Just two, and I'll try to keep them short. One: I (very vaguely) remember the moon landing: we were at the neighbors' house, where there was some kind of major remodeling going on and my dad was helping. The tv was outside, and we all got called over to watch it, with the ubiquitous: watch this, and you'll remember it all your life. But I remember being told more than I remember what I was seeing on the screen. I was five.Two: at the Neil Armstrong parade in Wapakoneta, afterwards. There was a plane (or jet?) flyover of some sort, and they dropped commemorative balloons on the crowd before the parade actually got going. With some urging or prompting from my parents, I ran out in the street to pick one up, like the kids went after candy in the 4th of July parade I went to a few weeks ago. Can't say I recall anything else about the parade; my folks may still have the balloons, as they certainly have other souvenirs.
Drove (or was driven) past the distinctive Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapak on family trips many times, but I don't remember ever being inside.
Though we didn't know it (or each other) at the time, Rosemary and I both owned and read You Will Go to the Moon when we were children. I have very clear memories of the torus-shaped space station and the fact that the space travelers in the station were watching a western film projected on a screen.
Haven't been to the moon.
2 comments:
I haven't been to the moon, either. That book lied!
(It was, BTW, the first book I was able to read by myself...I've been told, though I don't remember, that my parents "tested" me to make sure I was actually reading it, and hadn't just memorized it from having it read to me.)
I remember that book and I remember seeing the moonwalk on TV at a friend's house in the inner city of Columbus. He and I taught at an after school literacy program. What I remember thinking was. How can we spend so much money to send somebody to walk on the moon when the people who's house I was in didn't even have money to buy groceries?
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