughed hysterically at Reginold Van Gleason III and his antics in the world of fantasy with a smattering of reality. The Poor Soul was vintage Gleason. We felt such great empathy for this Gleason character. Sometimes, we wept. On the big screen, Gleason moved us with a wide variety of characters. Minnesota Fats up against blue-eyed Paul Newman in “The Hustler.” Requiem For a Heavyweight” was another memorable Gleason flick.

Who could forget Gleason’s “Gigot” film where he played a Parisian custodian and laborer, a mute, a simple man with a big heart who was the butt of jokes by society who didn’t understand him. Gigot was a sweet tender man embraced by a prostitute and her daughter. He took them in, gave them shelter, and they became something of a family though perhaps short-lived.

Gleason is probably remembered best for his “Smokey and the Bandit” role as Buford T. Justice, a hysterical character in hot pursuit of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field in a hot Trans Am. Though certainly not Gleason’s greatest role, he made us laugh.

Gleason had a secondary career in his “Music for Lovers” franchise in the 1950s and 1960s. Many a life was conceived to his soft mood music on the turntable. “Music For Lovers Only” remained on the Billboard Top Ten Charts for 153 weeks, with his first 10 LPs selling over a million copies each. He was not a musician, nor did he even know how to read music. He knew how to convey a mood and he understood how to unite lovers with his work. I can still see his Capitol Records labels on my father’s Hi-Fi while my mother prepared dinner.

Gleason’s final wrap-up was the obscure 1986 Garry Marshall film “Nothing in Common” with Ton Hanks, Bess Armstrong, Eva Marie Saint, Hector Elizondo, and Barry Corbin. “Nothing In Common” was a great tribute to Gleason and his work. With the debut of “Nothing in Common” we said goodbye and “so long” to The Great One, who was very sick with stomach and colon cancer who, despite how sick he was, never failed to deliver a great performance.

Baby Boomers have had the good fortune of growing up in The Jet Age. We’ve managed to see a whole lot of firsts in commercial aviation – from props to jets to the jumbo jet. My first jet trip was in 1961 on a United Air Lines Boeing 720, which took my family and me from Baltimore’s Friendship International Airport (now Baltimore-Washington) to Kansas City’s old Municipal Airport to spend Christmas with family before heading off to San Francisco and Hawaii for a two-year stint with my father on Oahu with the NSA before jetting back to the Washington, D.C. area.

Jet travel became possible thanks to great visionaries like Pan Am’s Juan Trippe and Boeing’s Bill Allen. Trippe made air travel possible around the world with a succession of aviation firsts. He took big risks. It seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do. Boeing had a good grasp of how to build jets with the B-47 and B-52 post-war bombers. The problem with the B-52 was the sluggish KC-97 piston tanker, which struggled to keep up with Boeing’s eight-engine 600 mph bomber.

Allen saw this issue and bet the entire worth of the Boeing company on what was known as the “Jet Demonstrator” 367-80 “707”prototype – which led to the KC-135A jet tanker and ultimately the Boeing 707 commercial jetliner. Britain’s misfortune with the failed Comet program (catastrophic crashes from airframe failure) was Boeing’s good fortune. It enabled Boeing to bring high speed jet travel to the flying public.

On a chilly October evening at New York’s Idlewild International Airport (now JFK), Pan American World Airways warmed up a new Boeing 707-121 and jetted for Paris, France at dizzying speed at an altitude unheard of with Pan Am’s classic piston propeller Clippers. Overnight, jet travel was upon us to just about anywhere you can think of around the world.

It wasn’t long after the 707’s inauguration Trippe sent a missive to Allen asking for a really large 600 mph jetliner capable of hauling 400-500 passengers. As in the early 1950s – both men took huge risks to develop the most enormous jetliner ever built – Boeing’s 747 Jumbo Jet.

To build the first 747 prototype, Boeing needed a really big building. It carved out a huge section of forest land outside of Seattle in the middle of nowhere in a place known as Everett with a team led by Boeing engineer Joe Sutter known as The Incredibles. In roughly two years’ time, with strict deadlines and its share of setbacks, The Incredibles rolled out their 747 on September 1968. It took to the skies the following February and the world hasn’t been the same since.

Boeing’s very last 747 – one of the 747-8 freighters, rolled out of the Everett factory amid fanfare and sad farewells and took to the skies several weeks later signaling the end of one hell of an era of air travel. For Boeing and for the flying public, it wasn’t the end – but a new beginning with better technology – the updated 777-X (777-8 and 777-9) which will enter service in 2025. Get ready for a new age of quiet high tech jet travel where the world will become even smaller.

The 777 has already changed the world and been flying vast distances across the globe since 1995. The 747 has gone down in history in more ways than I could ever get into here. Salute! It took a Boeing to shrink the world in wide-body comfort and extraordinary style.