It was January? of 1965. I was employed by Applied Data Research in Princeton, NJ ...

I had conceived, designed and written some software to control flatbed plotters in a way that was independent of the details of the devices. (Today we would call that aspect of my code a "class driver".) And then I was able to make a sale of the software to Shell Oil Company.

This was pioneering software that knew how to do 3D projection and perspective. So the user could move a virtual pen through 3-space and my software would project the result, scaled, translated, rotated and perspectivized, onto the 2-D plane of the plotter bed.

You could condition the virtual pen to leave trails behind it -- dashed lines, dotted lines, blah blah blah. The software even had scaleble fonts that I had programmed myself, the pioneering equivalent of what we would call today a TrueType font. The only thing my software lacked was a hidden lines elimination feature, an algorithm that I struggled for two years to invent but could not.

Anyway, a big user of the software was Shell Oil in Houston. (I had closed the sale with some Shell folks in NJ but it was Houston that ended up being the main user.) Something came up during the winter of 64/65, I forget what. I had to fly down to Houston on short notice, planning to stay only a day or two.

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Instead the visit stretched out to almost a month. Shell had been prepared to fly me back and forth so I could spend weekends with my wife and infant daughter. But I'm a trouper, Shell was in a world of hurt, and my wife agreed that I should stay in Houston till Shell was up and running again. So I worked 18x7 until the job was done, taking only short meal breaks and the occasional long dinner break, sometimes sleeping at Shell, sometimes sleeping at my hotel a few blocks away. (But the blocks on Fannon were LONG blocks, as I recall.)

I'm not sure that my stuff had bugs. I think it may have been an emergency requirement for some new features. At any rate they needed the software modifications to print well geology maps derived from data gathered in the field by their prospecting teams.

It was mid-winter in Princeton but in Houston ... Ah, in Houston ... It was sunny, and warm, and I saw a helicopter land right next to the Steak By Weight restaurant on Fannon Boulevard. Out stepped two men wearing large Stetson hats. (Stetsons are made in Brooklyn, by the way, or at least used to be.) Winter in Houston came as a stunning surprise. But we never moved there. We didn't move because it never occurred to me that we could.

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Anyway, came a day when Shell and I agreed that everything that needed to be done had been done, tested and found to be in good shape. That was around 10AM of my final day there. I expressed a desire to get on a Newark-bound flight as early as I could.

I wandered away to get a soda or whatever while the responsible group manager, a gentleman named Dewey Kibler (a typically Texan name to conjure with), called the Shell travel department office there in the Shell HQ building, which is where I had been working.

I returned to Dewey's office. "It's all set up" he said. "If you get right down there they'll have your ticket ready and will run you out to the airport so you can catch the next flight east."

"Bye Dewey, I've really enjoyed being here. Thanks for your hospitality."

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Color me gone. I went down to the travel department, who handed me a ticket for an Eastern Airlines flight. I didn't look at it, mostly because they rushed me downstairs ... and into a limousine ... and whisked me off to Hobby ... where Shell had asked that the aircraft be held ... for little old me ... apparently for fifteen minutes.

You see, Shell could make this stuff happen because Eastern was their biggest customer, and Houston was Shell headquarters.

I boarded the plane, a brand new 727-100, and headed back to coach, suitcase in hand. (That's how it could be done back then if you didn't have time to check luggage through, or if you didn't want to check it through.) While looking for an open seat (that's how it was done back then) a stewardess asked for my ticket (which was sometimes how it was done) ... and then turned me around and led me to ... first class ... to the frontmost seat on the right. (Must have been 1B, I don't recall a seat next to mine.)

She went back to coach. Another stewardess then asked whether I would like a cocktail. At 11 AM? Hm-m-m-m ... Why not? ... I didn't drink much, and usually not till evening, but this was a special occasion. I was exhausted and hoped that a drink would knock me out for the flight home.

Wrong. Completely wrong.

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I had ridden 727s a couple of times before but never up front. It was like riding at the end of a telephone pole that was being pushed from behind. I could feel every movement of the aircraft and for an aviation buff like me it was wonderful. It was also QUIET, something I had never before experienced in an airliner. All I heard was the thump of the nose gear coming up and locking, and of the nosewheel doors closing. That and the sound of the slipstream, the quiet white noise building in intensity as the aircraft accelerated.

So there I was, riding a magic carpet with a vodka martini in my right hand as I watched Texas fall away. I've done so much flying that very few flights stick in my mind, but this one certainly did.

Once we were at cruising altitude a sumptuous lunch was served to those of us who were flying POSH. (Port out, starboard home.) Heck, even the coach meals were really good back then, and the meal in First was even better. I don't remember what I ate but whatever it was, it was wonderful.

I didn't sleep at all. I was too excited by the experience. And ever since then I've equated the 727-100 and then the 727-200 with grace and comfort ...

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I've equated the 727 with the Golden Age of air travel, when aircraft almost always departed and arrived on time. When luggage was almost never lost. When traveling men wore suits and ties, and traveling women wore dresses or women's suits, and when traveling children were dressed in their Sunday best. When the stewardesses were young and pretty and still happy in the fun jobs that they would quit as soon as they had met Mister Right, or that would end when the airlines asked them to step down so they could be replaced with even fresher young faces.

That era will never return. Suffice it to say that today I drive whenever this is at all practical. If I start at 2AM I can make Denver to Malibu in 20 hours. I've done it three times. I can make NYC in 42 hours and Boston in 46, including a stop in a motel. I've done this probably twenty times.

I have zero interest in riding in a cattle car, or in being treated as a piece of cargo, despite the fact that deregulation has resulted in fares that are low as dirt. If I can't fly in comfort -- if I can't afford First -- I simply won't fly again.