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The way it was

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently was on an airplane and sitting next to me was a young man in his mid-twenties, sporting a full set of complicated tattoos. He was very talkative, and as we were chatting I mentioned that the first time I ever was on an airplane was in 1960.

He was utterly flabbergasted. If I had said 1860, he could not have seemed more surprised.

He said to me that everything must have been so different back then, and I agreed it was pretty different. He wanted me to explain what it was like. One of the things I mentioned is that airplanes used to often fly without being at all full. Another was that the flight attendants wore really sharp uniforms. And still another was that the passengers dressed up for flying – such as, for women, dresses and high heels.

He was even more flabbergasted. “Why?” he asked. “Why would they dress up?” I tried to tell him that was just the way it was in general. People took pride in the way they looked and most people dressed up to go out, and that very much included plane flight.

There was more to the conversation, but that’s the part that sticks with me. That, and his utter surprise.

Comments

The way it was — 104 Comments

  1. Forty years from now, people will look back and wonder what they were thinking about when they got tats. For me, one of the worst things in the last 20 years. I especially cringe when I see a beautiful young woman with tats.

  2. I can be a bit of a slob, but even I would draw the line at wearing some of the stuff I’ve seen people wear on airplanes. A grown man in board shorts and flip flops? I mean, c’mon… have just a little self respect. At least wear shoes and pants.

  3. Cornhead:

    Agree absolutely regarding women and tatoos. But then it seems styles are anti-esthetic, purposefully embracing ugly or disfigurement.

  4. I know I’m counter-cultural, but I try to resist succumbing to what feels like a too-casual culture. I never come to work without a tie, and if I go out to eat you can be sure I’m at least wearing a sport coat. It’s still less dressed up than the everyday wear of adults when I was growing up, but I feel more comfortable dressing above the average.

  5. Tats … the main reason I won’t give one of my granddaughters cash. I’ll help her pay bills etc when she gets in a bind but never cash money. She’ll get a new tat!

    Flying I never “dress up” but always wear long pants to use incase the plane goes down in water.

  6. People dressed up even for baseball games in the 1960s. If you look at the clip of Bill Mazeroski’s home run that won the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates, you’ll notice that most of the male fans in the stands are wearing shirts and ties; some are still wearing their suit jackets even though it was a warm day. Most of the women are wearing either dresses or blouses and skirts. The teenage boys swarming Mazeroski at home plate at 1:20 are wearing neat, clean polo shirts and slacks (no jeans), and their hair is cut short.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE1nYMg-jU4&ab_channel=MrBuccos

    (An aside: the baseball uniforms of the early ’60s were still saggy and baggy– not like the more form-fitting double-knit uniforms that came in in the 1970s.)

    As for tattoos– they are just as ugly on men as on women. Likewise face and body piercings.

  8. I remember flying from Miami to Key West aboard a twin engine piston powered Douglass DC3. Must have been ’76 or ’77. Airline was appropriately called Air Sunshine(Sumtimes). What a rush, the smell of avgas lingered in the cabin.

  9. I bet if you had asked him to say how many years ago 1960 was, he couldn’t have done it without a calculator.

  10. Tatts are symbolic of the degradation of American society. As a doc, I’ve learned to marvel at the design of the human body in all its intricacies. But these young tattoo-covered people with the education and wisdom of door knobs is just plain revolting. They think they can make their bodies look better. Not happy with God, their Creator, I expect: “He shoulda done a better job!”

  11. ” Another was that the flight attendants wore really sharp uniforms.”

    No, no, no. Not flight attendants, stewardesses! I work at the air museum with two retired airline pilots; one 93 and retired when Pan Am went under, the other in his late 70s and retired from Delta. As was often the case in those days they both married “stews”. Both have told me their wives only refer to themselves as stewardesses and are quite proud of that label. They hate the term “flight attendant”. Both men say, to get their wives really angry is to call them FAs. They will respond that they were very proud of their wings and the rigorous training they had to go through, and also the uniforms which gave them special status.

    Definitely a bygone era.

  12. You also just flashed your flimsy copy of your ticket at the stewardess as you entered the cabin and could sit in any unoccupied seat you liked. It was an entertaining way to meet a girl on the way back to college in the fall. The downside was that people smoked once the seatbelt light went off.

  13. I loathe wearing suits and ties and refuse to be the customer of any business that requires them. They’re incredibly uncomfortable. I have exactly one jacket and tie that I use for funerals, and I resent having to wear them then. The restriction puts me in a truly foul mood.

    As far as flip-flops go, if you aren’t at the beach or pool or your own home you’ve got no business wearing them.

  14. Yes, back then, you would just present an airplane ticket and walk onto the plane; no security gates and guards, no terrorists.

    Remember that when we hear that terrorists will not change our way of life.
    Sure; what bullshit.
    You can’t even attend a Broadway show without having purses searched.
    And note which cultures contribute the vast majority of crimes, terrorism and death.

  16. @Neo:I mentioned that the first time I ever was on an airplane was in 1960.

    He was utterly flabbergasted. If I had said 1860, he could not have seemed more surprised.

    In his defense, that’s like you riding a train in 1960 sitting next to someone who had first ridden in 1899.

    Yeah there’d be some changes.

