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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's Friday, which, among other good things, means it's time for StoryCorps and a conversation between Darrell Anderson and his former colleague Merribeth Bryant. In the early 1970s, Anderson had just returned from Vietnam and needed a job, so he applied to be a flight attendant for an up-and-coming airline called Frontier. Frontier had never hired a man for that role, let alone a Black man.
DARRELL ANDERSON: I figured I wasn't going to get the job, but I went and got an interview. The lady was about 60 years old. I looked at her, and I said, ooh, honey, you're a fox.
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ANDERSON: She looked at me like, well, you're the kind of person that we need, even though you're full of it. And so I got hired.
MERRIBETH BRYANT: The pilots were really upset because it's always been pretty young stewardesses that they could flirt with. And then they hired a male, and he's Black.
ANDERSON: I remember opening up the cockpit, and the pilots go, who in the hell are you?
BRYANT: (Laughter).
ANDERSON: You know, there was a lot of different situations that happened on that airplane for me. And you get all types of people who fly.
BRYANT: That's right.
ANDERSON: I had a guy on a flight going to Oklahoma City. So homeboy decided to call me Rabbit. You know, Rabbit, why don't you get me a drink? So I said, for me to hippity hop my butt up there, it's going to cost you. And he just thought that was funny, so he ended up buying everybody drinks.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
ANDERSON: I'd make him tip us every time I had to go get a drink.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
ANDERSON: I turned his stupidity into paying us. I had to beat the beans out of him with kindness, and all them people got all the drinks they wanted.
BRYANT: Even though you were up there, trapped in that tube with him.
ANDERSON: Oh, but he wasn't going nowhere. That's the flavor that the airlines gave me - how you turn madness into happiness, how to smile when I didn't want to, how to give even though I was exhausted. It taught me how to always rise to the top. By the time you got off that plane, you were smiling inside. And so my life became delicious.
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INSKEEP: Beat the beans out of them.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Beat the beans out of them.
INSKEEP: So many lines I want to remember - madness into happiness. Darrell Anderson and fellow former flight attendant Merribeth Bryant in Denver, Colorado. Their conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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