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Dallas to apply and be interviewed, they’d already know certain things about us. I went forward for those forms despite the hard stare of Mrs. Coolie, grabbed them, and returned to my chair. Then, after placing them in my purse, I went back to the desk and thanked the young man for coming.
    “I hope we see you in Dallas very soon,” he said.
    “You will,” I answered.
    I walked quickly from the school gymnasium and ran through the hallway to the outdoors. I burst through the doorway and, once free of the musty, institutional smell of the building, breathed deeply. I was going to be a stewardess, live in Boston, date all those college men, and lounge around a Hollywood pool watching Marlon Brando do swan dives from the high board.
    “Whatta ya say, Trudy?” It was the quarterback of our football team standing with a couple of other football players.
    Suddenly, he seemed like a third-grade kid wanting to carry my books home from school. I practiced my new smile on him, cocked my head pertly, and walked away with a newfound air of confidence and well-being. It was good-bye Amarillo and hello Hollywood. Or something like that.

    Rachel grew up in Louisville very much as I did in a happy family with lots of friends and all the usual high school fun. By the time she was a senior she was getting restless. She didn’t want to stay a small-town girl with a small-town job. She’d looked over all the local boys and found none exciting enough to give her the life she wanted. She watched an older sister marry and settle down into a narrow, contented groove. Rachel knew that wasn’t for her. What could she do? How could she get away? Good old Eddie who would some day inherit his father’s hardware store wanted to marry her. Her parents thought it would be lovely if she married good old Eddie. The young couple could build a ranch house out toward the new end of town, join the club, play golf. Wouldn’t that be nice?
    Ugh, was all Rachel could say to that arrangement and her dimples disappeared under a deep frown. One day she saw an ad in the local newspaper. Airline recruiters were coming to town to interview potential stewardesses. Rachel was the first girl in line when they arrived. They hired her right on the spot—a great tribute to her looks and her school record. Usually when a girl is interviewed, there follows a long screening process before she is signed.
    Rachel told me once about the scene at home when she broke the news to her folks. It was rough going for quite a while. Her parents didn’t want her to leave home. They didn’t want her to fly. If she must have a career, why not nursing? She could study that right at home. Well, the harder they tugged, the wilder she fought to get away. Don’t underestimate Rachel. She made it.
    We arrived on the same day at stewardess school to attend class number 14-45, a six-week course of basic training under the watchful guidance of “Big Momma,” a stylish Mrs. Coolie in drag. It was under her wing that we became stewardesses, a fact of her life that she probably regrets to this day.

CHAPTER III
    “Big Momma Is Watching”

    We arrived at stewardess school on a beautiful spring day. Winter would obviously not be back, and the cool, wet air gave us an even greater expectation of good things to come.
    We entered through a narrow gate manned by an elderly gentleman, obviously retired from another line of work, who looked at our letters of admission and waved us through.
    The grounds were exquisite. Flowers and shrubs were beginning to show some color against the scrim of beige buildings, each in excellent repair and no taller than two stories. And surrounding the entire grounds was a high, formidable electric fence.
    Our luggage was left at the gate for later delivery to Room 16, the one we’d been assigned in our letters of welcome. It was a coincidence meeting each other at the airport as we waited for the limousine from the school. The driver was a wizened old gentleman