DAY 4 - Part 1
The Setup
In the 30s young American boys had movie swashbucklers and the radios The Shadow to look up too. In the 40s there was the real G.I Joes. During the 50s American boys were in a Cowboy frenzy. And to my generation, those who grew up in the 60s, is was all about the Final Frontier, Space.
For a boy in the 60s it was all about Astronauts, Space Capsules, Apollo, Cosmonauts, and Martians. In the era before Star Wars, we had Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, My Favorite Martian, The Jetsons and of course Star Trek. There were hundreds of Space toys too, in fact if you didnt have the G.I. Joes Space capsule, you were held to ridicule and public humiliation.
Sidenote: Yeeeeeeeeeeees I had the G.I Joe Space Capsule. Who do ya think was doing all the ridiculing and public humiliating?
Not only was the Space Man & Rockets part of the Fantasy world, it was NOW the real world. It was true, Walter Cronkite told me so! On any given night you could watch the network news and hear THE REAL LIVE coming and goings of the Space Program. This was no make believe stuff, this was really, REALLY happening!
If you thought the kids on my block were nuts over the Space program, you should have met the Sister of Mercy
in St. Jeromes Parochial School. What the Beatles meant to teenage girls in the 60s, the men who had The Right Stuff were on the same level to the Nuns. Even more so since according to the Nuns, The Astronauts had them and God on their side! There was not a lift off or return to Earth throughout the 60s that was not shown to all the students of St. Jeromes during school hours. Neither Snow, nor Sleet nor Hail, nor Blackouts would stop the Nuns from pushing on with our studies, at my school. They only time we stopped studies was when the Bishop came to class or when the NASA Astronauts were on TV. Every bulletin board in School was dedicated to the NASA program. All the students, and there were many, had to write the astronauts countless letters telling them about the novenas we say for them, their families and their safe return. If any student was caught saying anything bad about an astronaut, they were NEVER seen from again!
When we lost the astronauts during a test run on Apollo 1, the nuns were distraught and not much was done in school those days. Later in the early 70s, way before 24 hour news coverage, when Apollo 13 was in trouble they played their transistor radios softly while they tried to teach. That long week, we students knew not to even slightly misbehave. When we watched the Apollo 13 landing in school later that week, and the astronauts touched down safely I saw a 90 year old nun jump 6 feet off the ground in pure joy!!!! We were let out early!
On May 25, 1961, in a speech given to the Joint Session of Congress, President John F Kennedy said I believe that this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth
On July 20, 1969, a bit over 8 years Man walked on the Moon. Can you imagine something of that magnitude in this day with all the technology ever happening?
On the evening of July 19, 1969, I remember pleading
with my mother and father to wake me up if I fall asleep. I couldnt miss the moon walk. It was very hot that night and all the windows were open, and the fans were blowing. The Moon walk will be sometime in the middle of the night!
My father worked as a subway conductor at nights. To make sure he was home to see the moon walk, he took his 1 week vacation that week. Mom made sure he painted the apartment while he watched the various newscasts.
I fell asleep, and in the middle of the night my Mom woke us all up. they are going to start to land on the moon, get up! We were all awake, all very hot the fans were noisy, but to keeps things cooler Mom asked me to shut off all the lights. When I did this I looked out the windows and noticed all the neighbors lights were on too. I told my Mom, she looked out the window
.Oh my God, its like 8 Oclock at night, Everybody is up! She was just as surprised
as I was.
We all watched the TV
and it seemed like it took forever. The picture was quite horrible, but you could make out the Astronaut figure coming down the ladder on the side of the lunar module. Slowly, slowly Neil Armstrong went down each rung, finally his foot landed on the surface of the Moon.
WOW!!!!!!
In a very crackled audio Neil Armstrong said "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
There was one very awed boy in Brooklyn, New York that night! There were billions of others around the world sharing the same amount of awe, in the same moment!
This was BIG, real BIG! So Big that in the middle of the night, my Mother decided to call her Sister, Long Distance to Wantagh LI! Nobody ever called ANYBODY, especially long distance, in the middle of the night unless someone died! My Aunt & cousins were also watching it on their TV in all the way out in Wantagh!
My Dad then made breakfast; we ate and went back to bed. Before I dosed off I remember asking my father, If Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, then how did the camera that filmed him get there first? He never answered me. And to this day, I still aint sure how they did that.
Maybe I will ask an astronaut one day.
(cont. below)
He very carefully checks out the lipgloss too... guess it wasn't his color because he finally gave it back to my poor DD to put in her purse again.
Not so loud!
You are such a Stud!
No they were micro organisms from Space!
me cry. This is one of my most wonderful memories of my Dad. I too got the wake up call in the middle of the night. I remember my family sitting in the living room watching this. This is my first memory of something "big" happening! I remember after watching this my Dad bringing my older sister and I outside in the middle of the night and pointing to the moon, completely in awe of the fact that there were men up there. I remember how amazing it was. I was 7 and my DSis was 10. 
