'Coffee, Tea or Me?' back from wild blue yonder of '67 By Ayesha Court, special for USA TODAY 20th Century Fox 'Stewardesses' are back in vogue: Flight attendant=20 Gwendolyn (Jeri Ryan) makes a date in the retro romp Down With=20 Love. Believe it or not, flying on commercial airlines 35 years ago was=20 boffo. If you're sitting in a cramped seat eating your stale pretzels,=20 think back to when chateaubriand was carved seat-side. In coach. If you're= =20 having a hard time wrapping your mind around that, proof has just hit the=20 shelves in the reissued 1967 pulp classic Coffee, Tea or Me?: The=20 Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses by Trudy Baker and Rachel=20 Jones with Donald Bain (Penguin, $13). The book, which sold 1 million copies, inspired three sequels (which sold=20 more than 5 million copies), a successful made-for-TV movie and a porn=20 film. Coffee's reincarnation is part of a trend, says Stephen Morrison,=20 senior editor at Penguin: "This seems to have become the year of the=20 stewardess with '60s 'stews' appearing in Catch Me If You Can and Down With= =20 Love." Even more than those movies, Coffee captured life as it used to be.= =20 It hasn't been re-edited to reflect changes in society. The retro-'60s tone= =20 is offensive to gays and women =97 something Bain is well aware of. "There's= =20 so much politically incorrect in there. If I wrote it today =97 I wouldn't= =20 even dare." One chapter, for example, is called "They Looked So=20 Normal." But traveling had a lot more glitz. "It was exciting every time I= =20 got on a plane," says Bain, who wrote the book using his experiences=20 working with airlines and as a frequent flyer. In the 1960s and early '70s, beautiful women lined up for the chance to=20 become jet-setting stewardesses. Before women's liberation, the chance for= =20 young ladies to live independently, travel and meet men was rare. Being a= =20 stewardess ranked up there with being a model or actress. "People looked at= =20 you with a certain amount of envy because you were part of an industry that= =20 was glamorous and mysterious," says Patricia Friend, international=20 president for the Association of Flight Attendants and a former stewardess.= =20 In exchange, stewardesses played by the airline rules. "The airlines were=20 selling sex, and the stewardesses were content to be part of that," Bain=20 says. Braniff Air's slogan "We really move our tails for you" and its "air= =20 strip" stewardess uniforms =97 meant to be taken off layer by layer during= =20 the flight =97 were the kind of double-entendres that would have made James= =20 Bond proud. Other airlines hiked up skirts and tightened uniforms, years=20 before the summer of love. Crews built a carefree camaraderie. Playing practical jokes on each other=20 was common =97 putting ammonia in the safety demonstration mask, for=20 instance. (You'll have to read the book to find out what the "manual=20 flushing procedure" is.) Life on the ground was just as friendly as the=20 skies. All-night parties, bedding pilots or men met on flights, heavy=20 drinking and stews living eight to an apartment told a story of a whole new= =20 generation of swinging ladies doing what they wanted. Bain also detailed=20 the rigors of stewardess school (half flunked out), drunken passengers who= =20 pinch, pilots who play tricks and ill-mannered children. Nowadays, Friend=20 says, the traveler's challenges are more formidable. You "grit your teeth=20 and hope for the best." Which makes some long for days gone by. With=20 nostalgic hits like Hairspray playing on Broadway, could it be time for=20 another adaptation of Coffee? Says Bain: "I think it would make a wonderful= =20 retro musical." *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.natalielaughlin.com/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************