I spent thirty-three years in the airline industry (1973-2007) I don’t know many people that stay in one field, job, or a specific career for their entire working life. I did because I did not want to change careers. I hated the anxiety of looking for a job and the job interviews and all that, and once I had the job I liked, or at least in the field I wanted to be in, that was it as I saw it.
It was a rough field to be in, as there were always strikes, layoffs, and pay cuts all the time. There was never any sense of real job security, at least not for very long. But the work was exciting enough for me to put up with the bad times and “hang in there.”
I had many different jobs with the airline. I started in the kitchen, went to the commissary department (loading food and supplies on the planes), then the ramp (baggage handler) and then airport agent, working at the ticket counter and the boarding gates. I was laid off during the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) but took a new job in the city ticket offices. Those were the days before etickets and people had to buy paper tickets to travel.
I enjoyed the new job in the city ticket offices. My supervisor gave me the position of working “vacation relief” which meant I would go and fill in in offices where someone was on vacation. Often it was out of state and it was a one-person office, meaning I worked all alone for a week or two. I loved that. When I was not filling in for a vacationing employee, my home office was the Beverly Hills ticker office at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, owned by Merv Griffin. I got to talk to him a little bit when we were walking around on breaks. Of course, in that ticket office we handled ticketing for many celebrities. It was normal to see movie stars, etc. almost every day.
When I was “on the road,” I got to be in places live Denver and Albuquerque and Phoenix. I loved that. Staying in hotels and seeing the area and getting to know new cities for a week or two at a time. Being my own boss with no one looking over my shoulder was wonderful. It was a great time.
I eventually stopped my piloting and sold my membership in my flying club and partial interest in our aircraft. My flight instructing at Santa Monica Airport was very short-term, but my love of aviation and piloting never wavered. During that time I lived on the beach at Santa Monica (eleven years). That beach apartment was in a dream I had many years before I lived there. I had a very strong and vivid dream of me living right on the beach in Santa Monica. I learned that we can create our own dream conditions in life.
Half way through my airline career my life made a big turn. I had lived with a friend for many years but it was not a good relationship and I eventually lived alone. My social life was getting pretty stagnant so I made a very bold move and decided to take up country western dancing. Someone years earlier had told me I should look into country western dancing as a fun activity.
I did some research and found where there were dance lessons being given in the area. I just jumped right in and very quickly met someone who just “clicked” with me (and vice versa). The chemistry was immediate and intense and finally, in 1990, I left my dream location at the beach and moved inland to the Hollywood area. Believe me, I did not see this change coming at all.
It was nice having an improved living arrangement and not living with someone who was not a good match for me. Twenty-five years later we would get married, another thing I never imagined or saw coming in the early stages of the relationship. Of course, we needed same-sex marriage to become legal, and it finally did.
When the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred, big changes came to the airline industry. American Airlines bought out TWA after our third bankruptcy and took on the TWA employees. So many other airlines went out of business in those days and the employees lost everything. Fortunately we kept our jobs but for TWA employees to keep their full-time status and their seniority (seniority is everything in the airline business), they had to go work at the St. Louis airport.
For me that was a “no-brainer” and I decided to move to St. Louis and work there. Fortunately, Terry was my registered “domestic partner” then so he got free airline travel. He came to stay with me in St. Louis every other week and every other weekend I would spend my days off at our L.A. home in Hollywood. Another time in my life when it all worked out just great. That was a good time living in both places and being together a lot of the time. Terry loved the traveling to be with me in St. Louis.
Well, it was good times followed by bad times, in a sense. In 2004 American Airlines “downsized” the airport hub in St. Louis and I took a position back in Los Angeles at the airport. I lost all my seniority since I left St. Louis, and it was as if I was a new hire, I had no say in anything with no seniority. No choice of shifts, no choice of days off, no choice of vacation weeks, etc.
I lasted for two years at LAX and then decided I could take no more. My dream airline job had changed too drastically for me to keep doing it. I took my retirement at age 58.
My story improved very quickly when I retired. Now, I am one of those who loves retirement. I truly believe I was made for retirement. No more having to spend all my time and energy working for some company, and for some boss that often times is a real jerk ( I did have a few bosses that were good or okay, to be fair) Now my life and my time were mine!
So there you have a quick romp through the basics of my life. Yes, it was very basic and perhaps shallow autobiography, but more may be revealed in future blog postings. At least now you have the outline of my life. My whole life is perfect looking at it from my current perspective. I see how things happened and why certain thing happened, even if they did not look like very good experiences at the time. The bad times, the dark times, yes they exist, but they are just parts of the puzzle, the big picture!
So now you know the basic outline of my life and we can turn to other topics in my blog. I hope you will stay tuned and see where we go.
Wally