    What I don’t understand though is the sort of cultural arrest we’re seeing. You’ll see young people today trying to dress like hippies, and I defer to those who were adults at the time but I don’t think very many young people in the late 60s and early 70s were wearing zoot suits with chains down to their ankles.

    Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence is largely about this. Interestingly he lived through just about 20% of the 500 years he covers.

  17. “Both have told me their wives only refer to themselves as stewardesses and are quite proud of that label. They hate the term “flight attendant”. Both men say, to get their wives really angry is to call them FAs. They will respond that they were very proud of their wings and the rigorous training they had to go through, and also the uniforms which gave them special status. “

    Well, yes. What self-respecting and even proud woman wants to be lumped in with a bunch of gay-simps invading their economic niche. “We’re all together now!”

    As I recall, Stewardesses were at first required to have some nursing background.

    Of course on the downside, there were always some horny and emotionally stunted hetero cartoonists riffing off of the glamour, looks, and for them unobtainability of these professional women. But until such point as these men could be legally deep sixed for being naturally born goons and boors, there was not much to be done about it. Except laugh at their projected neediness.

  18. Boundaries, and consideration for the sensibilities of others.

    Probably a hold-over to some degree from that culture of honor, John Haidt refers to and which Neo has covered.

    People nowadays feel entitled to offend, and derive malicious satisfaction from doing so. They know that the cost of whapping them upside the head to get them out of your face, entails costs that you the victim, are not likely to willingly pay. Whereas the offender has no other purpose or point in life other than to offend and force others to accommodate his obnoxious will and often noxious body.

    It is his way of affirming the fact of his existence, if not its value.

  19. Paul in Boston remarked on the fact that smoking was allowed on airplanes back in the day. Another change is the installation of fortified locked cockpit doors. I have a cousin who recently retired as a commercial airline pilot. When he was first hired as a pilot in the late 1970s, the smaller commuter planes often had only a curtain separating the cockpit from the passenger cabin. One anecdote he liked to tell concerned the Philadelphia/Harrisburg commuter flights. One day a guy boarded at Philadelphia who was so drunk he almost poured himself aboard. After takeoff, he asked the flight attendant for another drink. When she refused (on the grounds that he was clearly more than three sheets to the wind), the guy pushed forward toward the cockpit, brushed the curtain aside, and decked the first officer (who fortunately was the pilot monitoring rather than the pilot flying). My cousin, who was sitting in the jump seat as a trainee pilot, shoved the drunk back into the passenger cabin, where several passengers literally sat on him. Meanwhile the captain radioed Harrisburg asking for assistance from LEOs. When the plane landed, it was met by a squad of four beefy state troopers who removed the drunk– none too gently– and carted him off to the local state police office in Harrisburg. Hard to imagine that cockpit security was so lax not that long ago, but of course, obnoxious passengers are still with us.

  20. The smoking! That’s what I remember from airplanes in the way back times. Smoking on the airplane. It would be utterly unthinkable today. The weeping and the outrage and the demands to speak to management to say nothing of the diversion to the nearest airport and arrest for violation of federal law that would result! Also, I remember as recently as the 1990s being on flights that were far from full. One coming back from Atlanta to San Fran on a McDonnell Douglas L1011 (Delta) where there was me and 2 other people in economy. That L1011 was also a weird experience as I usually flew United and was used to the Boeing.

  21. I don’t mind tatoos but I do mind the obliviousness of getting all tatted up and thinking you’re a rebel. Nuh-uh! You’re wearing a uniform … permanently.

  22. “But these young tattoo-covered people with the education and wisdom of door knobs is just plain revolting. They think they can make their bodies look better. Not happy with God, their Creator, I expect: “He shoulda done a better job!” “

    Huh. Yeah. It probably is their way of punishing a god they don’t believe in by becoming as rebellious, or even as monstrous, as they dare. And at the same time they overcome what they naturally fear [the monstrous and chaotic] by becoming it, to quote C.S.Lewis. While, in social terms, adding to themselves the only standout attributes they believe they really possess.

    I’ve asked quite a few who have gotten tattoos why they did it. Apart from a couple of servicemen from the 1950s with an anchor on the outer forearm or “Connie” on the outer bicep; none have been able to really say more than, ” I thought it would look cool “.

  23. And, of course, the security. That has changed everything. Turned a 2 hour flight into a 4 hour experience. I’ve gone back to driving a lot more because of it.
    Also, recent development: You have to be checked in an hour before your domestic flight. Checking in online is not good enough. If you do that, print out your boarding pass at the same time b/c the kiosk at the airport won’t let you if it’s less than an hour before your flight.

  24. The change is like the end of the movie “Casino” where all the fat sweatpants-wearing zombie horde is invading the casino after the corps ran the mobsters off.

  26. physicsguy:

    Oh, I know they were stewardesses. But I said “flight attendants” to the guy because I figured he wouldn’t know what “stewardesses” were.

  27. Arguably it started with the beat generation though it became mainstream with the boomers. When a generation rejects the tenets of prior generations, it seeks ways to differentiate itself from what it holds in contempt.

    Adorning the human body with ‘art’ declares that nature’s work is but the canvas upon which the individual expresses their individuality.

    In order to see that instead, tats degrade a ‘canvas’ of supernal beauty, they would have to grasp that no human artist can improve upon a sunset, no musician exceed the exquisite restfulness of a babbling brook.

