It’s my first day with my second major airline, Tower Air. I am bonding with my classmate buddies. Lots of experience and talent in this class. I am a lightweight compared to the level of experience here. There are former Pan Am, Eastern, Brannif, and Old Continental pilots in this group of about thirty guys.
Bruce Quinn, a typical office-puke, is our Ground School Instructor. On day one, he’s discussing the Hasidic Jews we fly to Tel Aviv, Tower Air’s bread and butter customers.
“We carry more New York Jews to Tel Aviv then El Al,” he confides.
“If we have a trim problem and we’re nose heavy, no problem, we just throw a dollar bill towards the tail of the airplane.”
The class erupts with laughter, my new-found friends find this Jew-joke hilarious.
I write a note to myself on my yellow legal pad, “mouth shut, mouth shut,” and resolve that no one here will ever know that I’m a Jew.
On my first leg, Flight Engineer Wally Hudson, better known as Al Wahlid in Saudi Arabia, leans forward to ask (as I push the throttles forward to take off JFK-San Juan), “Where did you get that Hebe name?”
“My German father would be really upset to hear you say that, Wally,” I hide behind the lie.