"Moon Landing" from Steve

Steve, like most IT guys, loved science. Loved science-fiction, too. Don't get me started on his obsession with asking pilots if they ever saw UFO's while flying planes. Got to a point I was scared to have us sit in an airport too long for fear he'd go pestering all the incoming pilots. But he'd send me all sorts of articles to read or burst out in normal conversation with some weird pieces of arcane information. He could hold a piece of information in his head in ways that perplex me to this day. He was a walking encyclopedia. He was constantly teaching me things.

But what I enjoyed most was when the information coincided with stories from his past. His childhood. Steve didn't need the nightly newsman to tell him it was the 40th anniversary of walking on the moon. He had written this earlier in the week and waited to post it. Just one of those pieces of arcane information in his head waiting to burst out at the appropriate time.

July 20, 2009

I was 6 years old when we landed on the moon 40 years ago today.

My parents let me stay up late that night to watch Neil Armstrong take his historic steps, and to me that was as big a deal as the steps themselves. I want to say it was about 10:15 at night when it happened and even at 6 I knew it was a big deal, but at that age could I fully grasp what exactly was going on?

There were clues. My dad fought in World War II, and had seen it all or so it seemed, but he too paused on a work night to watch the TV in the living room with the rest of his sons. I noticed that. Mom kept telling me that I would always remember that day, and that I would tell my children about it. She was half right: I have no children, so I'm telling all of you. My grandmother, Bombina, was terrified. She was convinced that the moon would fall from the sky if they landed on it. "Vinny, why do they HAVE to go???" she would plead with my father.

The picture wasn't very good but that didn't bother me. The only thing that ever play well on that TV were cartoons so who cared. It was 1969. I was used to bad pictures on TV. Disturbing images of helicopters and soldiers broadcast like a blurry surrealistic nightmare. Maybe I didn't comprehend it all, but somehow I knew enough. I know this because it didn't escape me that the ship was called the Eagle, or that it landed in a place called the Sea of Tranquility. I knew the future when I saw it, and I saw hope in my family's eyes that night.

1969 was the year I became aware. I was aware of the Mets, and found a hero in George Thomas Seaver. I knew who Joe Namath was, and I knew who Willis Reed was. I knew what Viet Nam was and I knew my oldest brother was a soldier. I knew grandma Bombi had nothing to worry about, the moon was going to stay right where it was. And I knew that Neil and Buzz stood in the confines of the Sea of Tranquility 250,000 miles away and it all made perfect sense.