Coffee, Tea or Me? Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Foreword

  CHAPTER I - “Is This Your First Flight, Too?”

  CHAPTER II - “Let’s Run Away and Be Stewardesses”

  CHAPTER III - “Big Momma Is Watching”

  CHAPTER IV - “You’re Nothing but a Stew-Bum, George”

  CHAPTER V - “Can We Fit Eight in This Apartment?”

  CHAPTER VI - “This Is Your Captain Speaking”

  CHAPTER VII - “You Must See So Many Interesting Places, My Dear”

  CHAPTER VIII - “You Must Meet So Many Interesting Men, My Dear”

  CHAPTER IX - “The Radar Is Built In”

  CHAPTER X - “They Looked So Normal”

  CHAPTER XI - “You Ought to Be in Pictures, Sweetie”

  CHAPTER XII - “Wow! We’re Going to Work a Press Trip!”

  CHAPTER XIII - “Please, Not Another Press Trip”

  CHAPTER XIV - “There’s Another Drunk in 3A”

  CHAPTER XV - “Baby-Sitters of the Sky”

  CHAPTER XVI - “Even Your Best Friend Won’t Tell You”

  CHAPTER XVII - “Have a Merry Mistress”

  CHAPTER XVIII - “The Saga of Sandy”

  CHAPTER XIX - “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Plane Like This?”

  CHAPTER XX - “Should We Strike?”

  CHAPTER XXI - “A Layover Is Not What You Think”

  CHAPTER XXII - “An Unhappy Landing”

  CHAPTER XXIII - “We’ll Give It One More Year, Okay?”

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Coffee, Tea or Me?

  Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones met, and became fast friends, while stewardesses for the now defunct Eastern Airlines. Although different in style and appearance—Rachel tall, blonde, and breezy; Trudy shorter, brunette, and more demure—they shared an appreciation of the humorous experiences and people they encountered on their flights. One day, a passenger with publishing connections, who’d found their stories funny, introduced them to a top New York editor, launching the saga of Coffee, Tea or Me? Trudy and Rachel appeared on myriad radio and TV shows across the country, their winsome personalities endearing them to millions of listeners and viewers.

  Donald Bain is the ghostwriter or author of more than eighty books, including Coffee, Tea or Me?, and the best-selling Murder, She Wrote series of original murder mystery novels based upon the popular TV show. His writing career spans biographies, comedies, crime novels, historical romances, investigative journalism, and business books. He was recently designated 2003 Distinguished Alumni by his alma mater, Purdue University. (A more detailed look at his career can be found at donaldbain.com.)

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in the United States of America by Bartholomew House Ltd. 1967

  Published by Bantam Book, a subsidiary of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. 1968

  Published with a new introduction in Penguin Books 2003

  Copyright © Bartholomew House, Ltd., 1967

  Introduction copyright © Donald Bain, 2003

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Baker, Trudy.

  Coffee, tea or me? : the uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses /

  Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones ; illustrated by Bill Wenzel.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: New York : Bartholomew House, 1967.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09894-3

  1. Flight attendants—Biography. 2. Air travel. I. Jones, Rachel. II. Title.

  HD6073.A43B34 2003

  387.7’42’0922—dc21 2003044462

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  Acknowledgment

  So many thanks to Don Bain, writer and friend, who’s flown enough to know how funny it really can be. Without him, Coffee, Tea or Me? would still be nothing more than the punch line of an old airline joke.

  Introduction

  So this stewardess enters the cockpit and asks the captain, “Coffee, tea or me?”

  He displays his best leer and answers, “Whichever is easier to make.”

  Little did I know in 1967 that the book I was writing with a title lifted from a lame old joke would go on, along with its three sequels, to sell more than five million copies, be translated into a dozen languages, cause anxious mothers to forbid their daughters from becoming stewardesses, spawn airline protest groups, have its title inducted into the public vocabulary, and be republished thirty-six years later, branding me the world’s oldest, tallest, bearded airline stewardess.

  I’ve loved every minute of it.

  Anyone reading Coffee, Tea or Me? today, who’s flown recently on a commercial airline, will wonder whether air travel could ever have been as much fun—even glamorous—as depicted by Rachel and Trudy. I assure you it was. And like most people who traveled by air during the sixties and seventies, I miss those carefree, alluring days. Taking a flight was something special. You dressed up before boarding a plane and never had to worry about being stuck next to a seat companion wearing rubber thongs on bare feet, a sleeveless undershirt, and a baseball cap on backward. Back then, everyone was a jet-setter. Sinatra’s “Come Fly with Me” was written for and sung especially to you. Smokers had their own section on the planes, and a cold, dry martini was de rigueur while cruising the skies. Although it became hip to criticize airline food, it was actually pretty good back then. (The jaded “gourmets” of the era who found fault with being served caviar, smoked salmon, Chateaubriand carved to order at seatside, and chocolate mousse while winging across the globe at 30,000 feet in an elongated aluminum cigar tube sadly missed the point.)

