It's been thirty years but I remember some things about that summer quite well.
My best friend, Steve - who was more advanced than I in Science and Current Events - somehow sparked my interest in the Apollo mission. Steve knew all about the previous missions, even the Gemini Project.
We commemorated the endeavour the way we commemorated most trends of that day - by pretending we were participating (I never liked to call it "pretending" - preferred to say "play-like"; pretend always sounded too effeminate).
Steve and I built our Lunar Module and the Command Module out of lawn chairs:
We started out the first morning at my house, we stacked a couple of lawn chairs on top of each other in my carport and climbed inside. In the afternoon we might move to my closet which was very dark, as we were orbiting around the dark side of the moon.
We had an alternate set up at his house and every day, the first order of business was to rebuild the command module - it was different every time.
I seem to recall that Steve got to be "Neil Armstrong" and I had to be second-fiddle - Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (even though Steve's haircut more closely resembled Aldrin's). Neither of us wanted to be Michael Collins - the unsung hero who kept everything going in the Command Module while Armstrong and Aldrin were lolly-gagging on the moon.
I remember the excitement of those days. Both Steve and I had collected a couple of official moon maps. These were large folding maps that our bank was giving away (I still have one). We noted the Sea of Tranquility on the map - that's where the LM (Lunar Module) was supposed to land.
I also had a 45RPM record that the local A & P Grocer was distributing. It offered segments from Kennedy's "We Choose to Go to the Moon!" speech along with other inspiring features about this national response to his challenge.
There were commemorative items everywhere, one could purchase a LM Model Kit for only 10 cents. I remember seeing the ad often in those days, "Lunar Module Model Only 10 Cents!" -so I clipped the coupon and mailed it in along with my dime.
I think I was under the impression that it could possibly something near life-size; it was instead a small plastice model - much like the model cars of that day. I never was very good at putting models together but I did get that Lunar Landing Module put together in some fashion. Some time later, I was surprised to receive another package in the mail - this one was much larger than the one containing the LM. I opened it to find two booklets about space exploration!
WOW!
Thanks to the wisdom of my Dad, I soon learned that the books were the first of many that I would receive at a charge. The ten cent plastic model was the bait to get me into some "Space-Book-of-the-Month" club; Dad paid - I believe it was seven dollars - for the two books I had already opened and sent a letter stopping the books. Fortunately, I had helped him wash his car and he let that count toward the cost of the books. This was an early lesson in: "if it sounds too good to be true - it probably is".
Dad purchased our first RCA color TV so we could watch the Apollo 11 lift off in living color. That was quite an experience!
On the night of the moonwalk, we had been to a mid-week church service (ours were on Tuesday nights) and rushed home to watch on television. If I recall correctly, there were thunderstorms and the power was off for a time - but the astronauts were experiencing delays as well. The power returned in time for us to see Neil Armstrong edging out of the hatch and onto the ladder to descend to the surface of the moon.
In 1969 there was a great deal of turmoil in the country: student protests, the Vietnam War, Nixon in the White House, the rise of the drug culture ...
In the middle of all that, some clean-cut, wholesome American heroes briefly burst on the scene atop a Saturn V rocket. And rode that rocket to the resolution of a dream whose seed was planted almost a decade before.
The moon shot was a pleasant diversion from all the turmoil.
"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. "
Rice University,
September 12, 1962
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