    It’s their nihilism upon which their arrogant ignorance rests.

  28. Cicero:

    Thing was, this tattooed guy was quite nice, as well as friendly and talkative and quite curious about the past.

  30. It is kind of sad. I look at people in fairly nice restaurants–or in church–who look like they were working in the yard, or just got up off of the couch. Certainly dress codes have changed dramatically, and I enjoy many of the changes. For instance, I seldom wear a tie anymore. A sports jacket with open collar shirt is my semi-dressed up look. But, if you don’t make some effort, I should think an occasion would lose much of its “specialness”. I know that I am an antique curmudgeon, but it also degrades my own sense of occasion when I look around the restaurant and see grunginess on every side.

    I might go so far as to say that the near complete abandonment of style and grace is a symptom of deeper issues.

    Some people call them tattoos, or tats; I call it graffiti. A turn off.

  31. neo:

    You can use long pants to make a life preserver (learned in a Junior Lifesaving class in my long ago “the way it was” time). In case you forgot your seat cushion. I don’t know how effective these long pants life preservers actually are, hypothermia and all that ….

    And regarding hypothermia, IIRC, having any barrier between you and the water helps, so there is probably a trade off.

  33. Back in the 60s, in bootcamp in the Navy we were shown how to construct life preservers out of whatever clothing we had on and then were made to try them out. The ability to swim was mandatory and long pants made the best Macgyvered preserver.
    It was 70 ft from the flight deck to the water. That’s of course if the sharks didn’t get you.

  34. I wear long pants, a shirt (not a tank top), a lightweight jacket, and closed shoes to fly. I don’t much care for the idea of my bare skin on an exit slide or touching some hot metal or toxic materials on the way out of the plane.

    I’ve got you beat, Neo. I was a small child, but I clearly remember flying from Chicago to Phoenix in a big TWA Super Constellation with four engines (prop, of course), in late 1953.

  35. My grandparents were of modest means; probably true ‘middle class’ for the time (1930’s until 1990 when grandpa died; grandma lived until 2008). They owned a small farm, but farming was not their primary profession. Nevertheless, ‘going to town’ (which was a small city of 15,000, eight miles away) was worthy of dressing and grooming appropriately, even if they were just going shopping. That was the culture, even among ordinary folk. Grandma followed that standard until the day she died.

  36. “…Super Constellation…”
    Now THAT was probably the coolest commercial plane ever built…
    (YMMV of course…)

  37. In 1961 our family we flew from Frankfort (after finding my lost little sister in the airport) to New York in a Super Constellation(propellers, loud, and shakey?). It was at night and one of my brothers and I got to go up into the cockpit. It was a military flight I suppose. We had to stop at the Azores for some reason and I remember getting a hat, but don’t remember where I lost it.

  40. Going out meant being seen. You wanted to look decent. Look great, if you could pull it off.
    The airport is a great place for people watching. If you are watching people, people are probably watching you. Don’t be a slob!
    I am a lawyer. For the first 10 years of my professional life I felt uncomfortable going out to dinner anywhere after 6:00 PM without a tie and jacket. Now I don’t even wear a tie to work most of the time.

  42. The last time I flew for work, I remembered why I purposefully dress comfortably for flights now. Taking off my dress shoes, my watch, my belt, fixing my shirt tuck, and all of the other hassles that are involved when going through the TSA security theater.

    9/11 was 20 years ago and we are still doing all of this completely ineffectual nonsense. Just think about how bad it’s going to get in the next 20 years now that the regime has openly gone tyrannical.

  43. PA Cat: I was not aware of that article but I suppose it’s hardly an original thought. It seems to be that our civilization peaked with the world depicted in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Nicely dressed people inhabiting a world where technology seemingly offered a glorious future.

  44. Kate, the Super Connie was the epitome of elegance. It just looked like it wanted to go–fast. OM, you must have been on a militarized version, because the commercial one was quiet, and smooth.

    Even in the ’60s, on International or Conus to Hawaii flights, Pan Am Stewardesses would serve champagne in coach. Since government subsidized Pan Am, a U.S. Flag Carrier, was seldom full there was plenty to go around. In the early days of jets, even the 707 was still fairly roomy–not like a Connie of course.

    My first Navy deployment to the Mediterranean was in 1959. That was the first year that Officers did not have to wear hats on shore leave. Coats and ties were mandatory of course. I don’t want to think about how they dress now when representing the U.S. Navy on foreign shores.

  45. Has there ever been an airliner more beautiful than the Connie?

    Non-military / gang Tattoos are a good but not perfect marker of a disturbed personality.

    Not a perfect marker because it’s common for perfectly bland, anodyne NPC people (you need to know the NPC == Non Playable Character meme in 2021) — perhaps the type of guy Neo sat next to — to pick up and adopt behavioural cues from ‘spiteful mutants’ they encounter. . This is what Woodley of Menie calls The Social Epistasis Amplification Model:

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-017-0084-x

    The more that we tolerate tattoos and other weird behaviors in genuinely disturbed people in our midst, the more that other people of weak character or little self-awareness will adopt same —> get a tattoo and body piercing cascade.