  The early 747 jumbo jets had a pianist and singer in the upstairs lounge (Frank Sinatra Jr. headlined one of the inaugural flights). It was all first class no matter where you sat, baby, primo, top-notch, top-drawer, and topflight.

  And, oh, those stewardesses. They were the crème de la crème of young womanhood, classy and cool, every hair in place, and with smiles as wide as a runway. The airlines set the bar high, and these lovely, bright, pleasant young women made sure they were up to the challenge on every flight—uniforms perfectly fitted and without a wrinkle, white gloves spotless, hats worn jauntily on their perfectly coiffed heads, confident as they strode through airports around the world, aware that admiring eyes were on them every minute and basking in the adoration. Dating an airline stewardess was like dating a nubile Hollywood starlet or lithesome r
unway model: “I’m dating a stewardess!” It was a credential men wore proudly, like driving a Ferrari or eating at “21.”

  And why not? These were special women, not only because they looked great, but because they were adventuresome, spending their working lives racing through the air high above where we mortals played out our mundane days, laying over in exotic places, bringing clothes back from Paris or Singapore to their small apartments at home base, conversing comfortably with on-board celebrities, and worldly-wise to every game any man has ever tried to play with a woman.

  Today, they’re called flight attendants, a change in nomenclature brought about by the influx of male cabin attendants. But back when I wrote Coffee, Tea or Me? they were stewardesses, and the airlines were quick to market their obvious appeal to the traveling public. They were known as “stews,” and they lived together in “stew zoos.” The hordes of men pursuing their affections were known as “stew-bums.”

  Coffee, Tea or Me? is about them, these objects of male adoration back when flying was fun—and yes, even glamorous.

  HOW THE BOOK CAME ABOUT

  One day during a three-year stint with American Airlines as exec in charge of public relations for the three New York metro airports, I received a call from Ed Brown, an editor at Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. The first book in my writing career, The Racing Flag, a history of stock car racing, had been ghosted for Brown. He told me that Chet Huntley’s producer (Remember The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC?) had introduced him to two former Eastern Airline stewardesses, who had funny stories to tell. Was I interested in working with them?

  I met with the two young ladies at Toots Shor’s watering hole in midtown Manhattan. They did have some funny stories, but hardly enough to sustain a book. I knew I’d have to use my own airline experiences—and imagination—to get the job done.

  I wrote a proposal for an untitled memoir of two airline stewardesses, which sat with Brown for a month. Simultaneously, I’d found my first agent who pitched the project to Sam Post, then editor-in-chief at Bartholomew House, a hardcover start-up at MacFadden-Bartell, a large magazine publishing company. Post bought, and the project was taken away from Brown and Pocket Books.

  The title Coffee, Tea or Me? came to me halfway through the writing of the book after hearing someone recite the old airline joke. Bingo! Boffo! How could it miss?

  Well, it didn’t miss. The hardcover was published to considerable fanfare on November 21, 1967. A savvy, fast-talking publicity pro, Anita Helen Brooks, was brought on board to hype it, and she booked my two former stewardesses, using the names I’d chosen for them, Rachel Jones and Trudy Baker, on dozens of radio and TV talk shows around the country and for myriad print interviews. The book took off like an SST and showed up on many bestseller lists, including the hallowed one at The New York Times. For the most part, reviews were good, some even calling the book “a comedy classic,” and “a wickedly funny spoof of the airline industry and its stewardesses.”

  Alan Barnard of Bantam Books put up $75,000 for paperback rights, and Hollywood came a-calling. One after another, major film studios optioned the property, only to allow their options to lapse, which opened the door for the next option to be taken. (Eventually, CBS made a TV movie based loosely on the book, starring Karen Valentine and John Davidson. As bad a film as it was, it became one of the highest-rated made-for-TV movies in history.)

  The most intriguing performing rights proposal came from Broadway legends Anita Loos and Julie Stein. They thought it would make a wonderful musical comedy and offered to option it for that purpose. But the Hollywood money up front was a lot bigger and too enticing to ignore. If I have any regrets about the intoxicating days of Coffee, Tea or Me? it was turning down the chance to see it emblazoned on a Broadway marquee. But it’s never too late. It would still make a great retro-musical.

  Bantam’s paperback edition was even more successful; at one point there were more than 3 million copies in print. Aprons, coffee mugs, and hats with COFFEE, TEA OR ME? on them sold briskly in stores across America, and readers in a dozen foreign countries read the book in their native languages. We were flying high in the friendly skies.

  Another publisher, Grosset & Dunlap, wanting in on the action, signed me to write three sequels: The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round-the-World Diary, published in 1969; The Coffee Tea or Me Girls Lay It on the Line in 1972; and The Coffee Tea or Me Girls Get Away from It All in 1974.

  ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END . . . OR MUST THEY?

  Eventually, Rachel, Trudy, and I moved on with our separate lives. Since Coffee, Tea or Me? I’ve written another eighty-plus books, including my recently published autobiography, Every Midget Has an Uncle Sam Costume: Writing for a Living, in which I tell the entire story of Coffee, Tea or Me? along with other tales of the writing life.

  Coffee, Tea or Me? became a pleasant memory, just as those sanguine days of air travel faded into today’s decidedly less pleasant experience, marked by cramped seats, shoe bombers, long security lines, chaotic hubs, brown-bag meals (if you’re lucky), and unfathomable fare structures.

  The Coffee, Tea or Me? era was over.

  Until . . . my agent of thirty-five years, Ted Chichak, received a call in late 2002 from Stephen Morrison, a bright young editor at Penguin. Was Coffee, Tea or Me? available for reissue? It was and it wasn’t. Shortly before that call, I’d committed the book to publisher and longtime friend Lyle Stuart, who intended to bring out a new edition in 2003. Eventually, all parties concerned, including a magnanimous and gracious Stuart, decided that Penguin was the right house to publish a fresh edition of Coffee, Tea or Me?—the edition you’re now reading. It’s my hope that it will bring back fond memories of a gentler time in air travel, or introduce a new generation of air travelers to the way flying used to be.

  A final word to today’s flight attendants, once known as stewardesses. Thanks for being on the front lines of air travel security, putting up with air rage, sloppily dressed passengers hauling steamer trunks aboard to put in the overhead bins, complainers, whiners, drunks, dunderheads who consider security measures a personal affront, and, most important, terrorists whose goal is to bring down the planes on which you serve. You have my undying gratitude for the tough job you do so admirably, and for allowing me to have had fun writing about an earlier era in air travel, and your role in it.

  Donald Bain

  New York, 2003

  donaldbain.com

  Foreword

  Rachel and I think alike. That’s both a blessing and a curse.

  You’d never know it by looking at us. Rachel is a tall, rangy blonde with a wide-open face, brown eyes, and a breezy personality. She’s a go-getter, the one in the crowd who’s always ready with the prod for action.

  I’m a couple of inches shorter than Rachel. My eyes are black, my hair a dark brown, and I was first in line at the dimple factory. I also smile a lot, even when the news is bad.

  We met at stewardess school, roomed together, and immediately felt that rare and wonderful rapport that lights up when two people get along beautifully. We fly together, live together, hold each other’s hands through blighted romances, tell each other of newfound loves, laugh together at today’s mad, mod world, and, from time to time, get in trouble together.

  In many ways, all stewardesses have a common bond. Rachel and I were both from small towns and anxious to take a fling at the big, bad world. That’s true of most girls flying today.

  Stewardessing is the ideal job for girls looking to travel and see other places, make many new and varied friends, feel at home in hundreds of strange cities, and get paid for these things to boot.

  Yes, it is true that a stewardess is a built-in baby-sitter, flying waitress, and congenial hostess, no matter what troubles befall her. The troubles can be endless: a mixup on meals, a shortage of liquor, engine difficulties, other mechanical quirks, male pinchers, female whiners, vomiting children, two-timing stewardesses who steal your man, and, once
in a while, a plane that takes a good friend to a fiery death.

  But we accept all this. The bitter with the sweet, and there’s so much that is sweet about being an airline stewardess.

  Our lives are different. Airline crews are a close group of people. We work together. We live together. Airline crews stay at the same hotels and layovers. But that doesn’t mean it’s sex, sex, sex all the time. It can be if you want it that way, and some do. We all like a little of it. But most of us are also discreet about our private lives, which simply puts us in a class with almost every other young girl tasting life and what it can offer.

  One last defensive word before we spring you loose on Coffee, Tea or Me? A stewardess is a girl. She wears a uniform and works at thirty-thousand feet. But above all she is a girl, female and subject to all the whims and desires of all females.

  One of our desires is that you know more about us, our lives, loves, and laughter. That’s why we put together our similar minds and wrote this book. Smoking is permitted, and seat belts are at your discretion.

  Welcome!

  CHAPTER I

  “Is This Your First Flight, Too?”

  It rained very hard the day we made our first flight as stewardesses. We should have recognized it as an omen of things to come. At the time, it just seemed wet. We should have realized that our first flight couldn’t be like anyone else’s first flight.

  Our brand-new, custom-tailored, form-fitting, wrinkle-proof, Paris-inspired uniforms became soaked in the dash from our apartment house lobby in the east Seventies of Manhattan to the cab at the corner. The doorman, a portly fellow known for his red face and his ever-present brown paper bag, had taken over twenty minutes to get us that cab, which cut drastically into the hour we’d allowed ourselves to reach Kennedy Airport.