Meeting Hutch- flashing back to 40+ years ago!

When Hutch first entered the Braniff family, he was immediately thrown into the deep end of the airline lifestyle. As a newly minted Reserve, his official initiation consisted of being packed into a hotel room with two female flight attendants, a hotel dresser with a full on Liquor kit and a doobie, dressed in polyester pants! 

And that was just day one!

Hutch simply draws in the weird, the wild, and the funny wherever he goes. Who else could find themselves riding on a F/A jump seat in first class, casually discussing the finer points of dressing in drag with Vice President Spiro Agnew?

From his legendary days running with the "Popper Gang" at the flight attendant college to a lifetime of attracting absolute chaos, Hutch's journey is a masterclass in endless fun. Strap in, because when Hutch is around, reality is always stranger—and much funnier—than fiction

Copyright: 24 Hour Entertainment, Inc. 2025-2026

Music Licensed by: Pixabay

Music by: Nerdy Boyz

Song: Dance Energy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

What life was really like at 30,000 feet. We're taking you behind a curtain to share the secret histories of the crews who defined an era. Travel from the chic elegance of the 60s to the high flying energy of the 80s. An era of disco, icons, world-class service. They will never be seen again. Welcome to the Brand of Chronicles. So let me throw this out at you real quick. Would you say that at least 80% of anyone that we laid over with, flew with, apartment dwelled with, partied with, pretty much everybody smoked poca lolo, right?

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Well, you know, I'd say probably you're up there at 80%, probably.

unknown 0:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

All right. So I'm guessing. Yeah, all right. So uh we're gonna start here in uh three, two, one. Welcome to the Braniff Chronicles. My name is Chick, ex-flight tenant for Braniff International. My number, clock number is four one three five two. I am here with Hutch. Um welcome to the program, Hutch. Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you, Braniff. I do, I do. And and and do you remember what your clock number was with Braniff, or let alone what your clock number was with what, Delta?

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yeah, you know, it's funny. They they gave me easy numbers. I was I was so stupid and young. Uh 41300 is my clock number.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Uh and my class number what graduation date was 7117. So it doesn't get any easier. I don't have to remember a lot of numbers.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So everyone out there in the audience, you can either use those as some type of a PIN number or a password number if you come across as financial statements. Didn't think about that. Didn't think about that. So you're like um what were you doing? You were living in Dallas at the time, if I or Fort Worth, if I'm not mistaken. What were you doing right before you got hired by Brandiff? And how did you get hired?

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Well, I'm I'm from Dallas, actually, Farmers Branch, a North Suburb. Um, I was in my first year of college at North Texas State, and my parents, my dad worked for Allstate, and they were getting transferred from Dallas to Atlanta, and I had to make a decision whether I was gonna go with them to Atlanta or stay in school or what I was gonna do. And I I didn't know what I was gonna do, and you know, Brandon you could have your father and your daughter work at the same place, you know, and uh my next door neighbor, their father was a Brandon pilot, and their daughter was about two years older than I was. Uh Cheryl Turner, beautiful. Uh she came to my door one day with this hunk of a flight attendant, I don't remember his name, like uh Magnum PI type of guy. And she said, You ought to be a flight attendant. And I go, What's that? You know, I'm so stupid. And uh and then he said he wasn't I'm like, Well, yeah. And you know, I had to wait till I was like 19 and a half to go to final interview and got hired, and uh it was the best thing that ever happened to.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Wow, and and did you feel intimidated when you got into the Braniff College? Or what was your oh well, you were getting ready to go to college anyway, something or you were at North.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Well, I would I withdrew from my second semester because they kept telling me seniority was everything.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Oh, okay, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Yeah, yeah, and so I just withdrew.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

So you got on the Braniff bus, you went down to uh the Royal Coach Inn for training. Who was in your class?

SPEAKER_03 4:35

Oh my gosh. Um, let's see.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Bill uh was Bill Wapton in my class. No, Lupton was in mine. You were a class. Well, he was in your class. You were a class ahead of me or behind me.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

Yeah, somewhere we were right there. It's it's hard to remember. Um gosh, I don't know. I was the one of the youngest in there. Um you go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

The reason why I asked is because it seems like all of the all-stars were right around our class period in July.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

So I would agree. All the people that you know, uh I think they were hired that year because they had all that hiring. We were just racking up the seniority every time, every week they graduated a class. So it uh yeah, it was a good time to get hired. And we all knew one another.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Right, right. Yeah, what was your first flight?