    It’s arguable that mutational load is increasing in the general population for a variety of factors, but let’s argue about that one another day. It should be pretty obvious though that if you tolerate, let alone actively praise, deviant behaviour then you’re going to see increasingly more of it.

    Twist: There is another factor driving some men to get the more aggressive looking tribal type tattoos — increasingly bizarre and depraved female (temporary) mate selection strategies driven by Tinder and other online apps. This all a bit too much for some Boomers to process as the sheer awfulness of the situation is bad for the blood pressure. Will discuss another sunnier day 🙂

  46. Just had some electrical work done on the house. The electrician was a butch, tatted up trannie with red hair. I was like, “WTF?” But kept my cool. Talked with her/him about the issues and she/he set to work. No fuss, no muss, he/she did an efficient, excellent job. Well spoken and courteous he/she was too. Can’t always judge a book by it’s cover.

    Ah, the 60s in commercial; aviation. The jets were becoming more common, but we still had the prop jobs – DC-6s, Convairs, Viscounts, even DC-3s.

    Flying was more of an adventure. People walked out on the tarmac and went up the stairs into the plane at most terminals. Jetways were a new big deal. It was also expensive. You didn’t fly unless you absolutely had to or your boss or Uncle Sam was paying. A rare occasion, why not dress up and look good?

  47. @oldflyer:

    Officers on port call in civvies today look like slimmer versions of Bob From Accounting with cookie-cutter haircuts. Chinos abound. At least spotted across hotel buffet tables they do. What they get up to later and in what attire, I have no idea.

    What I find more interesting and should come as zero surprise to readers here is that have noted that as soon as the Enlisted hit town, they split along ethnic lines. It will come as no surprise that I have noted this behaviour. It boggles my mind that it probably comes as a surprise to some that such behaviour exists in Nature as soon as the twin shackles of discipline and Zampolits are removed, but there you are.

  48. Don’t know how much that French #@$%er Sartre flew, but he was prescient about the modern experience when he came out with “Hell is Other People.”

    Given that I and many others with no mojo feel this way, I have no problem imagining that Bezos, Gates, and Friends are working towards exterminating most of us on the installment plan.

  49. Any fashion trend that can be reversed I’m ok with. And tattoos, with advances in tech, can be removed.
    As far as plane travel – on my first flight ever, the captain invited anyone who was curious into the cockpit. Yeah, those days are gone.

  50. Reading this blog, and most especially the comments after perusing other spaces in this internet thingy is frequently like a breath of fresh air inhaled after exiting a fetid, crowded elevator. I particularly enjoyed Zaphod’s piquantly cogent observations today. I was also reminded of a very old memory, of the day when my parents took me along to bid farewell to my aunt, who was flying out of the ABE Airport in Allentown, PA to take up new residence with her husband who had found a job in Oregon. Auntie Olga (yes, her real name) was traveling with her infant son as passengers on the most beautiful machine I, a six year old boy whose favorite reading material was the Tom Swift, Jr. series of boy’s adventure books, had ever seen. It was, of course, a Constellation. It sat regally on the tarmac while everyone ascended that long rolling stairway, and awhen boarding concluded, those gigantic props started spinning after the engines coughed and belched smoke like God’s own radial motivators! Long Nosed Connie moved out of the boarding area to the runway, where I lost sight until it came back into view gently climbing into the morning sky. I had forgotten about that until just now. Seems like yesterday, but it might as well have been in a different aeon. Come to think of it, maybe it was.

  51. @JJ:

    No you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Not if you’re living in the invisible ashes of what was once Christendom.

    The heathens out there most certainly DO judge a book by its cover. Chinese or any other kind of Asian will wonder out loud why a person look like just fell out of a manure truck if they’re so smart and have their life together. It’s hard to argue with that logic.

    In a state of Civilisation we have the luxury of giving everyone time to show his or her individual character… and the double luxury of congratulating ourselves for our broad-mindedness.

    But in a state of shall we say Civil Disorder, you’d be wise to play the odds. Stereotypes are just our ape-brains solution to modeling normally distributed traits on the African Savannah. Damn smart apes even evolved a bit of Bayesian neuronal trickery to fine-tune the distribution parameters on the fly.

    In other words, when the power goes off and the water goes off and you hear gunfire coming closer and then some face furniture bedecked tattooed individual pops up in your sight picture…

    Well you get the picture 🙂

  52. The stewards on the Pan Am Clippers on the San Fransisco-Manila route, back in the 1930’s, had to be trained chefs, the better to pamper the passengers.

  54. I was in my thirties before I had a job where I had to dress up for work. The business school I attended had a dress code, which the kids around me chafed at, but I respected. All my life, I had noticed that dressing up got you a certain measure of respect, like during my first visit to Vegas in 1991. I was 21, waiting for my mother, when someone walked up and asked if I worked for the casino. I said no, but I did thank them for asking.

    Anyway, after thirty years of casual clothes at work, I liked wearing good shoes, dress pants and dress shirts. It made me feel like I was “at work,” as opposed to somewhere else.

    That feeling gradually eroded over the years of no real respect, and everyone else in my department and my company dressing down. Now I wear jeans and T-shirts in summer, jeans and dress shirts in winter. And sneakers. Last week my department was asked to wear business casual for some guests. I haven’t been so uncomfortable for years. I felt a twinge about it, but I got over it by the next day.

