Posted on 03/16/2024 5:24:55 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Seen on Twitter-X the other day: “How did people get airplane tickets before the internet? Did you call the airline and they mailed you the tickets physically?” The author’s bio said she was a neuroscientist. Apparently there’s a difference between knowing how the brain works and using it.
Well, miss, lemme tell you. We’d crank up the crystal radio set and see if we could raise anyone down at the aerodrome. “Hello, Hank? You got a seat on the midnight pond-jumper there? Put me down for one.” They’d mail you a key, and you used it to open the plane door. In those days, you know, you could smoke on a plane. In fact it was mandatory. Couldn’t take off unless everyone’d lit up. There were no in-flight movies, but the back of the seat had a pamphlet glued to it, and it described something funny Charlie Chaplin did. For dinner they had a pig on a spit, and they’d roll it down the aisles and carve off a piece.
Okay, I’m kidding. It went like this. You went to the travel agency, which was an office with posters of places you’d never go, and you’d ask —
Ick, seriously, like, talk to people?
Yes. You would tell them where you wished to go, and they would call you up later and give you options. You would write a check, put it in an envelope, affix a stamp — am I going too fast for you here? — and a few days later a ticket would arrive in the mail. Then you would get on the plane and be skyjacked to Cuba. Simpler times, and by gum, we liked it.
You see tweets like the neuroscientist’s all the time from the young and the baffled, the generation who grew up with the internet all around them like a benevolent god who asked nothing of them except watching five seconds of an ad before the video starts.
When you like drove from one state to another state, how did you know where to go??? Were there like signs or things?
Well, you know that word, “maps,” below the icon on your phone that calls up a strange abstraction of lines? We had actual maps. You’d unfold a map, refold it into a rectangle, and then follow a line to the end of the rectangle.
Lileks is always a great read. Thanks for posting!
I find it disturbing there are many people today who do not know how to get from their home to a grocery store two miles away, unless told how to get there, turn by turn, by their phone.
I remember those days! LOL!
It’s funny...I traveled a lot internationally for work for several years in the mid 70s. For the life of me, I don’t recall how I got my airplane tickets. I think my company’s travel office prepaid them for me and I picked them up at the airport, but I’m not actually sure.
I DO remember arriving in the Philippines in the spring of ‘77 without a visa and had to talk my way in.
Probably, too, a lot of people, who have everything tied up in crypto and, all of a sudden, realize they can't access any of it and all of their Bitcoins won't buy a gallon of gas or a can of beans.
I’m kind of a paper map geek. They do have the advantage of being useful with no batteries or GPS systems.
I drove professionally for a few years back in the 80s, and you had to be able to read a map or you were sunk. Especially up in the hills where there were no straight lines.
“”Lileks is always a great read.””
I’m not familiar with him but I liked this...will watch for more...Thanks.
Yep, we went through a travel agency or actually drove to the airport and purchased a ticket to wherever!!! I did that when I left my home state of New York for CA many years ago. For vacations back to NY, must have used a travel agency...
“”many people today who do not know how to get from their home to a grocery store””
You think that’s bad! When I go to the store, park, walk to the doors, there are people who can’t find the front door without their phone! Nor can they find their way around the store aisles without phones.
You would go to the airport, the agent who checked you in would take the first copy, the gate agent would take the next copy, and you would keep the third copy as your boarding pass. The connecting gate agent would repeat the process with the extra tickets you were given.
You would keep your return tickets in a safe place.
-PJ
I work with a guy like that. He lives about 10 mins from where he works in downtown Houston, same route to and from, every day and STILL needs gps. I knew the route in my head on the 2nd day.
Damn zoomers.
Watched an old episode of Adam-12 a few months ago. People walked freely through airports, and they only wanded a particular flight because there was a credible threat of a gun.
How nice it must have been to travel effortlessly back then.
And tickets were paid for by cash or check in person.
We just called the airlines directly, reserved seats, went to the airport, checked in, got the tickets, paid for them, and boarded.
I use Waze for my trips to/from work, only because I want to know if there’s a wreck, cops, or other issue that will delay me.
I can still drive to my old jobs here in Houston (from 1983 when I was 13, through til now). At least the ones here. When I was in the Navy or working contract for AT&T out of Lake Mary, FL, I can, but it’ll just take bit longer. ;-)
Did many PCS (Permanent Change of Station) cross country while in the military. Had to have the maps to get to the new bases. My wife always read the map up-side-down and got us lost. So that was on my check list > right side up on the map.
Free parking when you went on a trip. Drive in, park your car for free, pick it up when you got back.
Then they got a big federal grant to make a new terminal for Yuma International Airport.
Fence around everything, no free parking, total control in the terminal.
I started asking around. Fence and paid for parking were required to get the federal grant money.
I’m not trying to defend someone not knowing the directions without GPS, but I often use my Waze app for “incidents” like cars broken down on the route, cops trying to get their quota for speeding, heavy traffic or accidents so I can find another route, etc. I hate sitting still in traffic. My husband hates it even more.
I will say that I don’t use Waze on my usual routes, but if I hit a slow down, it’s my go to to find out what happened ahead of me and how long it will take.
And yes, I can read a paper map better than most men (or women especially). I don’t need GPS. My family traveled cross country by car every summer for vacation. I learned how to read a map by the time I was 10, and I’m a very good navigator. I can often find my correct direction without a map, so I might have an internal compass somehow.
He writes a regular column on his site called The Bleat.
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