SPEAKER_03 5:33

It was intimidating.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

What's that? I'm sorry. What was their what was your first flight as a reserve? What did you get called out on?

SPEAKER_03 5:42

Oh, that's a great question. I was driving around Northwest Highway with two of my buddies, and we were getting stupid, we were getting high, right? And my pager went off, and I just like had a coronary, and it was uh called in, you know, they go, Oh, you want like to Des Moines, and okay, you'll be there. So I got on there with Diane Nelson and I can't remember remember the other girl's name, and went went to Des Moines and they said, Come over, we're gonna have drinks. And I didn't, you know, here I'm 19 years old. And I go over to the room, I'm dressed in my uh polyester pants that we used in training because I didn't have anything else, you know. I knocked on the door, they opened the door in their rows with kerners, and the entire liquor kit on the dress. And I think Diane, I think Diane was rolled on the joint on the bed. Yeah, that's her. And then I just I thought to myself, chick, I go, this pinch me. This is the most incredible job. I'm getting paid to go get drunk with two stewardesses and smoke weed, and smoke weed? That was my main thing. I didn't care about the drink, it was man, I'm smoking.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

I didn't have to give up a habit.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Yeah, I didn't. I did I developed more habits, actually. That's that was the downside.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

And you're in polyester pants, and like let's let's let me know.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

That was ready to go down to the bar.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, let it be known that if you ever see Hutch, and for those of you who know him, he looks like Steve Martin. Wild and crazy guy with a pair of polyester pants on. And so if you and so if you opened up your hotel door back in 1977, that is what you would be looking at.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

With an afro, with a fro. With an afro. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

That's a good one. That's a good call out on reserve. So you went from getting stoned to staying stoned, and uh yeah, living the dream.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Living the dream, you know. I mean, we worked our ass off. I'll have to say this, you know, uh, having flown so long, uh, and I learned every skill I had, I thought, at Branick. Yeah, I was I was mentored by women older than my mother, if you think about it.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

And you know, you'd hear about the the Vietnam charters and stuff. I mean, holy mackerel, and that wasn't that long ago, yeah. So uh, you know, I was mentored by a lot, you know, by a lot of you guys. You but you're a couple years older than I am, uh and so like Don Baker, he was a mentor to me. I I would have never learned how to ski without that guy, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah, yeah, everybody brought a craft of some type, and if they didn't bring a craft, they brought some kind of drug that either you had experienced or you didn't. And I mean, when you think about the rundown, pretty much everybody, you know, had already come in that liked alcohol, smoked weed, you know, girls did black mollies for speed, you know, dropped their weight, um, coke. Um, you know, we got on the back end of flying, you know, the 714 was introduced, and like that was like the ultimate. And uh a couple of acid droppers. I remember talking to a couple of people that dropped acid and went to go see, I think it was a Hong Kong uh ballet.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

That would have been a great time to do it.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah, and they were like they were going like, wow, it was so crazy.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

You remember uh amyl nitrate with the amyl nitrate.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah, we would go down to the old plantation, gay dance bar, I'd go down there with Stacy and Don and Michelle once in a while just to do amyl nitrate, you know, just get a big heart rush.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, can I tie can I tie a story into that with my uh polyester pants?

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Okay, I'm in the same polyester pants, I swear to god, and they're they're powder blue, and we're doing in class, uh they're passing around amonitrate in a cigarette pack, and I didn't know what it the fuck it was. They go just take it, you know, just in the hand just a little bit. And I'm like, okay. So I I did it, you know, I'm a gulval, I didn't know what I was doing. Man, I you talk about a rush, my face turned so red, I got so hot that I had to get up and excuse myself from the classroom to go to the bathroom, right? And we had this, uh, whoever the teacher was, I forgot her name, man. She was kind of hard. She was a hard one. And uh, so I go to the bathroom, I put some water on my face, I come back into the classroom, and I have leaned against the counter to where water is all across my crotch. All across. And I had to walk in front of the entire class. Now with water, I didn't feel like I pee in my pants. The gay guys are laughing their ass off, hitting hitting on that nitro again.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