    Also, no more ties for me. A dress shirt, my sport coat, and dress pants is what I’ll wear to my next job interview. I call it my “Jim Rockford look.”

  55. I am you younger than most of the commenters here, having been born in 1970. I have straddled both the rural and urban life and civilian and military life. I have dabbled in farm work and office work. Have worked in a supporting role with a federal Law Enforcement agency through the Guard. Have some college, and a police academy certificate, plus a couple of MOSs ( Bradley Hull Mechanic and later, Intel) in the military.
    These days I am basically a self employed handyman.
    You will find me in jeans, seven days a week. At work, at home, at church. I save the less faded jeans for church. Never wear shorts except to sleep or swim. Usually wear t-shirts 7 days a week in warmer months. Rarely wear buttoned up shirts except occasionally to church, and then mainly only in the winter. Most of the time, the “ dress up “ shirt is a pullover shirt with a collar. That is typical summer time church wear. I never wear flip flops, except for in the shower when I was in the military. Usually wear lace up work type boots seven days a week. And my beat up cowboy hat, pretty much everywhere except church. I have no tattoos. Back when I was younger, I thought that one of those barbed wire tats around the biceps might be cool. Now I just need to get the biceps beefed back up!
    I wish American men would stop wearing sandals. We are not peasants or Middle Easterners ( mostly not). And I wish women past a certain age would not wear sandals either.
    Thats just my opinion.
    Its still sorta a free country.
    Dress how you want.

  56. I’m not super obsessed with dress codes — Sorry Hugo Boss 🙂

    But: Gratuitous Tattoos, Face Furniture not good.

    Wouldn’t go so far as to to declare open season on Varicose Veins, but beyond a certain age, leg-covering apparel is advisable at all times.

    Also, the expression “Mutton Dressed Up as Lamb” needs to make a comeback.

  57. A Lockheed Constellation is being restored at Bridgewater Air Park in Virginia. This airplane, built in 1948, was the first plane to be known by the designator Air Force One. It was found at an airport in Arizona, not in very good shape but was repaired well enough to fly to Virginia.

    https://www.firstairforceone.com/

    The runway at Bridgewater is 2745 feet by 60 feet…landing the Connie on it must have been a pretty intense experience.

  58. I don’t mind that people do not dress up; but, for Pete’s sake! Quite a few of these passengers need to show some respect for fellow travelers.

    I do NOT want that guy who is wearing a sleeveless shirt and his smelly armpits are stinking up my flight to sit next to me.

    And, don’t get me started on those selfish passengers who feel it is their right to take off their shoes and the rest of us have to gag on the smell of sweaty feet!

  60. My grandfather was an auto mechanic in the 1920s. He wore white coveralls with a shirt and tie underneath to work on cars. We have pictures of him dressed that way.

  61. Steve in PA:

    I flew in quite a few propeller planes during the 60s and even the early 70s. You’d wait on the runway and then the engines would rev up, very loud and also making the plane shake. You could really feel those propellers.

  62. Ah, Neo. There is no more beautiful sound, outside of a concert hall, than a big radial engine starting and reaching a steady idle state. The shaking, belching, and smoking are throat clearing exercises before it settles down to a comfortable growl.

    My first squadron was in Skyraiders (you could look them up). When six or eight were starting on a cold morning it was like a concert; only occasionally spoiled by a failed starting technique that produced a prodigious backfire. Some treated the starting process as an art form. The engine was an unforgiving critic.

  63. I was at the local garden store a few days ago. In front of me was a woman in her mid 30’s just covered with tats. The young teenage cashier was just gushing over the lady’s tats saying someday I’m going to have tats like those. When it was my turn to check out I asked the young lady if she planned to work as a cashier at the garden center for the rest of her life. She said oh no after college she was going to work in an office. I told her that if she got tats like the previous lady she would be working there instead.

  64. PA Cat: I remember that home run so well. Damn!!!!
    Men wearing suits to ball games back then was so normal that on really hot days, when suit jackets would be removed during the game, the Yankees announcers (well, particularly Red Barber) would describe fans as being “in their shirt sleeves.”

  65. Some guy wrote an interesting blog posting about why one should never date a woman with tats and piercings. Very much about their bring insecure and poor decision makers and whatnot. He ended up getting death threats.

    Things went down hill when there was unfortunate problem with eating apples from the wrong tree. A certain Catholic priest named Martin helped the downhill slide. But a significant turn was the 1930 Lambert Conference, a meeting of the Anglican Church. Before that Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church agreed on the procreation aspect of married relations and need to be open to new life. Allowing the one body union thing to be for recreation alone opened too many doors better left shut.

  66. A few years ago I walked the Camino de Santiago from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela. I wore long sleeved, button down dress shirts and polyester khaki dress pants. Both very comfortable. The hands and face took a lot of sun. But I was appropriately dressed for Mass, whenever that opportunity occurred. Those in t-shirts and shorts suffered a great deal from sunburn. When people asked about my dress I explained I was a high school math teacher, and they were understanding. Now I live in South Texas. I have worn the button down dress shirts, but a neighbor encouraged a change to Hawaiian style of shirts. The untucked loose fashion will be more accommodating for concealed carry purposes.

