Those "senor" letters, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 10, 1946

              Dear Señor:
1
Vol. VIII - No. 1
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii April 10, 1946
We've just been saying "good-bye" to an old friend of yours---and ours.
We left her, all by herself, bumping along the edge of that same old dock where she was once courted by thousands as Queen of the Pacific. She looked a little tired, a little damp...yes, a little dumpy. Guess she looked a little old, too. Not so slick, not so shiny any more,.,
She's the Pacific Clipper--last of Pan American's famous flying boats
---the last page of-a great chapter of pioneering that carried the ol' flag on
flying wings to all the seven seas. She just came in from San Francisco—16 hours 30 minutes - with passengers, mail and cargo, and a full column on her log. Just three hours before she landed here the first Constellation, all spit and polish and excitement with its sleek, shiny fuselage, its upper-air conditioner and its speed of 300 miles per hour plus, shoved off from there on our first landplane schedule on the Pacific. Before the ground crew can get the old Pacific out of the water and into a hangar, the new Clipper will be dropping its wheels back on Mills Field and her not-too-impressed passengers will be saying: "I wonder how long we'll have to wait for the rockets? Didn't you find 9 hours for this crossing rather boring...?"
This was the Pacific's last trip. Tonight's her last night. Tomorrow she'll be led off by her owners----the United States Navy,,..
But she won't go alone. She'll be taking something with her that
we'll probably never see again in aviation---a character of courage, a symbol of
enterprise that dared the deep, unknown for the first time. Tomorrow sleek,
swifter landplanes will streak across these routes she once so laboriously---and
courageously, too---flew for the first time...before landplanes were big enough,
or capable enough to do the job. Yes, down there in the darkness are a million ghosts...
What's that Traffic boy saying...?
"...sold every seat on the Constellation in three hours..."
Sure, bub. But you can't remember the time in 1935 when ol' Will Rogers wired down over the Army's telegraph service from 'way up in Alaska to ask if he had time to go on into Russia with Wiley Post and still catch a seat on the first flying boat to Manila----
"Who was Wiley Post?"
Oh, just skip it, bub. Before your time,...
Señores, we're witnessing an historic moment in the history of aviation. .. a moment, like so many other historic moments, that has to be gotten over with in a hurry because something more important is about to happen. We're already striking the scenery on the stage to make room for the next act.
...Yeah, tonight's just about as dark as the first night that ol' Uncle