And with powder blue pants. With powder blue pants, interdark.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

I think that's uh yeah, it's uh that was embarrassing, and you know, I think that's why I got that calder airplane there.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

It was out of sympathy, you know, and I thought Don and I and Bill sneaking off in the backwoods and smoking joints and then going to work out with Bill Barry was a little sneaky, but you guys were popping Amal Nig.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

Yeah, that we I hey, trust me, I did not initiate it. I didn't even know what it was. I I was just going along, you know, and and I hadn't gotten uh my roommate was the weirdest too. So uh, you know, I don't know if you remember Rocky Riley. I don't well that's a that's a story for another time.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, I don't remember Rocky Riley. So um I have a you and I I think only flew a couple of times together, but this is uh but did you fly Boston? No.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

So you're Domus. I did not, I did yeah, I was in Dallas, LA, and Houston. Okay, I could when LA closed, I could only get a paid move back to Houston. I couldn't I I couldn't get a paid move to Dallas. Right, right. So that's why I took Houston.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah, see, well that's the thing too, is that's what I'm trying to recall is flying Trans-Pacific out there with you. Because we uh we had weird our rotations were odd because once we all kind of locked in to the crews we wanted to to party with, we all knew we'd be laying over about the same time in Guam, two crews, or in Hong Kong.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, that was the thing we'd overlap, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Or but we would crew out, right? Like Don, I think Don, Stacy, I we had like our cluster that went out. Uh, and then there were times when like Stacy, you and Anna and Gene and others, you guys would go out, and it was weird how we had those rotations. Well, it was what you could hold.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

I I think we you know, uh, you want to go to Guam first, and then your seniority kind of dictated that, right? And that would throw you to Seoul. Seoul wasn't the number one pick, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Right, and so a lot of us wound up in Seoul to going to the 38th parallel and you know, girls going to the wig factories and watching MASH.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Right. Yeah, so what was uh tell me about that experience flying Trans-Pacific. I mean, were you well, first of all, we were pretty much all like cigarette smokers, right? I mean, that's what I liked about the flying back in the airline days, even on a 727-200, is people could be boarding on a 200, and I think 17, you know, row 17 was the split, 17 back was smoking, 17 forward was non-smoking, which was crazy because you could sit in 16C and the guy in in in 17 would just powder puff in your head with smoke, right? And somebody would come on and they'd be like, Oh, I wanted a smoking, you know, my seats and is is non-smoking, and we would like pull that little card up. We'd advance in a row, we go, well, now you're in smoking.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Yeah, pin pin it on the back of a seat. Yeah, we just extended it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Oh man. We could we we can make those kind of adjustments. Yeah, so tell me about flying Trans-Pacific, like in-flight experiences. How was that for you? Did you work galley a lot? What were you doing? First class, coach? Were you senior?

SPEAKER_03 15:54

No, I I was mostly coach. Oh, well, there were a couple of times I had, you know, seniority was to that I had to work up front. You know, it just depended upon where you were. I worked a lot of first class too, going to Seoul, and then maybe I might have to work coach going to Guam. You know what I mean? It wasn't a position uh regulated to my seniority, it was more like regulated to my destination. Where did I want to go? And you know, you could overlap your trips when you bid, so you get pulled from that next trip and get a priority pickup. Remember that game they played? I don't remember that. So if you had a 12-day trip that went into you know June 8th, right, and your bid came out, but you had a trip that left on June 5th, they would pull you from the trip on June 5th because you couldn't fly, you were still out. Right. And then you get a priority pickup.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

And that was and you could select that.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

That's when you'd get guam, you'd get better trips. And people figured that out, and that was that made it hard to bid, and then you could orb bid with each other, you know. Right, right. That was one way of doing it. Complicated, but you know, we didn't have a computerized system back then, so it was even yeah, it was all paper.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

It was all paper. And were you living in LA at the time?

