Needless to say, it was, well, first class.

We got on first (naturally) and we were hardly seated before the flight attendant was passing out drinks, handing us hot towels with which to wipe our hands while we lolled in seats about twice as wide as those back in steerage. I was even able to manage a few minutes of sleep, something at which I am seldom capable on airplanes.

We also could (for once) see out the window, although on a trip from San Francisco to Hawaii there isn't much to see at 38,000 feet--mostly a lot of blue and many clouds.

But it was an experience which made me feel as if I had somehow moved a step apart from the rest of humanity. I hadn't, of course. Coming back, we were back in steerage (laughingly called economy by the airlines) stuffed into seats too small for us, seats that fit no human contour I have ever seen. We were gnawing on a tiny bag of pretzels (airlines, being politically correct, no longer serve peanuts to avoid allergic to peanuts law suits) and looking at our watches every half hour wondering when we were finally going to get to San Francisco.

But getting there remains a fond memory and one I will cherish.

It was while I was thus transfixed and very comfortable in the sky that I got to musing about first class.

Americans like to think they're a classless society. A favorite American occupation is to pull down anyone who gets too far above the rest of us. At the same time, we harbor a secret envy for those societies, like England for instance, where class not only is recognized and also widely tolerated.

We spend a lot of time--as do the British, I think--living lives of fantasy in The Royals.

In the United States we don't have royalty but we tend to repeat the process with the rich and famous, especially in entertainment. Else why would it be a major news item when the Brad Pittses' split? Or who would care who Jackie Kennedy married next?

So we like first class, superior, four star or maybe even five star because it makes us feel a little better than the next guy. We don't like to admit this human frailty, but it's there, nevertheless.

Class in travel got started a long time ago. My ancestors suffered their way in steerage from Bremen across the Atlantic below the decks where first class passengers were served on tables with linen tablecloths and set with silver. But that's the way it was. And that's also why they were coming to America.

Class in general preceded class in travel simply because there once were a lot of classes in Europe, ranging all the way from serfs or peasants to lords and kings.

The American Revolution began to put an end to class, but it had to do it in a new land and on the backs of Indians and slaves, alas, indebtedness we are still trying to repay.

As America evolved, Americans never really went for the gradations in rail travel that still prevail in Europe. Travel by rail in the United States was all pretty much a one class system--uncomfortable. But when the North Atlantic could be bridged only by large ocean liners real first class travel really took off.

For what now seems only a brief period, the great liners of the day from the Titanic to the first Queen Mary were the way to go. There was a whole ritual to trans-Atlantic travel, one which has its remnants in the cruise ships of today. Today's cruise lines would like to have you believe that travel on their ships is all first class. And many of the facets of cruise travel are. But somehow it's not the same. The class system is gone, but classy is not what I would call ocean travel these days. It's an imitation of a time when class was all important and which no longer exists. We are live well on cruise ships, but we are all together doing it; too much together for me.

That leaves the airlines with the only real first class first class left--at least in my book--and I am baffled as to why in a time of declining air travel, bankrupt airlines and heightened air security it still persists.

Nonetheless, I'm glad it does and I am happy to take part in it even on brief occasions.

It always makes me feel like the old bird who used to sit with his back against the tail of plane in a commercial for the now defunct Western Airlines. He would dust the ashes off his cigar and growl, "The only way to fly."

And it is.