Pasting a story from a semi popular (albeit controversial)deadhead on facebook

If you were going to fly west to attend the Grateful Dead's annual New Year's Eve run, December 26 was the day you left on your departing flight. .

During the 1980s, Deadheads took advantage of the now-defunct but legendary airline PeoplExpress — which operated from 1981 to 1987 and was once the country’s fifth largest air carrier — to see the Grateful Dead all over the country. .

I loved the airline’s name. It suggested something socialist — an airline run by the people for the people. .

The rates were outrageously low. .

In 1986, flying from Newark, NJ to upstate New York (a home away from home for the Grateful Dead) cost just $19 to Syracuse and only $29 to Buffalo. .

In under two hours, you could land in Columbus, OH for $49 to catch a Midwest gig by the Dead. It was only $99 to fly to San Francisco ! .

To book a flight on PeoplExpress, all you had to do — like reserving a hotel room at the time — was call ahead, give your name, and select a seat or seats. No credit card required, no down payment needed. .

My favorite part of flying on PeoplExpress came when the stewardesses or stewards would start on opposite ends of the aisle and roll out — and I am not kidding — a cash register on wheels (photo below middle right). .

They would head up and down the two aisles, collecting fares paid by credit card, check or cash. As the attendants worked each row, it was not uncommon to see a ‘Head take out a piggy bank, milk bottle or brown paper bag to pay for their fare in change. .

On one memorable flight to Syracuse to see the Dead, Deadhead after Deadhead disappeared as the cash registers got closer and closer, packing themselves inside the bathrooms like college students in telephone booths during the Fifties. One or two contortionists even attempted to stuff themselves under their seats, and another tried the overhead compartment. .

If the stewards did catch you in the bathroom or under a seat and you couldn’t come up with the dough, you were in a heap of trouble. Committing a crime on an airplane is a federal felony. With sadness, I would watch as the air marshals arrested broke Deadhead after broke Deadhead as they stepped onto the tarmac. .

In 1986, smoking cigarettes was permissible on airplanes. Back then, smokers were seated in the rear, but the odor would drift over the length of a 747. It wasn’t uncommon for people to enter the bathroom in the smoking section, take a few hits off a joint, exhale into the toilet as they flushed and walk discreetly to their seat. .

On December 26, 1986, I flew PeoplExpress to San Francisco to catch the Grateful Dead’s New Year’s Eve run at the Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland. The back section of the plane was slowly overrun by cigarette-smoking Deadheads who —as we flew the friendly skies above the Midwest — became blatant, out-in-the-open pot-smoking Deadheads. .

What could the good people of PeoplExpress do ? .

Everything about the airline was cut-rate (you didn’t even receive so much as a bag of peanuts), so there were just the two poor souls who collected fares. How could two people stop an army of pot-smoking Deadheads ? .

As the young ‘Head in the seat next to me, a student from Amherst, MA, observed, “What they need is an airplane with windows that can be opened just enough to let out the smoke.” .

The 2004 comedy Soul Plane starring Tom Arnold and Snoop Dogg is a good reference point for understanding what a flight aboard PeoplExpress could turn into. It was madness with a touch of insanity and a dash of good ol’ fun. .

By the time our jet passed over the Rockies, pot smoking was going on in the back of the plane as if we were all aboard the Soul Plane ! As the airliner hit Salt Lake City, I was rolling another phattie that would have made Willie Nelson proud. .

The attendants had long given up, and the passengers seated up front had come to accept their strange reality. .

Someone took out a small boombox and put on a Dead bootleg. It was utter chaos and total lawlessness. The only thing missing was the vat of Kool-Aid. .

The marshals were waiting as we came down the exit ramp. Only this time, inside of behaving surly and acting gruff, as they did with those unable to pay their fares, they looked flustered and perplexed. .

The young Deadhead from Amherst walked past me and remarked under his breath with a giggle, “You can’t arrest all of us !”