with a yes,” he continued.
“I know, but I never thought it will be tested,” she whispered sobbing.
“Later, I would have learned how to swim, honestly.”
She knew, her career as a stewardess was over, at this moment.
To her surprise he answered,
“Go over to the shallow end of the pool and put on your vest, inflate it and paddle over to the others. And promise to learn how to swim, and that fast. Also forget, this conversation ever took place.”
She had the urge to kiss him, but stopped herself in time; she was so astounded and grateful!
All the others were also glad, over the outcome of this incident. They were aware of the consequence if Mister Parker would not have been so tolerant.
The next contraption which was thrown into the swimming pool was a yellow compendium, only much bigger. As a matter of fact, it was so large; it required two men to move it. Of course, one of the men was Herbert, who was summoned out of the water to help getting this surprise package maneuvered over the rim. Doing so, Mister Parker was holding on to a cord which was attached to this floating monster. He gave a quick jerk on this line and a loud, very loud, hissing noise filled the swimming hall, augmented by an echo effect.
The bundle split open with a flashy popping sound, to expose two large doughnuts, joined together, expanding rapidly upwards to slap on the water, revealing a life raft. The whole show took only a few seconds, with the whistling sound of air, slowly subsiding. The silence afterwards was ear splitting. None of the students had ever experienced such a spectacle before. When and where should it have been, unless one had gone through an emergency where such a device was necessary? Again, a spontaneous applause took place and this time it was really followed by a bow, towards the spectators, by no other then Mr. Parker.
He explained how to enter this life saving enormous monster from the water. There are two, so called, boarding stations. They were provided on opposite sides, with a little blown up sausage just under the water line. Slippery because it is wet, one is supposed to use it as a foot step. Good luck, since nobody has shoes on with non-slip soles. The upper and lower doughnuts are identical, since they might come up one way or the other. To climb into the raft is not easy at all and requires a lot of strengths. Most girls would not be able to do so. But help was always given, of course. A few lines, attached to the side of the rubber raft, are the only support where you can hold on.
Herbert, who was in no mood to be the laboratory test animal again, paddled slowly away from the object of interest, thinking to be out of sight this way, wrong!!!
Mr. Parker addressed him and said nonchalantly,
“Herbert, show the ladies how to board this entity, okay?”
He propelled himself over there, splashing his feet like an Olympic swimmer, which he was not by far, swearing loud with his mouth under water, causing bubbles to dance around his nose, and saying:
“Act number five, scene seven, light, rolling, and action! Hollywood, here I come.”
He grabbed the attached lines and found it impossible to pull himself into the raft. So he tried a different approach. He raised out of the water just enough to slide on his belly over the top until his forehead touched the rubber bottom which was stretched tightly between those two round knackwursts. With a somersault, he landed with a big thump on his wet back which echoed back and forth from wall to wall in this hall (it rhymes!), only to be replaced by a thunderous laughter by all the onlookers. Herbert felt like the biggest fool this side of the Mississippi. (Which is any old place, on this, our planet?)
He thought, “Why do I always have to be such a dupe, even when I am not trying to imitate a clown!”
After the laughter had subsided, he didn’t believe what he heard.
Mister Parker announced, “This is exactly the way it has to be done, congratulation, Herbert!”
He continued, “You must have seen it before, didn’t you?”
“N-n-nooo,” Herbert stuttered.
“Well in this case, double congratulation,” he added.
“So I did alright?” Herbert asked himself.
“Yes, you dummy!” he answered from somewhere inside.
“Alright, no complaints!”
One after the other struggled into this round enclosure; some needed help, which was given. With all these activities taken place, Mister Parker stayed on dry grounds to give orders or explanations.
“Next,” he said: “the utility bag has to come on board.”
Nobody understood what he was talking about!
“So,” he said. “Everybody look outside of the doughnut and find a line dangling in the water.”
One girl shouted: “I found it!”
“Pull on it and get it on board, whatever is attached to it.”
She tried and explained to be unable to do so. Something is holding it back.
“That’s the utility bag and it will be, when the life raft inflates, 99.9 percent of the times, be under the floating isle. The only way to get it is someone has to go overboard, hold on with one hand to the raft and with the other hand follow the line to pull the bag from under the bulge to the outside. Two others will hoist it safely inside. It is important because the next thing to do is to put the sea anchor over board, which is nothing but a small parachute-like device on a line, which has to be attached on the raft at the point where the wind is coming from, to prevent the raft to tip over when the sea is rough and the wind can get underneath.
There are a lot of other steps to be taken, which will fill a few more pages of this book. So let’s leave it at that!
One more item to mention, a bible is also included, water proof packed, needing no instruction!
Well, one more piece of important equipment, among so many, should be the Gibson Girl, which is a radio signal apparatus; it gives a constant SOS signal and can be homed in on. It has the shape of a female body, which needed a lot of imagination to recognize it as ,girl‘, with a handle to crank some electricity into it, extremely hard to turn. To make it effective, a kite had to be launched, on a wire, to act as an antenna, and another wire to hang into the water to ground this whole paraphernalia. A hand-held two way radio or a cell phone was not invented yet. The handling of all the equipment and the locations, like fire extinguisher, oxygen bottles and first aid kits, was always a very important priority with Pan Am because it was different for each type of aircraft. flight attendants changed from one type to another constantly.
To accomplish a more realistic training for the life raft drill, the US Coast Guard in New York offered to take a whole training class, with the comprehensive equipment, out on the bay, with one of their boats. It was welcomed by all concerned and so it was done, for some time. The coast guard took them out there, a life raft was launched and the trainees entered their inflated island and were left alone. How better and realistic it was, the real McCoy.
The sea anchor was tossed overboard after the equipment bag was retrieved. The canvas was rigged to shield the survivors from the elements,
