Forty-five
years ago this past Sunday, I know exactly where I was.
I
was sitting in the living room of the girl I had been dating with about a dozen
of our friends and her family, glued to the television set.
July
20, 1969: Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. And hundreds of millions of
people around the world were doing exactly what we were doing – watching television.
I
had graduated from high school in May. I was preparing to begin my freshman
year at LSU in September. But that summer, it was really all about the moon.
The
week before, three high school friends and I had driven from New Orleans to
Cape Kennedy. We decided that we would go to see the Apollo rocket launch that
would carry three astronauts – Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins
– to the moon. We left a few days before the launch, spent one night camping
out at a state park in the Florida Panhandle and another on the beach in
Florida, before getting our reserved spot at a state park near the Cape.
Hotel
rooms were out of the question. More than a million people converged on Cape
Kennedy to do exactly what we were doing. It was a way of participating in what
would likely be the most incredible event of our lifetimes.
Early
the morning before the launch, we went on a bus tour of Cape Kennedy. One of my
friend’s father worked at the rocket assembly plant in New Orleans, and he was
able to get us tour tickets. What I remember most were the enormous buildings
used to construct and house the rockets.
Late
that afternoon, we drove to a road alongside the Banana River and parked. This
would be our viewing spot, and we were spending the night in the car to reserve
our spot – in a straight line from the rocket, which we could see. There was no
sleep that night,; thousands of others arrived to do exactly the same thing. Parked
in front of us was a young married couple from Canada; parked behind us were a
young couple from the Netherlands. People had come from all over the planet.
None
of us cared about the mosquitoes, the noise of cars driving up and down the
road, the warm temperatures. Discomfort didn’t matter. We were part of
something historic.
The
next day, July 16, the rocket lifted off about 1:30 p.m. The cheering, yelling,
and hugging along the Banana River went on until the rocket was out of sight.
Then it was time for a massive traffic jam, as people attempted to leave the
Cape Kennedy area. It took a few hours to get out. We didn’t care. And we didn’t
care that while spending the night in a tent in yet another state park
somewhere in Florida, we nearly floated away in a rainstorm that lasted all
night.
Four
days later, we were glued to the television set. I was something of a celebrity
for having gone to the launch. But the real excitement was what was on
television – Neil Armstrong and his “one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind.”
What
we thought was the beginning of space exploration was, as it turned out, something
else. It was the science fiction writer Arthur Clarke who observed that the
only thing more remarkable than how fast we made it to the moon was how fast we
abandoned it. It was a high-water mark for the space program, for the belief in
technology, and likely for America’s confidence in itself.
But
we had that wonderful moment, that moment when the world’s attention focused on
the small screen, and then to the bigger screen in the heavens.
It
was an incredible moment to be alive, and young.
Related: I wrote about the 40th anniversary back in 2009.
