July 20, 1969. I can’t remember exactly what time of day it was when we watched the first man walk on the moon. Was it dark? Was it daylight? Living in Watsonville, a small-town in rural California, my 14-year old mind had fantastical thoughts, sometimes foreboding ones, about how and whether or not these men, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, andВ Mike CollinsВ were actually alright.
Already having lived through three assasinations in recent memory –В President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., would these men be safe and sound and actually on the moon? In the Uranus-Pluto inspired upheaval that was the 1960s, we had alreadyВ grown usedВ to associating disasterВ looming in the background of major public events.
I remember an image of the corner footВ of theВ lunar landing vehicle coming closer and closer to theВ В surface of the moon. IВ called my sister in to watch as it was closing in on the moon.В We wereВ watching actual footage of the lunar surface — a grey, dusty and craterous place. This was no longer aВ distant light, but an actual hard, material place.
Not quite believing, yet fighting disbelief, what was coming to us on our TVs, live and right before our eyes was an end to legend and folktale.
I remember vividly Mama’s words, recalling her ownВ adolescence in Santiago,В PhilippinesВ before the Japanese occupation of World War II. В “You know, when I was your age, I was cooking on a stove made out of stones, with a wood fire we had to keep up during the day. We butchered our own pigs, grew our vegetables, and harvested our own rice. The moon was just a source of light. ”
Then she shook her head as she said “I never dreamed I would ever be alive to see this.”
I remember watching the Miss Universe pageant that evening which broadcast an earlier taping of the contestants watching the first man walk on the moon. Some of the women were holding their mouths, gasping andВ in tears. It was aВ watershed moment inВ the history of our country, the planetВ andВ our generation across the world. This was when we pushed down the walls of global mythology that impossibly distanced us from the stars.
Forty years ago, on this day, ourВ reach exceeded our dreams.В On that day we stood watching, riveted, from living room to street corners — anywhereВ with television sets onВ across the country and around the world.В In a turn of the globe, the world as we knew itВ hadВ irrevocably changed, and we thought, somewhat innocently, anything and everything was possible.
Reading these responses, its amazing to see so many many lives touched by this one event. I think we learned earlier when the President was assasinated, that we were all connected by a national heart.
In the moon landing, it was a global one.
I was ten, and with my family on an offshore island that day, putting bird bands on baby gull chicks so they could be traced through their lives. We were eating lunch and listening on a portable radio with thousands of gulls screaming around and above us, but I was there right along with the astronauts when they actually landed. We didn’t get to see anything on TV until that night when we returned home, but the delay made it no less important to me.
I’ve always wanted to go to the moon.
A wonderful day to remember that moment – forever frozen like a snapshot in my mind – and take forward from it all that goodness that comes of realizing dreams.
Fe . thanks for the memories. . .like Len, I believe it was late evening. My soon-to-be husband and I had driven from Florida to Kentucky to spend the evening with friends and watch the landing. I remember all the great food she had prepared (well I am a Cancer!)
Your mama sounds like a real Vesta goddess Fe, keeping that fire going and all before World War II. And Savas’ mom’s recollections regarding the gestapo is a reminder for us to not forget what happened in the 30’s/40’s and pray it never happens again.
Thank you, Fe, for touching on some of my own memories from 40 years ago. If i remember correctly, it was night on the West Coast when we heard “the Eagle has landed”. i was 16 at the time. For my family, it was a marathon in front of the TV before and after touchdown. A sunny summer day blurred into a warm night and the next morning until i could stay awake no longer. Seems so strange, it’s been almost 30 years now since i last owned a television. Can’t imagine sitting in front of The Tube (or, now, The Flat) for that long for any reason.
-Len Wallick
savas:
I think there is a difference between now and then.
In this country, there has been a rise in hate crimes and racial profiling, this we know, since Obama took office. That means also more violence against women, gay people, Muslims, blacks, Latinos — by anyone with an axe to grind wielding it against their favorite target.
Also we cannot forget the police roundup in Fort Worth on the anniversary of Stonewall, and the recent soft acquittal of the Jena Six defendants (after much work by community members and progressives across the country fighting for their fair trial).
As Eric said, he thinks and I believe that we are going to burn this stuff out as we expose it to daylight. Its the shaking up of the way we have been historically — all the old power structures breaking down. Alot of people are scared of this change because it means everything they’ve known is moving past them–their ability to perceive, understand, perhaps even try to control it, but can’t. And so they lash out.
Its going to get more intense as we move ahead the next few years. But I believe its going to get better. The metaphor to use and focus on is that the poison is working itself out, and that process in the body and the body politic is an excruciatingly painful one, but one we must endure to heal. Your Mom is right in that we can never fall asleep at the wheel. In that we must be both hopeful and vigilant. Its about all of us.
This was a really moving personal account Fe… something that stuck out was “we had already grown used to associating disaster looming in the background of major public events.” This disturbs me for the same reason I posed the question in my piece, in the midst of this so-called progress we have something like Skip Gates Jr. being arrested by the Cambridge police. I was just talking to my mom who grew up in Poland during the war and we happened to have watched Defiance last night and she said, “I never, ever forget that the gestapo can show up at your door no matter how good things seem.”
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/07/20/harvard_professor_gates_arrested_at_cambridge_home/