  67. Fun thread. I’m a late Gen Xer, so tattoos were cool and very much mainstream by the time I was in high school. I joke that I’m a rebel because I don’t have any. It still strikes me as a thing that foolish youth do. You may not realize at 21 that the skin under your “sleeve” is going to sag someday, but it probably will. I’m amazed at acquaintances who apparently didn’t have that figured out yet in their 30’s. It seems that should make the “ROI” of a major tattooing at 35 much less than it would be at 21.

    I still don’t see many conspicuous tattoos in the professional world.

    The comment above about people seeing their body as a canvas instead of a finished work explains a lot.

  68. Back in the day–sixties at least–on campus, the lefties insisted that women who took care for their looks, or who didn’t need to, were shallow and superficial and to be viewed with contempt.
    This resulted in a number of women not taking particular care, and not a few outliers going deliberately for Maximum Frump.
    Whatever the lefty guys said, they lusted after sorority row. Who wouldn’t? But the combination was pretty toxic. Due to a choice of activities on campus, I found myself in the middle, counseling courtesy to wannabe hippy guys. Nobody told me I’d be doing that when I got to college.
    Fast forwarding half a century, I wonder if some trace of that remains. Certainly, there are effects seen on the street which, unbecoming as they may be, don’t seem to have saved much time in getting ready to go out.

  69. I clearly remember my mom dressing up to go to meetings etc. She also wore gloves. You never see gloves today. My parents greeted friends as Mr, Mrs, Miss in front of us (kids) and we were required to do the same. Mrs Smith etc. It was more formal and polite in the 50’s and sixties. I never saw the flying part as my first flight was to basic training in Texas.

  70. “ I’ve got you beat, Neo. I was a small child, but I clearly remember flying from Chicago to Phoenix in a big TWA Super Constellation with four engines (prop, of course), in late 1953.”

    Between the two of you for my first flight. Our grandmother took my next brother and me on a Braniff flight from Denver to Colorado Springs and back in the latter 1950s. Horrible flight – the wind sheer coming off the Front Range made everyone sick, except for our grandmother who flew more than most back then. Next trip was in 1960 on a 707 between Denver and NYC, then DC back to Denver. Didn’t get sick, but hit turbulence when the stewardesses were serving dinner, and with a large bump, it was all over the isle. Finally got over most of my turbulence issues 25 years later, when I was flying back and forth between Denver and Albuquerque every week. Again, it was the wind over the CO Front Range that was the issue. Almost any other direction into/out of Denver – boom, you are through the turbulence.

  71. Tatoos are ok for the following:

    1) Pirates

    2) sailormans

    3 Bikers.

  72. I think people fail to understand the comfort across a myriad of climates that dressing well provides. Planes that fly at high altitudes have air conditioning of some sort, but efficiency in controlling temperatures wasn’t as good in the 60s as it became at the turn of the century. Having a suit coat or a petticoat gave you a layer of warmth as the plane climbed into the cold air.
    But I think the biggest reason for being well dressed was that flying was mostly a business activity. Just taking a plane was a significant expense and wasn’t done for a weekend trip to the beach or the slopes. Even if leisure, usually it was a well planned trip that people spent months to prepare. You dressed up according to the importance.
    What we see today is the wonder of markets and open competition. Unregulated airlines have driven down prices such that flying is no longer a special event. Nearly anyone of various economic where with all can afford to fly to just about any location. So we get people on airplanes that, regardless of economic wealth, dress according to the effort it took to book the trip; i.e. very casual.

  75. The author of the op-ed traces the decline to JFK: “Think of all the things that have happened since men stopped wearing hats. Terrorism. The Vietnam War. Coronavirus. People not being able to tell a man from a woman. Rap music. . . . You know who I blame? JFK.”

    JFK wore a topper at his inauguration. And it’s not hard to locate pictures of his predecessor outdoors and bareheaded.

  77. https://www.newyorkupstate.com/resizer/2UQmba2-5P81YM82J4yc3sOXJRY=/1280×0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/image.advance.net/home/adv-media/width2048/img/newyorkupstatecom_national_desk_blog/photo/2016/07/13/dewey-picjpg-79060ec80508a025.jpg

    Here’s Dewey at a groundbreaking event. You have a pair of state troopers in hats, a local policeman in a cap, a couple of women in the crowd in hats (with others bare-headed), and, by my count, one of five men in the crowd visible wearing a hat. Dewey and the other participant are bare-headed, as you can see. You can see from the ceremonial shovel that the photo was taken in July of 1946.

  79. “A certain Catholic priest named Martin helped the downhill slide.” Milwaukee

    So Martin Luther’s objection to the selling of indulgences wasn’t valid?

    His perception that the Catholic Church had become so corrupt that internal reform was impossible was mistaken?

    That a priesthood that frequently contradicted Biblical precepts and then enforced that hypocrisy through the authorities wasn’t a norm supported by Rome?

    In the following centuries, the Catholic Church semi-reformed itself because of a brutal truth; the Protestant sects offered competition. As long as there was no competition, there was no impetus for reform.

    BTW, I consider myself a Christian, as I hold Jesus Christ to be the Son of God. But I am neither Protestant nor Catholic. I was raised Catholic until I could decide for myself. Over the years, I have looked into a representative sample of Judeo/Christian faiths and have found them all to be wanting in one aspect of another.

