I'm so old, I remember when the -300's were the cool new 737's.
Me too. Did weight and balance for Continental when they came out. For us, they were great. Eliminated many of the overweight problems that came with a 727 on a long haul on a hot day.
Back then, if you had told me that one day 737s would be doing West Coast-Hawaii flights, I would have thought you were crazy. I think we ran all DC-10s and the occasional PeopleCompressed 747 to Hawaii at the time.