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 was the ticket taker at the Star Lite Drive-In Theater in Fargo N.D.
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I went to both of those many times. They were out in the country at that time.
But as to the moon deal I was in front of the tv like most.
I was eight years old, sitting in my parents then watching Armstrong land on the moon. With us was my father‘s father, who had been born before the Wright brothers invented aircraft. I can only imagine what must have been going through his mind at the great technological leaps during his lifetime as he saw Armstrong walk on the moon.
I was twelve years old, growing up in suburban St. Louis. My father worked for McDonnell Aircraft, so I was brought up with an interest in aviation. Some of my earliest memories are of watching Mercury launches. On this date in 1969, I was watching TV coverage and building a model of the Saturn V.
Los Angeles AFB. Space Division. Unmanned recon program. One month after AF Manned Orbiting Laboratory MOL was cancelled. With MOL I had met past and future astronauts, I made sure my family, kids 4 and 7 watched with me.
Los Angeles AFB. Space Division. Unmanned recon program. One month after AF Manned Orbiting Laboratory MOL was cancelled. With MOL I had met past and future astronauts, I made sure my family, kids 4 and 7 watched with me.
We would often fly in to refuel and grab a bite.
We lived in Sebastopol, CA. I was 8 years old. I watched the landing and moon walk on a black and white TV in the living room. My memory has filled in the missing color.
3 months out of the Service and watching it with my future wife.
Bristol, NH. Watching on an ancient (even then) B&W TV. I was starting down 5-years of age and my dad had been killed in Vietnam 14 months earlier.
Six weeks out of high school. Must have been cool having a dad who was a rocket man, of sorts. At least being near a missile wing.
I was a wide eyed 12 year old sitting glued to my TV in Carteret, NJ
At home with 5 young kids.
Glued to my TV watching Jules Bergman on ABC. He was, in my opinion, the best television reporter on the Space Program, back in the day. He seemed like the type who today would be calling Anthropomorphic Climate Change the scam that it is.
All I know is that the day before was a Saturday, and I was really ticked off that the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour was not on...just a bunch of black and white, fuzzy pictures with long periods of silence and a radio hiss with somebody mumbling something from time to time.
My family was vacationing in Vancouver, and we went back to our hotel to watch the moon walk.
I was seven, and we were gathered at my paternal grandparents home, around the family’s first (bought for the occasion) color television.
I remember that there were core samples on the table, and my mom and grandfather were discussing petroleum exploration in the gulf of Mexico.
A young’n in New Orleans. Mom woke me up to watch.
Thanks for posting!
I was a Navy dependent living in Subic Bay in the Philippines. I was 11 years old.
I recall it was a blisteringly hot, humid summer day, about 10 AM, and we were huddled around a small black and white television in our open concrete carport that had been partly sealed off with screen and a thick plastic membrane so it could be air-conditioned.
It was one of those days if I either went inside from the heat, or outside from the cold, my black plastic navy issue BCD (Birth Control Device) glasses would immediately fog up and become unusable.
I remember having no idea what I was looking at on the television, all I could see was was occasional blobs of white on a green tinged black background.
Wow. Yeah, talk about a contrast.
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