    “For me, organized religion is too much like being marched in formation to see a sunset.” John D. MacDonald

  80. Ah yes, Tom Dewey. The NY governor immortalized by Alice Roosevelt Longworth (TR’s daughter) as “the little man on the wedding cake” because he looked like one of those miniature plastic bridegrooms that were used to decorate wedding cakes in the ’40s and ’50s. Speaking of Dewey and hats– there is a film of the 82nd Airborne Division’s January 1946 victory parade in NYC. Skip ahead to 3:15 or thereabouts, and you’ll see that Dewey was wearing a hat, which he removes (together with the other nonmilitary dignitaries) as the color guard passes the reviewing stand.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v4OMPhRDIM&ab_channel=WW2MarketGarden

  81. If you want to get ahead, get a hat.

    I’ve got a mess of them. I fall farther behind every year.

  82. I asked the young lady if she planned to work as a cashier at the garden center for the rest of her life.

    If you’re not her uncle, best let it ride until she learns the hard way.

  83. which he removes (together with the other nonmilitary dignitaries) as the color guard passes the reviewing stand.

    He was particular about rubrics.

    I’m old enough to remember the cafeteria supervisor at my elementary school snarling at a kid in my class to take off his cap indoors. I think that dame was born around 1912. My mother used to fuss about hats indoors, so I take mine off unless I have nowhere to put it. The chain of custody over the rubrics has been lost, regrettably.

  84. I noted with interest the comments about the body being either a finished work or a canvas. For me, the only difference between makeup and tattoos is that the makeup is easier to change when fashion or personal tastes change. I give them both a pass. Dressing up is sometimes fun and sometimes useful, but never anything that holds my attention. I tend to use my clothes up and discard them often. I do without them entirely whenever feasible. It’s nice to own enough property to ensure privacy, if you’re an introvert and only mildly interested in frequent human contact.

  85. I remember my first jet trip in 1961 to Sao Paulo, Brazil. We left Miami flying south to Lima, Peru, refuled there then east across the Andes and the Amazon to Sao Paulo. I thought that was a long way to get there, but all routes had to be approved by the government then. I still have a picture of me in a suit.

  86. Oldflyer
    On my first smokechaser fires in the mid-sixties we could occasionally expect help from WWII TBM’s as retardant planes. They could carry (I think) 300 gallons and were configured to be able to make two drops. They would come in right at tree-top level and you could often hear that big radial echoing down the canyons on the way in. You could feel the wind when they made their drop. Great times; great memories.

  88. Dennis, the TBM/TBF was G.H.W. Bush’s plane, and it was probably the largest of the single engine combat planes in WWII. The engine was a Wright R-2600, which may have been unique to that plane, as the wonderful P&W R-2800 was favored at the time The Super Connies were equipped with Wright’s R-3350, as was the Skyraider. The R (for radial)3350 pushed the bounds for reciprocating engines.

    The last plane that I flew for British Aerospace, the iconic BAe-146 which really did not succeed as a people hauler, has found new life as a fire bomber. Like the prop and turbo-prop planes that preceded it, it can get lower ans slower than most of the other jets in use. I wish I could still pass an FAA physical.

  89. Tats on a youthful beautiful body is like putting bumper stickers on a Lamborghini. Graffiti really. Me and mine are so tat and pierced free, my wife doesn’t even have pierced ears.

    As I have mentioned before, when I was young, we had a light plane so I never flew commercial until I was older child. I remember it though. Jet service from Portland, Oregon to Honolulu. We went to see my dad. He was about a third of the way through a tour in Vietnam when his base was hit in the Tet Offensive. He had flown a lot of combat missions and was given R&R in Hawaii at Fort DeRussy. The whole guest area now is all high-rise hotels but back then it was all little bungalows in a coconut grove. A fantastic week.

  91. Oldflyer

    Yes, I’ll bet that once you’ve had one of those planes under your hands it would be hard to walk away. Neptune is flying the BAe’s here and they often fly over my house going and coming. Remarkably quiet for 4 engines.

  92. Re: Tattoos…

    A study published in Personality and Individual Differences found that women view men with tattoos as being more masculine. They also intimidate male rivals. This gives tattooed gents an advantage when it comes to getting laid.
    …
    The study also found that women view men with tattoos as being worse fathers and partners. This makes sense given the bad-boy image associated with tattoos.

    –“Study Finds Having Tattoos Gets You More Sex”
    https://manofmany.com/entertainment/study-finds-tattoos-gets-sex
    ________________________________________________

    Makes sense though the article doesn’t explain the appeal of female tattoos.

    I recall reading that perfume functions more as a territory signal to other women than to attract men. I’ve never been a fan of perfume on girlfriends.

    Perhaps female tattoos ae similar.

  93. Geoffrey Brittain – I actually wondered if Milwaukee was referring to a more contemporary Catholic priest named Martin the first time I read his comment.

    I can’t disagree with Milwaukee that the Reformation was a turing point, but I blame corrupt clerics much more than Luther.

  95. Chases Eagles, my dad was a computer programmer with General Dynamics Convair Div. at Carswell AFB from ’55-’59. He took my mom and I to the base around ’58 to watch a developing YB-58 takeoff just for the sheer awesome beauty of the thing. We saw stunning B-36’s there too. Later, circa ’66 I think, he and I went back to see the XB-36 museum piece (single tires) on display.

