Joe's Blog

Around the internets and on TV people have been noting the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Watching the launch and mission videos from that time has stirred deep seated, rarely disturbed memories. It's taken me all the way back to a little boy just turned 9, who's deepest desire was to be either Tyrannosaurus Rex or an astronaut.

In those days space missions were a big deal for everyone, but most of all for the 9-year-old demographic. All my friends and their families spent the week glued to their sets. This was a different experience back then, with color TV's just starting to gain popularity and only three channels.

The suspense had been building for years, with each mission getting closer and closer to a moon landing (and just as important for the grown-ups, keeping us ahead of the Russians). Dramatic pictures of the dark side and home-movie style video of Earth rising from behind the moon during Apollo 8 stunned the world. That mission came at a traumatic time, at the end of the year when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. I remember my Dad saying at Christmas that it had been a very bad year, and we should all pray the next one was a lot better.

Along with it's many firsts, Apollo 8 will be remembered for the dramatic reading of the first ten verses of Genesis as the little spacecraft came around the dark side into full view of the fragile blue earth hanging so small and far away behind the barren moon. People around the world were transfixed. At the time it was the most-watched event in the history of TV.

By that next summer of 1969 I'd finished 3rd grade at Comanche Elementary and was ready to start 4th in the fall at Alamo, not far from my house. 4th grade was the year I discovered I needed glasses, so that summer would've been the last of me wondering why I sucked so bad at Little League. The first day of 4th grade I tried on Ned Allen's glasses as a goof, and the world has been a better place ever since.

Kids bedtime at our house was 9:00, but in the summer that would've been relaxed a bit, and for the first landing on the moon all rules were temporarily suspended. I remember the landing happening late in the evening, with the first steps on the surface coming far into hours I wasn't used to seeing. I'm sure I dozed a little during what seemed to a kid to be interminable periods with nothing happening.

I dimly recall they had problems with the picture, which at first was upside down. I remember turning upside down, almost standing on my head in front of the TV. Being so nearsighted I was right up close and in everyone else's way. Thankfully they got the orientation of the signal straightened out before Neil Armstrong stepped off the lander and into history, and before all my blood pooled in my head.

The moon landing meant many things to people, but for a 9-year-old it was pure adventure. My friends and I spent all day every day imitating every word the astronauts and ground control said, recreating the bouncy moonwalks, piloting and landing the spacecraft. This went on for years afterward.

One of the things we used to imitate was the launch sequence and countdown. We had it down, all the way to the little pauses in the announcer's voice, and "Ignition sequence starts" at the 8 second mark.

Watching the launch now, I see very different things. I think how my parents and other grownups must have viewed the launch, living with the Cold War and the arms race, with the jarring image of the astronauts perched atop a converted missile designed to deliver city-destroying warheads. Watching the launch today reminds me of Dr. Strangelove more than the start of a space adventure.

But those are my grownup eyes. My 9 year old eyes, though nearsighted, saw only the start of the greatest adventure ever.

# posted by Joe @ 8:16 PM 0 comments