It’s a bit past the apogee (see what I did there?) of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. Maybe a long time for us, but to the moon, that’s but 0.000000011 of its history.
The Eagle landed, and it was 2:56 UTC on July 21 when Neil Armstrong stepped out of the door. For a six year old kid in Baltimore, that was 10:56PM at night. Our family was perched in the living room, watching on maybe a 14″ Zenith black and white TV set.
It was not part of the living room decor, I can remember Dad placing it atop a folding step stool as a makeshift stand. I was sitting as close as possible to it.
The images were fuzzy, grainy. Live TV events like sports were not unusual, but the idea that something could be transmitted in real time (well there was a delay) from the Moon was rather fitting for the same TV we also watched Star Trek on.
That was the moment.
More memorable from the Apollo era was the special days when the astronauts returned to earth. At Bedford Elementary school they gathered all the students in the auditorium to watch the module splash down in the ocean. There were no giant projection screens, again we saw in what was then large TVs (24″ screens? big box tube TVs) perched on carts, maybe 6 of them for a few hundred kids to watch.
The vivid feeling in the 1970s I felt there was of unlimited optimism. If they could send astronauts strapped in a rocket to the moon, and then return them a few days later, why everything was possible. Certainly by 2000 we’d have flying cars and automated lifestyles.
Or that’s how I remember it.
In 2019, where every day the news is … well you know what it is, that kind of optimism seems as antiquated as the old TVs and plaid pants I wore.
But it need not be gone. So I look to the moon every now and then, and ponder it’s sliver of optimism, of a spark, of maybe large, not unlimited possibility, but still… possibility.
The moon is patient, so I can be too.
Thank you moon, for the reflected optimistic light you send our way.
Featured Image:
2019/365/192 One Moon, Slightly Used flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
Thanks for this one, Alan. Couldn’t agree more!
Watching events en masse at school is something I remember from January 1977. Our school put out the TV during lunch to watch the broadcast of the Presidential Inauguration. Can you imagine? good times, good times : )
I like hearing “where were you when” stories.
I was 19 years old and a counselor for the summer at Camp Zanika Lache on Lake Wenatchee in their North Cascades. The lake was calm and the evening air warm as I stood with a gaggle of for-once-silent girls and gazed up in the sky at a bright object crossing quickly while the Science Counselor explained to us that it was on the way to the moon.Somehow I knew that was an important historical moment, and I never forgot it.