  96. I was born in ‘75 and didn’t fly on a plane until I was 20 years old. My first flight was from Montreal to Amsterdam (I was an exchange student). No one was dressing up then. The least pleasant aspect to me was the smoking. But it was otherwise enjoyable and I remember the Dutch stewardesses being the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Unearthly, to a small town red neck like me.

    And as far as tattoos go, only smoking disqualifies a woman so quickly as tattoos do when I rate her attractiveness in my mind.

    Nothing proclaims someone’s uniqueness as well as going along with the rest of the herd to the tattoo parlor.

  97. I dont think I’ll ever fly again. Not so much the flight, but everything that goes with it. I have time now.

    First flight, Chic-LA, 1973. I loved the 8 song stations by genre. Midnight at the Oasis was one song. Bennie and the Jets was another. Those were the eventful moments in those days.

    My companies HQ was near Minny. Chgo to Minny. I must have been there 10 times. Never once flew. Maybe a 6 hour drive with a good wind. One time it took me 14 hours to get home. Lake Delton near Madison had “exploded” all over the interstate. One time driving back, there was about an 80 car pile up in the snow. How I avoided it is a mystery. 20 miles later, Another 10 cars go off the road into a snow ditch. I couldnt help. I would have been killed. And then this one time at band camp………..sorry, couldnt resist

    Heh. Maybe I will fly again. 🙂

  98. Huxley,

    “Makes sense though the article doesn’t explain the appeal of female tattoos.”

    Well, one hypothesis advanced by M. Mcardle (IIRC) back in her sane days, was that tats and piercings were a statement, originally by the drop-dead gorgeous: I’ve got so much beauty to burn, I can put a safety pin through my nose and still look great. The male equivalent is, of course, driving an expensive 575HP car which won’t even hold a picnic basket.

    Once the signalling starts trickling down, though, the results can be unpleasant or unwise.

  100. Well, one hypothesis advanced by M. Mcardle (IIRC) back in her sane days, was that tats and piercings were a statement, originally by the drop-dead gorgeous: I’ve got so much beauty to burn, I can put a safety pin through my nose and still look great.

    Sonny Wayz:

    Plausible and I admired McArdle (or Jane Galt) more once upon a time.

    Though I tend to the more symmetrical explanation that the bad girl is seeing the bad boy’s tattoo bet.

    A lawyer friend in his better-looking days met a beautiful woman covered in tats at a bar. They had a super torrid affair, which ended badly of course. She went back to her biker boyfriend. He decided later that her tats were a red flag they were two people, too different.

  101. Since we are on a tattoo kick…

    Here’s a marvelously weird concept. A young singer/musician is seriously injured in a car accident and is sidelined at home. A friend gives her a portable 8-track recorder. The singer comes up with the demented idea of reproducing the Who’s album, “The Who Sell Out,” note for note including accompaniment a cappella!

    And it turns out so hilariously wonderful that Pete Townshend of the Who flips for it:
    _____________________________________________

    I was a little embarrassed to realize I was enjoying my own music so much, for in a way it was like hearing it for the first time. What Petra does with her voice, which is not so easy to do, is challenge the entire rock framework.
    …
    When she does depart from the original music she does it purely to bring a little piece of herself — and when she appears she is so very welcome. I felt like I’d received something better than a Grammy.
    _____________________________________________

    –Petra Haden, “Tattoo” (from “The Who Sell Out”)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT6FmfM8jh8

  102. “A lawyer friend in his better-looking days met a beautiful woman covered in tats at a bar. They had a super torrid affair, which ended badly of course. She went back to her biker boyfriend. He decided later that her tats were a red flag they were two people, too different.”

    Of course. She was very likely a Cluster B Cluster %^&*. They’re notoriously quick to put out, insanely great in bed, and then sooner or later flip out into a psychopathic break and become Hell On Earth. A female covered in Tattoos is pretty good sign of unstable self-identity — even more of a dead-giveaway when there’s an oblivious ad-hockedness about the art-work rather than it being one artistic whole.

  103. Forget flying in the 60s with a flimsy ticket flashed at an employee at the check-in counter.

    In 1994, I flew on my first and only trip to NYC. I found a one-way ticket for sale in the newspaper want ads. I drove cross town to buy the ticket for $150 (I think). The ticket was in the sellers name–some Jewish last name and Andrew for the first name. I am latino. I don’t look like Andrew Rabinowitz or whatever his last name was.

    There were no questions at check-in. No one asked for an ID and no one questioned my unlikely name. I had a row of seats to myself on a red-eye flight with a plane change in Detroit.

    Arrived in NYC at 8 am and stayed with a friend for 3 days before we drove back to Arizona on a road trip hitting every casino between Atlantic City and New Orleans. He gambled. I didn’t.

    I don’t fly anymore–can’t take the security theatre of flying anymore. But I have great memories of that trip (especially walking the entire perimeter of Central Park starting at Columbus Circle, but unable to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge for reasons I can’t remember).

    I also remember visiting family in LA and being late to LAX. I got there about 5 minutes before the plane took off. I ran down the airport corridors and barely made it. Can you imagine being at an airport 5 minutes before take off and still being able to board?

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