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Yeah, I lived out there uh with Bob Hollingsworth. Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yeah, that's right. That's that's right. Bob Bob was seeing Shelby, and I was seeing Denise, and the two of those girls had a nice little house in Hermosa, I think, or Redondo. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah, we were in Redondo, we were in Redondo. No, you guys were seeing now, we were in Hermosa.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, and the two gals had this cute little two-bedroom house in uh in Redondo with a hot tub. And I remember Bob was going out with her at that time, and I was hanging out with Denise, and I remember waking up one morning and going to the kitchen to get something to drink, which I think at that time it was a screwdriver. And and Denise goes, God, I you know, I think I heard Shelby come in last night, and I said, Oh, well, you know, why don't you like knock on the door and see if she's in? So she knocks on the door and opens it, and there's Bob and Shelby. Just like, hey, couple couples only. It was like some kind of like a TV series back then, right? It was way beyond Come Fly With Me with Leonardo DiCaprio, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Right. More like Forced Company.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, it was always an unusual cocktail out there. So yeah, you and Bob lived out there together. Did you guys fly a lot together? Because I do remember you know, being out there with him in Guam on layovers, and I guess you guys were kind of buddy bidding too, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Well, no, not all the time. When your roommates we kind of like that time apart, too. That'd be 24-7 if we flew and wound up in the same apartment all the time. So we kind of offset that.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Um, you know, uh you you gotta make that work.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Yeah, you gotta have that privacy, you know, aspect because you're out there Yeah, and who you're dating and at what time, you know, are you gonna bring so and so over, or you know, what are you doing tonight, or you know. And so uh yeah, it was a different I learned so much from you guys, and the in that that Asia area flying was an education. Uh I'll say that I've never learned so much in the first five years of my adult life that I did with Brad.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yeah, I think that goes for all of us, actually. Yeah, there isn't a single person that doesn't say that that was like probably their best years of their lives because the world was thrown at us and and everybody handled it really, really well. Did you like have any um unusual in-flight experiences with passengers on the 747?

SPEAKER_03 20:19

Oh gosh, I I know we went I forgot what the yeah, yeah, I I had uh spiral agnew on a flight. And we had been there the month before with the same kind of crew, you know. And the girls had been to the wig factory. I was here with Rob Rosser, Donovan, Ed Sprigs, um, and these girls came back from the wig factory, and we put on the wigs, we were drunk, and we put on the Halston uniforms and acted like we were the new crew, and the other ones were gonna get the dead head home. We were on myself. Well, pictures were taken, right? Yeah, pictures are taken with us all like dress up in wigs and sit in the stuff. So um I'm on this trip, and here's Spear Ranger. I'm working first class. Spear Ranger is over on the other side, and he's sitting on the jump seat talking to the flight tonight just on the trip, looking at these pictures. And across the cabin he's looking over. He's looking at the pictures, he's looking over at me back and forth, and I was in the jeans. He just got up, came over, sat on the jump seat, and he said and uh he said, I was on a state dinner with uh a lot of people and they took a picture of myself Uh staring up at these belly dancers. And my wife was right next to me, but they cut her out of the picture and made us look like we were looking up at strip girls, right? He said, I know stories don't uh pictures don't tell the whole story. And he flashes this picture in front of me. He goes, What's your story? And I sat there and had to tell Spiro Agnew while I was dressed up in drag.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Did you tell him if you had to cut Henry Kissinger out of the picture?

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Yeah, yeah, Henry was that was the deal. He was there with Henry Kissinger. That was that was the story. I'm like, oh my god, you know what I'm talking about. But you know, come to come to find out he was a criminal by the way, but still, it was still at my age, I was like 23 or something. I don't know. Very impressed with that kind of person and very embarrassed.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

