July 20 1968 was the day I left VN. Yahooooo!!!!
Posted on 07/20/2019 7:06:19 AM PDT by Skooz
My dad was USAF, stationed at Minot AFB, ND.
I was a 9 year-old space nerd. Most of my friends were also space nerds and we followed the Apollo program closely.
During the summer, the housing area was crawling with kids all day until the sun set about 10:00 pm. Every house had at least one kid, and most had 2 or 4. The winters were harsh, so we took full advantage of the summers and stayed outside as much as possible. GREAT place to grow up. The best.
The evening of July 20, 1969, I was playing with some friends and one by one they headed home to watch the moon walk. I walked home and sat on my dad's Ford Falcon, head down and listening to the news cast on a transistor radio my grandma had given me.
After 30 minutes or so I looked up and was amazed. The neighborhood that a few minutes before had been overflowing with people -- kids playing, moms gathered in groups chatting, dads washing cars--- was a ghost town. Empty. Not a soul. Not even a cat. Nothing. It was still and void. I had never seen it like that. I felt like the last person on earth.
That was when I went inside and sat down in front of the TV with my family. And like everyone else, watched Aldrin and Armstrong walk on the moon.
Cool!
I was eight and we went to my aunt’s house to watch live transmission from the moon. We went there because she and her hubby were better off than my family, actually having a brand new, 26 inch COLOUR TV! WOW! It was so BIG! Of course, the broadcast was black and white and the reception was very fuzzy.
CBC and CTV broadcast the live feed from CBS. CBC covered all of the Apollo missions with live broadcasts and I can recall coming home at lunch from school and watching, often being late, returning to school. I dreamed of being an astronaut but there was then, no chance of a Canadian becoming one. Ah, the carefree days of youth!
At Monmouth Park.
ML/NJ
Hah! That sounds like a great way to celebrate! (watching on television was no great shakes for me, I would have much rather been doing an aileron roll with you!
Great story.
I was encamped with 40,000 other Boy Scouts at the national scout jamboree at Lake Pend Oreille near Farragut, Idaho. We watched on televisions set up in tents scattered throughout the camp.
Not all but many of us knew the whole flight sequence by heart. There was a lot of technical information provided by NASA and some of us even studied it in our physics or science class. There were teachers then who would go into the fundamentals of escape velocity and such. There was no common core or study for the test. Just opportunity to learn.
Those were good days in scouting. No confusion about boys and girls and all the other crap that has destroyed traditional values. Vietnam was at its peak and some of us were within two years of being draft age. Aware and worried but still just kids.
The times were not perfect but most of America pulled together to a common goal with a common understanding of who we were. Our culture was common and illegals were very uncommon. We were unapologetically proud of that. We never suspected there was any reason not to be. Some boundaries were necessary and most of us accepted that. We were less than 200 million and the United States was MUCH less crowded. Strip malls, big box stores, glitter canyons in towns all across the country did not have the now common standard fare of chain stores and restaurants. We had three television networks and news two or three times a day instead of the 24/7 blather we have now. The cold war was on and the undercurrent of that fear was with us always. Times were not perfect but we thought we were very lucky to be Americans and very proud of that.
I was in ROTC summer camp at Ft Bragg NC on a week long field exercise, cut off from the world. Came out of the field to hear not one but two stupendous news items: the Apollo 11 moon landing, and Chappaquiddick.
The Fayetteville newspaper gave much more coverage to the latter. Even at age 20 I thought “He’ll never be President now” with a sense of relief, after nine straight years of Kennedy-worship by the media.
Great thread to start, Skooz! I am enjoying reading it...
For some reason, I just felt I got a snapshot of July 1969 America.
Soldiers in Vietnam. Busboys clearing tables and washing dishes. Families going on vacation.
Great thread, good idea.
In the Navy, stationed at Imperial Beach, and happened to be in downtown San Diego when the Eagle landed.
On the beach surfing and drinking.
Exactly 1 month later went into the Air Force to be shipped to Minot to work on B52s in the 1970s.
What did Ed say to Mary when she told him they might miss the ferry boat? “We’ll run off that bridge when we get to it”.
Agreed 100%. I had just joined the Scouts myself after hearing the troop had marched the length of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines...
That was America, no doubt. Classic. All the good and bad, but...America.
I remember it well - I was there earlier and lost a lot of friends there. On July 20th 1969, I was a brecently discharged Sergeant of Marines, recovering from wounds.
They have a VC monument on Hill 55 today.
On a slab in a funeral home on Martha's Vineyard
My Mom, Dad, two brothers, and myself were all gathered around our black & white TV watching the Moon Landing. I was about a month shy of turning 12 years old, and I still remember quite a bit of this very historic event.
And...just as an aside...I met Neil Armstrong’s son, years later. Neil Armstrong and his family bought a farm in Lebanon, Ohio...the next town over from my hometown of Mason. His son was a buddy of a friend (then boyfriend...ha!) of mine.
Lying on the floor of the Family Room watching it with my Family.
My Parents were simply amazed by it and I said, it’s about time.
I obviously watched too many Science Fiction Movies growing up. LOL
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