Trans Air became a Piedmont commuter, so they now required two pilots up front for safety and insurance purposes. Captain Kerry Cinder, “El Cind” and I were paired together flying the twin-engine Cessna 402.
The 402 is open cockpit, no partition separating the cockpit from the ten seats filled with barfing passengers.
“Low and slow,” the days were long and grueling. We lived for weeks at a time in hotel rooms in Tallahassee. Departing at six A.M., we would fly eight-leg days, from Tallahassee to Jacksonville to Ft. Lauderdale to Treasure Cay to Marsh Harbor, and back the same way, finishing up about midnight, back in our cheap hotel in Tallahassee. We flew “quick turns,” which allowed only for a quick pee and a smoke, but no food.
Room service was closed by the time we got back to our hotel, but I was too exhausted to be hungry. Days into this coffee-only existence, hunger finally kicked in. Returning to my room one night, I was starving. I see a used food tray on the floor, by the room next to mine. There, calling to me from the tray, sat an untouched salad with oil-soaked croutons. I stealthily removed the salad and a fork, trying not to alert my benevolent neighbor. After cleaning the fork, I devoured the salad. I’m in heaven, it seemed the best meal I ever had.
Next morning, rushing, showering and shaving at the same time, I get a bug in my head. I don’t want the maid to find the empty salad bowl in my room. Obsessed, the shower still running, I step out of the tub, still wet and covered with soap. I peek out my door, salad bowl in hand, only to find that my unwitting host’s tray is gone.
Its five AM, not a soul up yet. I dash diagonally across the hallway, wanting to plant the “evidence” in front of someone else’s door, and I hear the single worst sound ever… slam-click! My door locks itself behind me. Balls-naked, dripping wet, I’m in the hallway of a cheap hotel, unable to get back into my room. The salad bowl has now become my fig-leaf.
In my Hotel experiences, there has always been a maid’s cart somewhere on each level, but at five AM, having searched the entire corridor, I was out of luck. I was now standing in the little niche of the service elevator, deciding whether or not to leave the floor in order to find a maid who might get me back into my room. Its one thing to be caught naked in the hallway on your own floor, but how to explain being on some other floor?
These thoughts are whizzing through my head, as the elevator starts to move on it’s own, and stops on my floor. The doors slide open, and there stand, on either side of a cart, two very stout, black chambermaids.
Their wide open eyes and shocked facial expressions quickly resume an implacable “We’ve seen it all before” nonchalance, as they look at me, naked, wet and salad-plated.
“I’ve locked myself out of my room.” I manage, and turn towards my room.
Without a word, they follow me down the hallway. Walking with as much dignity as I can muster, our strange procession marches along the corridor. In this emotional agony, I now can’t remember my room number. In desperation I point at a door, guessing that it’s about where my room should be. One of the maids opens the door with her passkey. Handing her the salad plate, I say “thanks” and step inside. Thank God, it was my room.
“No meal is worth that,” I tell Captain Kerry Cinder, explaining my morning’s experience.
“Kid,” he grins wide, “welcome to the airline industry.”
Kerry was a high-tech guy, a Pan Am furloughee and Naval Aviator, flying fighter aircraft off of carrier decks. He was very kind-hearted to me, a man with a generous nature and loads of patience.