That was just Asia trip. Right. Yeah, that was that was a bit different. Yeah, Spiro Agnew. I remember the Neiman and Marcus guys were on a trip we had out going out there. They were going to Hong Kong looking for new merchandise. You know, those guys, they love traveling on Brown. They were always going to New York, they were always going to San Francisco. And then when that Asia Pacific opened up, you know, they were going out there shopping. They were going out there, what Stanley Marcus and somebody Neiman, but I remember they were in first class. They were cool. As a matter of fact, I think if when you because I that's when I got my first Neiman's credit card, that if you went down there, somebody told me, if you go down there and fill out the application, put down that you're a Brandon International flight attendant, they'll issue you a credit card for like 200, $200 credit, you know. And yeah, I mean, I got one, you know, came in the mail. Why not? It was like, wow, Neiman Marcus Crow, I had it for like forever, and it was like, of course, one of those really old ones where they use that machine where it presses the ink on it, and it's triplicate, and it only had like six digits on it, which meant that there were only like however many people in the world had a Neiman's card, it was up to six digits. So, I mean, whatever that that counts for. But, anyways, but yeah, so I remember that was like that, and Visa was my first credit card. I remember when I got my Visa card, I was like, wow, I couldn't wait to you know spend the credit. And I remember going to I think Trader Vic's in Honolulu and sitting down and having a prime rib, and they're going, like, how would you like to pay, sir? And I whipped out that Visa credit card. I thought, like, wow.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

I am somebody.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

I am somebody, you know, and that got me in a lot of trouble in Hong Kong because it was just nothing but a bunch of electronic stores.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Oh, yeah, that's where we got the first Walkman's.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, yeah. I remember coming to Walkman, and people wanted me to buy them one and bring them one back.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Yeah, they weren't even out on the mainland. We were we were the first ones to bring those back.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, we were the first ones to bring a lot of stuff back. And we're yeah, that's true too. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Don't swear me the truth.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Hey, what about New York? Did you ever do that flight one and two in that piece of shit uh 727-100 with the mid-cabin galley?

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Oh, I remember the 100s, yes. I remember you. If you were if if you were the Genie one on a 100, you work your ass off.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Right. And you always sit in that piece of crap jump seat that was stuck to the side of the wall.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

Oh, yeah, that swing, the swing jump seat from the wall.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yeah. I felt like I was in a baby carriage of some type. It felt like a total suicide trap.

SPEAKER_03 26:03

It was. You're right in the middle of the aisle. And everybody's gonna be able to do it. There's nothing between you and the cockpit or the ass into the airplane.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Yeah. You were gonna be an arrow going through the cockpit, or you're gonna be an arrow going through the back door, man.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Yeah, it's or or some debris is gonna hit you. Something's gonna fly back there and hit you.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Hey, so tell me about working 747. Especially, I think when we did the long haul, didn't we have a two-crew exchange, eight hours, and then the shift changed, and the other crew would come on board and finish out the the flight, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Pardon me, yeah. We uh we always had two crews laying over at the same time just from the robbing of the airplane. And to take over, we never got on a plane and then just took over with passengers on board. I don't think that we ever did that. I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah, I thought there was we might have, we might have exchanged, you know, but I thought there was double crew.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

I thought there was a double crew. There was a first outbound crew coming back to LA, and at mid-flight we would switch out because the other crew was sleeping, and then they'd wake them up and we would change out, and then crew A would go to sleep, crew B would come online, and they'd finish the flight.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

I don't remember that at all. I remember that we didn't have any crew breast seats. Um I remember us being on the SPs, and they and I remember you even sleeping in the galley on the galley floor in the back, and it would just sway right in the back. And that's the only place we didn't have crew exchange. We we worked the whole damn leg.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah, I don't know why I got the double crew in there somewhere, but I remember us sleeping on the galley floors in the back. I remember everybody would throw down as many pillows as they could find that the passengers weren't using, and uh, you know, whatever they could to kind of make a mattress, and I think you'd get almost like eight across. And then Michelle was sending a text that she found that cubby hole up in the first class um upstairs deck with the bar and the I think there were only like six seats in the back seats. You could climb between the bulkhead and the back of the seat. There was an empty pocket in both sides, and you could if you were like five, five or less, you could slip in there like a little tube and sleep and crash in there. Like everybody was finding like their little their little niches to go to sleep in.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

Yeah, that we I don't remember a crew exchange. I just thought, you know, catch a Z when you could. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

All I remember is going down in the lower galley and smoking, snorting, and listening to Michael Jackson and eating first-class food and drinking wine and having a fucking discotech down there.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

Uh it was like studio 54 down there.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

It was studio 515, 516.

