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.
I wish I could take credit for it but I was just relating how my life unfolded for the better because of the moon landing.
As fate would have it.
On vacation at Ocean View, Norfolk, VA. We had to borrow a black & white portable TV with rabbit ears to watch that bit of history play out - a welcome break from the daily body counts from VietNam.
Umpiring the bases in Clinton IA. Midwest league Class A baseball. Mosquito central. Right on the Mississippi.
They sprayed the field when the players came out for batting practice. They sprayed during the exchange of line-ups and ground rules. Then they sprayed after the 3rd and 6th innings. I would still have red spots on my arms in the morning. I used 6-12, IIRC,
We got burgers from the only diner open after the game and headed back to the motel to watch the landing. Some of the players in the diner as if there was nothing happening, maybe about 10.
Stayed up 90 minutes or so after the landing and caught up on the morning shows.
I know. I’ve seen pictures of it. The French lost a big battle there.
Welcome home and Semper Fidelis.
I was never really an Elvis fan but I remember what I was doing the day he died.
My wife and I were on a car trip traveling from San Diego up the Pacific Coast Highway to the Canadian border.
I was a marathon runner back then and was on a long run on the highway near where we were camping in Oregon.
I stopped for a couple of minutes at an overview area to look out over the Pacific Ocean.
A couple were stopped in their car to look too and told me they had just heard on the radio that Elvis was dead.
It's moments like that that stick with you.
At a friends house watching the moon walk. We went over cause they had a color tv. Why that mattered for a black and white transmission I do not know. I got to stay up way late. Still remember it.
I was in Long Beach CA. Just married the month before. Going to Long Beach City College while working at McDonnel Douglas.
Similar experience here. I was 9. Watched at my grandfather’s house on his black and white tv. His first flight was in a Curtiss Jenny in 1918. His last flight was on a 747. He was born in 1895.
I was 19. Watched it at my uncles house in Anoka, MN.
Ft. Belvoir, VA
I had just entered the Air Force Academy and was going through 1st Beast... no TV, no newspapers, just a lot of getting yelled at. Then, surprisingly, on the night of July 20 we were herded into the squadron’s TV room where we were permitted to watch the broadcast of the landing for a while.
Yes...it really provided, in an unexpected way...a window into that time. I pretty much got some flashbacks reading those comments!
I was in Dong Tam in September the following year, A Co., 93rd Engineers.
14 yo space nut,model rocket flying
watched and recorded on a real to real tape recorder, not sure if i still have the recordings.
We’d spent the day chopping cotton and had cleaned up and were watching the event on Channel 5 Memphis. Some contrast, men walking on the moon and we’d been doing the job blacks won’t do because it was hard work and the blacks were on welfare that paid better. Farm families had to do much of their own daily work.
I was the duty electrician on USS Columbus (CG12) in port Norfolk VA. I was making my rounds and stopped in the crews mess to watch the landing.
10 years old and uncomfortably numb. World irrefutably coming apart again. Was the end of youth before youth was done with me.
The Star Lite area was converted into a shopping mall sometime
in the 1970’s. The Moon Lite was at the outer edge of South Moorhead; I think it stayed open a couple years more. I am sure there are houses and/or apartments there now.
I was 13 years old sitting in my living room with my 15 year old brother and my mom watching the landings as they happened.
That's per Indiana time, which is also God's time and Neil Armstrong time. I've always regretted that Neil didn't go off script for his first words on the moon and break out with Back Home Again in Indiana, or even Hail, Hail, to Old Purdue.
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