Back in 1969, I stayed late at the Daytona Beach News-Journal, along with many fellow staffers. The night dragged on till early morning, but nobody was leaving. News was breaking, but we weren't covering it ourselves. We were watching it unfold on the office television. Men finally were walking on the moon.
My Godparents, Thelma and Robert Ross, had bought me astronomy books when I was a child. When I was 9, I'd read all the horse books in the library three times over, and started to explore science fiction. Put the two together, then ship me to Florida, and it's no surprise I was a fan of the space program.
When America began launching manned rockets into space, I was watching the skies at every opportunity I could see a launch. I found High Bridge in Oak Hill when I couldn't get to the Titusville Pier. Other times, my folks and I would walk to the ocean where Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach meet.
I loved the old Saturns. When European rockets raced into the sky like scatted dogs, the Saturns gave us a show. Steam plumes billowed out to each side of the rocket, setting the stage for the slow climb away from the launching pad. The Saturn would gather speed as it rose, and finally began to streak into the sky. We'd wait to see if we could see the stages separate, and to feel the accompanying rumble roll under our feet.
That late-night-to-early-morning in July, we watched as Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and touch his feet onto the surface of the moon. We'd made it.
It would be, we believed, the first of many steps onto the surfaces of other worlds. At least it was the first of several such adventures, including Alan Shepard's famous golf swing. For the last of the moon launches, my family and I, including my German shepherd, Athene, gathered at Titusville Pier to watch a great Saturn rise for one last time.
The movie "2001" came and went. The book "2010," like its predecessor 2001, was published and likewise was turned into a movie. And went.
Walt Disney's preview of the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow, with "people movers" and other futuristic devices, was shown to us on tv, but as a concept, it went, too....replaced by a theme park of the same name, EPCOT, that has nothing to do with experimental cities that had been planned to house Disney employees.
We've stopped making the great Saturns. The Space Shuttle, which had no dreams of extending us into deeper space, has taken its turn in our space program, and soon will be retired. We've remotely explored our neighboring planets, but we have yet to go. We're helping to build a space station, but it's even closer to Earth than is the moon - so much for building a station in the area of space called "L-5."
Even as late as the 1960s, we thought by 2009 we'd have air cars and a station on the moon, if not a regular landing spot on Mars or one of Jupiter's moons. But then, back in the '60s, we all thought that peace, love and flowers in our hair would win the day, and people would be a lot nicer to each other, too.
The dreams aren't ended...they're just taking longer to accomplish.
On the other hand, when I was watching our first lunar landing take place, I remembered that my father had ridden his paint mare, Trixie, to school. And in his lifetime, he saw us break many barriers. He saw the first atomic bomb. He saw planes that broke the sound barrier. He joined his family in watching little Telstar travel unblinking across the sky. He saw the end of the poll tax and the integration of schools and lunch counters. He saw our country criss-crossed with interstate highways, the growth of hotel chains, the rise and fall of train and luxury liner travel, replaced by jets. And he saw men walk on the moon.
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