SPEAKER_03 29:23

Yeah, and then you go upstairs and have to act normal.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Hey, but but I'll never forget coming Trans-Pacific, coming back, and we've been partying with the pilots earlier in uh because you know, we'd leave out of there at night, right? And we'd been partying with them for a couple of days ahead, and then and these are the younger pilots, these are the ones that were coming out of San Francisco, and um, and and you know, that was kind of like their LA was their base, but a lot of them are coming out of San Francisco, and I think it was coming, some of them that came from the the Mac flights, right? But I remember we were like partying with these guys, and uh I think there were always like four guys in the four pilots in the cockpit, and uh you know, we had a cockpit key, right? And so it was lights out, you know, we do the lights out, you know, let's like get everybody you know fed, drink them, put them down, turn on the movies, we'd get into the flight about six hours, and um it was all like dark. Once in a while there might be an overhead light somewhere, and um, you know, you could go up to the cockpit like at night and just like see a million stars, right? And um, oh yeah, you know, that you just sit up there for like you sit up there for hours if you wanted to going Trans-Pacific. So, anyways, first class, everybody would like shut down. You know, the seniors weren't really that senior that were working. I mean, there was like, you know, our seniority, a little bit older that were that were handling, you know, in the seniority, we were right in there. Yeah, yeah. And so all the coach was down, everyone was sleeping. I'm walking up front, I go to first class, you know, I forget what flight attendant was there. And I said, anybody check on the cockpit? They go, no. I said, okay, well, I'll run up there and check on it, right? And that SP flew at that six-degree angle and just that little smooth hiss, right? Just gliding along. And so I go up there, nobody's upstairs in the upper deck, nobody's talking, you know, because we'd go up there and like talk shit in the in the seats. Passengers really didn't stay up there very long. And I go to the I go to the cockpit. I don't even knock. I just open, you know, I you turn out the lights before you go in, right? You got to turn out the lights as you come up the steps so you don't pass a bunch of bright light in there. I open the door and they're all sleeping. No. And I said, uh, excuse me, gentlemen, and they fucking leaped out of their chairs. And I'm like, hey, does anybody need a meal or something to drink? Oh, oh, oh, check. Oh, yeah, no, uh, yeah, I think you guys wanted to go, y'all have a cocoa and y'all have some coffee. It's just like how scary is that? It's just total, like nothing but a bunch of stars and some clouds down below. And I because you know, I didn't knock or anything, I just like opened it up, and you know, just kind of that's like going, hey, these guys are all asleep.

SPEAKER_03 32:25

And you know, I don't know how they did it, actually.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

That's like a never forget story ever. Because I was like, but you know, they worked on autopilot, so the alarm would go off, right? I mean, I was up there at times when we'd be flying on autopilot, and they were like, you know, turnouts getting ready to come, and then they'd be like, you want to hear the alarm? Yeah, sure. And then it would go off, right? You know, make turn, make turn, and then they'd reprogram it, right? And then they'd fly in another direction, which was always great because you know, when you flew with Braniff, whether you're in a DC 8 61, 51, 747, you know, where you were doing long hauls, you always got to ride in the cockpit and check things out.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Oh yeah. Actually, actually, I've I've steered a 740. I've changed the altitude once. 747. Kevin told me to sit down. I said, Yes, sir. And he stood behind me and he said slowly with your hand. And he scared the living shit out of me. He barely touched those things. You go a thousand feet. So I was like, okay, I'm good. Scared me.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

So you're flying a 747 across the Pacific?

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Yeah, just you know, just to change altitude, you know, it was enough to, you know. In my head, I'm like, there's 400 people on this airplane. No, I'm I'm fucking killing people. Okay, I'm good. Thanks. Thanks. I can say I did it. Yeah, I can say I did it. And that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Yeah. Yeah, they were all cool, man. Uh every single day. Yeah, they were way cool. Very cool. What about charter service? You fly any of those ASTI charters out of New York, down to Jamaica, or any of that stuff on those DC 8s?

