Exciting Departure from Mills Field (First Appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle)

In 1938 the San Francisco Peninsula looked far different than it does today.  Every Sunday of my childhood our family traveled out of the city to Grandmother’s country house at the base of King’s Mountain, and we had three ways to get there.

El Camino Real with its curved mission bell markers took us through separate little cities, each with its own identity and points of interest long before they had grown together to form an almost continuous series of commercial enterprises and homes.  El Camino led past the first “auto court” I remember seeing.  The forerunner of the modern motel, it was on the border of Daly City and Colma.  I thought it would be dreadful to sleep in one of those little boxes, even though each had an attached garage.  My brothers and I also watched for the dairy farms where a tunnel under the highway allowed the cows to wander freely from one side of the road to the other.

By far the most scenic route south was the Skyline-Crystal Springs road.  It was largely agricultural, but the reservoir section traveled over a dam and followed the contours of the lakes.  No mighty Highway 280 spanned the countryside in those days, and the twisty road caused me great anguish.

The old Bayshore was our least favorite road.  It was a boring stretch with miles of salt evaporating ponds.  We children did like the view of the roller coaster in the amusement park on the north side of Coyote Point.  We never stopped, nor did anyone else apparently, because it fell to ruins and was eventually torn down.

Driving on the Bayshore finally started to pick up with the construction of the marvelous new San Francisco airport, Mills Field.  All the Bay Area took pride in the fine facility that promised to meet the air travel needs of its citizens.  A wind sock caught the breezes as passengers awaited their flights behind chain link gates, truly gates in those days.

In September of 1938 as a twelve year old girl, I received an incredible invitation.  Grandmother asked me to accompany her on a short visit to her niece in Salt Lake City.  Best of all, we would make this trip by air.  It would be the first flight for both of us.

All the family escorted us to Mills Field and waited with us by one of the few gates to the field.  Grandmother wore an orchid corsage to mark the importance of the event.  The attendant finally allowed us to pass through to the field where, nervous and excited, we climbed the short stairway to the door of the United Air Lines Mainliner.  There were so few passengers that no one seemed to mind as we posed outside for a photo shoot by family members.

Grandmother let me sit by the window where I kept my eyes on my mother and brothers who stood safely on firm ground.  At that moment I wished I were with them.  I had little time to worry, because our stewardess, a tall young woman in a smart uniform with wings on the lapels, came to check our seat belts.  She chatted in a friendly manner to alleviate our fears, and I thought she was more beautiful than a movie star.  Our pilot must have been given clearance, because we took off immediately, close to the terminal without today’s long delays at distant runways.

A short time after we were airborne, our lovely stewardess brought our lunches.  Each was served on a compartmentalized cardboard tray on top of a kind of cardboard box which became a tray table.  I don’t remember the menu, although it must have been enticing because I ate it all and saved the little salt and pepper containers to show my junior high science class when I got home. 

The flight started out smoothly, but we soon ran into turbulence that tossed the little plane all over the skies, or so it seemed to me.  Grandmother must have been as frightened as I, and although she tried to hide her qualms I could see how tightly she grasped the arm rests.  The rocking and shaking of the plane upset me far more than the curvy roads of the Peninsula, and I soon had reason to regret eating my delicious lunch. 

Toward the end of the journey the stewardess distributed flight logs with the exciting information that we were flying at an altitude of 13,000 feet at the unbelievable speed of 185 miles per hour.  The log, signed by the pilot, would prove to my classmates that I had indeed made this trip. 

We finally landed in Salt Lake City to be met by our cousins.  They seemed most impressed with our bravery to have actually flown in an airplane.  Grandmother glanced at me knowingly, and neither of us confessed how nerve-wracking it had been for both of us.  We wouldn’t think about the flight home yet.  We’d face it when it came.