Fortune cookie
You are about to travel overseas....Issue #11
Here is something hard to believe, Dad and I were at his favorite Chinese Restaurant one afternoon eating lunch and I got a fortune cookie. Mine said “soon you’ll travel overseas”. I read it to my Dad. He called me out on it saying “bullshit”. I said “Want to bet on that?”
That’s when he said “ok, if it does say that I will upgrade our tickets to first class to fly out to London together.” Guess what, we got to fly 1st Class. Yahoo what a score! He paid up and that was maybe the only time he paid off his losing bet to me, hehehehe.
What a special treat it was to fly first class back then. We flew in a Pan Am 747. Our recliners where we slept were at the front of the plane and in the morning on the upper level the tables were all decked out with with white linen cloths, silverware and fresh cooked breakfast, orange juice and coffee waiting for us.
We landed in London first, where Dad was expecting to surprise me and my mother. He had bought a new Jaguar XJ6 for her and my surprise was that I got to see her in London rather than having to wait until we got to Portugal. We picked up the new car, took a ferry across the channel then drove all the way to Estoril, Portugal, and the memories of the drive alone were great for a 12-year-old, soon to be 13. A teenager at last!
Along the way we stopped at an open market where we found some beautiful little love birds. We bought two of these cute little birds, a cage with a perch, water and bird food.
I had the small wooden cage with the little love birds inside in the back seat beside me all the way. They kept me company while the parents talked business LOL. We took the birdies to our hotel room every night and that was often a funny experience when checking into the hotels.
If only i… I realized back then how very special it was to fly 1st Class with someone who was so highly respected as my Dad was by everyone at Pan Am.
….ifOnlyi…. short stories are published chronologically, and follow my life growing up in California from 4 years old. If you’ve just found me the stories will come together when you start reading from….Issue #1
Oh, my, Ollie, that’s lovely. What a fabulous memory and recalling the dates of Pan Am and Boeing’s introduction of the 747, I can practically pin the year. Thank you for that memory.
🙃🙃🙃🤗🤗🤗😘😘😘😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