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Uh, yeah, I flew a ton of those with Stacy and Anna. A lot with Stacy. Uh down to South America, do Brazil. Really? Panama. Yeah, we did uh we did South America.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Yeah, I didn't South America. I did mostly ASCII charters to the Caribbean. And you guys did layovers.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Oh yeah, we do a couple day layover in Rio and then come back through Panama and go through Lima. Uh that was back that was back in the day, you know, drugs all over the place down there.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Right.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

So uh yeah, yeah. What was that movie, Midnight Express? You had to think about that stuff when you went out of the country.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Right. Well, I mean, Braniff was notorious and by default, okay. It wasn't like they went out of their way to haul cocaine back up. But I remember they would always like those DC eights would come into Miami, and it wasn't so much that they were checking the passengers through customs as they were taking the planes apart to see where they were stashing stuff in the fuselage.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

You know how they could tell? They started, they started looking at the nose cone. Right. And and uh and apparently they said, Hey man, these screws are been look look warm like taking on, looking off, uh taking off, put them on. And so they that's how they busted in the nose cone.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, Time magazine wrote a short article on that. I remember reading it back when you know magazines were like that's where you got your intelligence. And uh I remember and I remember reading a clip on there, and it had a it had that DC 851, the blue one, old blue, I think is what we called it. And um it talked about the reason why they stored it in the nose cone is because the nose had that radar system in it, like a like a parabolic dish type of radar that scanned back and forth, and it had a pretty big cavity in it, the way it was designed. And that's where they would front load coca, was in there. And I mean, you couldn't help but Pan Am, uh maybe American for sure, uh, national, Eastern, Eastern brand of, you know. I mean, you're talking about you know, the Snow Express just piling it on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Oh man. You know, those were those were the days. Now it's a whole different world. It's kind of like the golden age of flying back then.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Oh, absolutely. You know, we we nobody was exempt at that period because people are like going, like, well, you know, I said, you know what? Pan Am, TWA, we were all in the same sack together at the same time. We were all doing the same stuff at the same time. I remember hanging out with Pan Am flight attendants in Guam. They were very cool, very laid back. You know, they'd been really jealous. Yeah, they'd be yeah, they were jealous of uniform and whatever, but you know, they'd already been right, they'd already been flying international for a long time, you know. I mean, come on, D.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Oh, yeah. These girls were like, we were here for 48 hours. You're here for four days.

SPEAKER_03 37:54

Well, yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Yeah, have a good trip home. We'll see you when you come back. I'll still be here. Yeah, right. Oh, gosh. Oh, Lord. Hey, so yeah, so what was Guam like? Oh, I loved Guam.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

I loved Guam. That's you know, um, I don't know if anybody ever tells the story of the Japanese uh soldier that thought the war wasn't over, that was found up in the jungle in Guam. And this happened when we were there. Yeah. They found a guy, and uh so you had to know somebody to get to like Telefo Falls.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

And so we wound up, I don't know, one of the girls made connections with a news guy, and we found out how to hike down there, it's a rope and all that. It it was jungle to get in there, yeah. Oh yeah, and now now I heard it's so commercialized, it's paved, there's stairs. It's just like no wonder the guy didn't know the war was over. It's a total jungle. Now they've commercialized.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

So because we'd go down there, we'd go to Telefofo, right? We'd chew on Betelnut, you know, that was a local island, catch a buzz uh uh organic. We'd chew on beetlenut, we'd go down there, and you know what? There's the wildest thing. And and I remember when the the last you know Japanese soldier from World War II came out of the bush, right? I mean, it was a huge fucking international story. But I remember when we would go there, remember those old World War II American Sherman tanks that would just be sitting in the mud, they would just be off to the side, like where they'd gotten blown up, that was their last track. That's like I got a picture with Denise and Shelby sitting on one of those. Oh, really? It's like, wow, they didn't even move it. That was where the battle ended, right there was with that tank, and who knows who else was around there, you know. I mean, I remember they would also tell us, hey, be careful when you guys go running around in the jungle because there's still mines laid over from World War II. That's true, that's true. Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Did you do the USO tour in uh Seoul to the 38th parallel?

