Memories of the landing
July 20th, 1969. I have been avidly following the space program since for as long as I can remember. Cutting out every article in Time and Life, building a four-foot high Revelle model of the Saturn V, showing friends the mechanics of rendevous and docking with the plastic models, watching each successive mission for hours and hours on the black and white RCA television in our home.
Living in Cleveland, the landing happens in the middle of the afternoon. Hours later, Neil Armstrong emerges and my family strains to see his form descend the ladder to the lunar surface.
I don’t remember all of that so well. What really persists in vivid memory to this day is the following.
It’s late in the evening, well after midnight. I come to, propped upright against the wall, in my jammies, in bed, where I have fallen asleep. My folks have taken the one television set in the house, knowing how much this moment means to me, and set it on the desk next to my bed. It’s been left on, and in the continuing 24/7 coverage of the event, what’s on the screen is the live but static tableau of Tranquillity Base, long after Neil and Buzz have ascended the ladder at the end of their brief foray outside the lander. They’re inside, trying to get some sleep. All that’s visible is the image of the lander, the flag, and the lunar surface baking in the sun. Nothing is moving, and news anchors on the late shift are speaking intermittently in hushed tones in the middle of the night.
I gaze at the picture from the lunar surface. No one else in the house is awake. It’s just me and the glowing black-and-white transmission from the moon.
At that moment the future is the most natural thing in the world.
