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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.