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yeah, I did do that. I did do that.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

So the one thing about the that I don't know if people remember, we had to go through a briefing and sign away liability to anybody.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

And that was kind of scary. If you got killed, uh you can't blame us. I want to take I want to I want to go on a steward. It was, you know, for me in my age, it was like that was intimidating. I I grew up at that era.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

It's amazing what you learned. Right. Hey, so what happens? Um Brande Falls, right? Where do you go after that? You said I think Houston was your last base when they finally closed.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Yeah, hey, you know, uh I was on the last Branett flight. I don't know if you remember that.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

I was oh, so you were on 502 coming back? I was on 501, 502. So you were with Gene White when you guys came in. He tells that story in the Brandeff Chronicles really, really good, really detailed. Tell me your your tell me what tell me what happened as you as the individual. You flying over there, you knew we were kind of running on fumes by that time. What was your routine? What was your routine when you got there on that on the day before you guys came back? Tell me about your day when you board 501 and the next 24 hours and when you come back. Longest day of my life.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

I was living in Houston. I had to leave Houston early to make sure you know you got on standby. And I was living with uh a flight head, and she and I went up there and we were standing by for the uh 501. We got the last two first class seats, and then a thunderstorm came in and slowed everything down for the cars. And we took off and apparently uh told them to land the airplane in LA. Right, and the captain refused, so they got people on the plane to go, and people there are coming back. He didn't say anything. So the next thing I know, we get uh we get off the uh airplane the whole crew standing there, Gene White standing there. That's a funny story. So Gene White standing there and he goes, How'd you get you over the time to come over here? And I'm like, What are you talking about? He goes, Well, we just have standard operations and I just have no way back. So I turned our tickets to the agent said, you know, I want to go right back. Because I didn't know when what was gonna happen. So that's I was a passenger on Gene White's crew. Wow. Coming back. And then we had then we got to Dallas. I don't know, yeah, I'm not gonna tell the story from my perspective. Then we got to Dallas Gene and myself. I don't know if he told you this. We went. Down to the lounge through the DFW airport to the content. And police weren't letting anybody in the joint. I mean you saw glass and like gift shops and stuff. We went downstairs and smoked a joint and drank a beer in a while. The morning we got in. And Gilma still had to go to Houston. And that was another problem. So uh yeah, that was a long stay in my life.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Well, I just want our audience to know that at the end of at the that at the end of Braniff International Airways operational existence in the airline industry, and one of the last employees who was obviously taking a pass to go on vacation, he upheld the honor of every Braniff flight attendant by having a drink and a smoke to close out to close out the airline.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

Well, I did kind of tell on myself, but you know, that's what happened. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

I'm proud of goodbye, Branif. I didn't know if we were gonna resurrect, and if so, I don't know, I guess I'd get in trouble if they got me.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Yeah, yeah, you're right. At that point, like what did it matter? You know, here's here's another story, and and and we'll we'll conclude we'll conclude this interview. Tell me about um where were you when we were shutting down Asia Pacific? Were you laying over out there when we got the telefax and says we're pulling out, everyone needs to retreat to the base, and then and then leave LA ASAP and get back to Dow. Were you out there when that uh telefax came through? Were you on a layover?

SPEAKER_03 46:02

I think I was uh yeah, I was on a layover. Um with you remember Donovan? Yeah, love Donovan. And and he had a br we were on the last flight out of Guam. And we had uh uh no well the last flight into Guam. So we were had to deadhead out of Guam when we were pulling out, and all of a sudden here we are deadheading out.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

So we picked you guys up because Don and I for Don and I and Michelle were the working crew outbound coming back.

SPEAKER_03 46:48

No, no, no, we were on the last flight into Guam. There was no flight out. We had the deadhead on Pan Am to Honolulu from Guam. And Donovan got two birthdays because we crossed the Tiger International Bait line.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Oh, you know what? We did Seoul nonstop to LA. That's right. We didn't go through there. Yeah. Hong Kong went through Guam, Seoul went non-stop.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

Yeah, we missed you guys. We missed you guys. Yeah, on that one. But we were on the same kind of yeah, that sucked.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Huh. All right, so look, we'd like to thank our audience for joining us here on the Brown of Chronicles with Hutch. We're gonna continue this conversation, part two, right after this. One flight, one crew, one layover. Can be a memory of a lifetime.