Catch Our Smile – PSA,
Pacific Southwest Airline
by
Patty Swisshelm

Out of sight, in 1974 I was hired as a PSA stewardess. The Hoosier turned California girl.

I would cram my fly away hair under a tall red bowler hat, glue spiral curls onto the sides of my cheeks. While using the same glue, fix false eyelashes onto my lined eyelids. I plastered enough makeup on so the passenger in row 28 could look down the aisle and see my face when making the 'Welcome Aboard' announcement. We matched the logo, "Our Smile Isn't Just Painted On".

The uniform was hot, bright pink with a red and orange stripe down the front, a key hole at the neck to show just a little cleavage. The tunic top barely covered the red hot pants. There was a lot of leg covered with extremely tight L'eggs support panty hose in suntan shade, to hold it together. Tight red high-heeled go-go boots, leaving an imprint on me like the zipper imprint on my calves when I took the boots off after work. We carried round red suitcases with a large red loop handle and a large red handbag. PSA flight attendants were a cross between 'House of Pies", 'Hotdog on a Stick" and Barbie Doll.

The Boeing 727, 737, and Lockheed 1011 airplanes all looked the same. A white plane with red and orange stripe around the fuselage with a big black smile painted under the cockpit window. Grinning birds. The seats were purple, red and orange surrealistic distortions printed in a psychedelic bubblegum paisley floral design. The seat covers camouflaged the spilled four choices of beverages we served: coffee, tea, punch or bouillon.

It was 1978, and in 4 years, I was senior enough to fly the 'midnight flyer'. The flight left San Diego at 9:00 pm; we would land in Los Angeles 30 minutes later. At 11:00pm we would board passengers for San Francisco and Sacramento. It was the mail run; California government mail was loaded in the cargo pit in Los Angeles. Because the government subsidized the flight, the ticket price was cheap $9.70.

The strangest passengers; freaks, heads, hippie chicks, loadies all tripped out and smelling of Mad Dog Mogen David wine, would fly the midnight flyer. One hour later we would land in San Francisco, then an 18-minute hop over to Sacramento. The crew would not get to their hotel rooms until 1AM and need to check in 5 hours later at 6AM.

We would fly out in the morning, flight #182 from Sacramento to Los Angeles then Los Angeles to San Diego. There were always crewmembers getting on the LA-San Diego leg, deadheading home.

Susan Sothras, my roommate and I worked the midnight flyer every Sunday night, and Tuesday night for 8 weeks in a row. I remember the commuters, always the same group getting on in Sacramento or Los Angeles to start their workday in San Diego. The preppie businessman wanting his coffee served to him before take-off. We collected tickets on board. Inevitably, there was one passenger trying to jiggle his coffee, standing up and at the same time searching for his ticket in the overhead bin.

One morning Susan was so tired that she thought a commuter was holding up a Del Mar Racetrack form instead of a flight schedule. Looking over his shoulder, she wanted to know who was running in the Exacta, since we would be going to the track in the afternoon. It became a weekly joke when the commuter came on board in Los Angeles. We made him a "precious passenger" and asked him to bring us donuts if he was planning to be on our flight. I still look for his face.

On the ninth week, our work schedule changed. Monday September 25, 1978, I was asleep in my corner bedroom in the pink stucco house in Wind and Sea area of La Jolla. My bed was in the corner under two windows, one above my head and one on the side of the bed. My bedspread was bright orange. The sun was shining in my eyes but I was trying to ignore it, it was a clear bright blue morning. The beige princess phone jingled on the spool bed stand next to my head, 9:00am and an old friend, Jay Douglass was on the line. He said, "Patty, look in the sky. Do you see smoke?" I cocked up on one elbow, looked out the window above my head and said, 'Negative'. Jay said he was outside of the imported car lot where he works and saw a PSA plane with its wing on fire falling down behind Mission Hills. I was groggy, confused and frightened. I got off the phone and called my mom, the family switchboard, she would put the calls out that I wasn't working on that plane.

The phone rang and rang and rang. Each time a relieved voice when I answered, then question about Susan. I knew she wasn't due back in San Diego at 9:00am; we had stopped working the midnight flyer. Confusion started seeping into my mind, like, you know, I mean, how, why, who?

The phone rang, and it was Patrick "Cheeko" Flynn. He was a PSA bag thrower in San Diego. The main office had asked maintenance and ground personnel to go over to the crash site and help secure the area. He wanted me to drop him off in North Park. Questioning why would he want to go over there, his reply was that "He was going in." The ex-marine was trained to serve.

We drove in my blue MGB-GT over Mission Hills to North Park. It was sunny and getting hotter by mid morning. Some streets were blocked. I pulled up to the perimeter of the crash site. The kerosene and burning smell in the air reminded me of smudge pots lining a newly oiled slag street in Gary, Indiana. People were lingering on sidewalks, whispering, afraid to talk in their normal voices. Pat got out and walked past policemen standing at wooden sawhorse blockades.

It was a relief driving down the hill to the La Jolla shore, the blue sky and ocean met in a refreshing line on the horizon. On my bright orange bedspread was my pink uniform. I had to check in for work in an hour. The phone rang, I stopped answering, Susan was home, she could take over.

136 passengers, 39 PSA employees, 16 flight attendants, 9 crewmembers, no one survived. I worked 4 flights that day for the most part, people were mellow, subdued, but a man on my flight asked me if PSA stood for 'people spread allover'? Let it slide. I ignored him, amazed at how stupid the general public is.

I got home around 9:30 pm, the phone rang, and it was Pat. He was down and depressed. He said the crash site was worse than anything he saw in Vietnam. Poor Cheeko, a total bummer scene that messed up his head.

So wasted on mucho vodka-grapefruits, I hit the sack and fell asleep. The next morning, lying in my bright orange bed trying to keep the sun out of my eyes, the princess phone rang. A worried voice, "Patty this is Cliff in Portland, I read the Oregonian…." John Clifford, the boy in high school and Indiana University that was too shy to ask me out, it had to have been one in the same. I said, "It takes a plane crash for you to call me?" He replied, "I'm fucked I should have called a long time ago."

That phone call was the start of our 3-year dating experience. We married in Hawaii in 1981.