Patriot Retort:
Today is the 49th Anniversary of the first moon landing.
Where were you?
Do you remember?
We were living in Norman, Oklahoma at the time. And my parents got us up from bed to come out and watch as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon.
Even at the tender age of six, I had some inkling as to just how unbelievable a feat it was that man made it to the moon.
The Apollo Mission – man’s forays into the vastness of space – was a technological marvel.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins became superstars — American heroes.
“One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”
[photo – https://www.nasa.gov/]
Watching a crappy grainy picture of some guy walking on a rock.
Florida,
I was a week old so I don’t remember..
Camping in Yosemite.
My Dad filmed the historic event on television with his 8mm camera for posterity. Who knew if we would ever see the footage again.
I was still just a glimmer in my Father eye……
Travel Lodge on Monterey St. in San Luis Obispo, CA. I was grade school age at the time.
BTW, measure of American progress:
1969: US puts men on Moon.
2018: US unable to decide how many sexes exist in the human species nor how to differentiate them.
I was working on a sound stage in Burbank, California filming the whole thing. It was tough making the image grainy, and Neil Armstrong had trouble doing the whole “slow motion walk” thing.
3 months old. Probably taking a nap at the time.
I’ve been told I took my first steps that very day.
12 years old, family had just moved to DeLand, FL a few months earlier. Absolutely glued to the tube. Very enamored with the space program. If had been any good at math or science, I may have even grown up to be an astronaut.
My brother just texted me and said, “Yeah, they woke us up to watch the moon landing. But do you remember that they woke us up to watch Tiny Tim marry Miss Vicky on Johnny Carson too?”
Yes, I do remember.
But for the life of me I have no idea why they thought that was enough of an historical event to get us out of bed.
I was on my way out the door to hitch hike to a local club a few miles away to see Bo Diddley. My parents told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was gonna plant my ass in front of the TV, because something historic was about to happen. I hated them at the time (I was 17 and knew SO much more than my parents), but I soon realized that what I was seeing was pretty damn incredible.
Sorry, Bo…
This happened after my junior year in HS.
One of my friend’s Grandfather lived with his family. He had a chair in the family room with a pedestal ashtray next to it. He smoked 1 to 2 packs a day of regular Lucky Strikes.
He always told the family that if Man ever set foot on the moon he would quit smoking.
When Armstrong made his historic first step, the old guy put out his cigarette and never smoked another one. A half pack of LSs stayed on that pedestal ashtray for 3 years until he died.
What is more incredible to me is the fact that he remembered the Wright Bros first flight.
This man lived and knew the first flight of Man and lived to see Man land on the moon.
What an incredible century and county we lived in.
I was on Mars, staring at their ineptitude….yeah that’s right, we are here and have been for some time….your lucky that we prefer bagels with cream cheese, lox, and capers otherwise we might have eaten your face…
I was helping Dad rebuild the fences on the first cattle ranch he bought. Thirteen years old, and growing like a weed. I watched it on the news, on the 13 channel B&W TV.
I was 7 and watching with my parents, I still remember Walter Cronkite saying “they’re on the moon”…..After that I always wanted to work in mission control.
-10 years. 🙂
I was 12 and watched it on an old (even then) B&W portable in Minneapolis and John Brennan needs to be executed for high treason.
I was in the sunroom of my sorority house (I was taking Microbiology that summer) at the University of Maryland. Yes, I am officially old now but I was 18 then.
I was in college at the time and woke my 3 year old son up to see it. He still remembers that event.
I was at my dad and stepmom’s house in Pensacola, Florida. We watched it on their TV in the living room. I was really excited to see this historic event. I saw many of the previous Apollo mission launches, including some of the Gemini missions. Dad told me as a young my boy, “You were born at the start of the space age.” It was a wonderful time for a child to witness this part of history.
I watched on the TV in the snack bar in the enlisted men’s club at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. I was a 20-yr-old PFC stationed there for training as a medical equipment repairman (I enlisted in February of 1969).
I was 14, horsing around outside with friends. My mother made me come inside and watch and I remember being completely unimpressed.
12 and glued to the tube. NASA had a fan club type thing, I had been in it since Mercury and had all the patches,models,etc.
Would that kids today had that kind of pride in our country and it’s heros.
Helicopters on Mars.
I’m forward thinking. Never look back.
Boy Scout Camp Siwanoy, Wingdale NY. They put a rabbit ears TV up on a stack of dining tables. 250 boys sat mesmerized. Remember, to most of us the Mercury 7 were rock stars. I had their poster on my wall along with the Beatles.
Just discharged from USAF and starting junior college.
Camping with Mom and Dad as a 12 year old and 2 younger brothers 11 and 9 in a rechall at the campground in Maine.
Dry fly fishing on Georgetown Lake, MT, with my father and an uncle. We all lost the last of the only pattern they would take on HUGE rainbow trout. We tried every other pattern we had, to no avail. But until we lost the last blue #12 Damsel Fly pattern we had, we caught hellacious huge trout. Then we drove home to Nolackaloonies, MT, after dark, looking up at the moon and grinning.
Officers Club at Brooks AFB -smoke filled bar with cheap drinks.
I was collecting moon rocks when this thing landed and some guy walked out of it and I said, “Get off my lawn.”
MCRD San Diego. I was in the most hellish part of Marine boot camp. We flunked our first inspection that day and spent the rest of the day in the sand pit (you Marines know what I’m talking about….)
I didn’t even know about it until several days later when the girl who was writing me asked if they’d given us the day off!
San Gabriel CA. RCA Victor console with built in stereo and 6 LP changer. I was 14.
12 and on the West side of Eagle Mountain Lake, Ft Worth, with some relatives and their friends. Specifically in a large room meant for the kids that had a view of the lake.
Remember quite a bit of it because milepost events were large to me back then. It was like I had a high speed camera on while telling myself “remember this!”. I had my reasons for that.
2224 N Grand East…Springfield Il. I still remember My Phone # 523
0005…And Like everyone else…We walked outside and looked at the
Moon…..
Family vacation after the Marine Corps. A large lake near Mt. Lassen. The snack bar had a working TV, I had a hamberger and cold brew during the walk.
16 years old, glued in front of my girlfriend’s parents 25″ Motorola Console tv w/ the built-in stereo AM/FM radio & record player & freakin’ rabbit ears antenna …. only time I didn’t take up her offer to go & make-out instead of watching tv
… ended up marrying that girl
Hey, Uncle Al!! My husband was stationed at Fitzsimons in 69 and I met him there in 75 when I got stationed there. Thank you for your service and thank you for keeping our equipment operational!
I was working as an indentured servant at a retirement home for cross-eyed rodeo clowns twenty-two miles southwest of Paris, France. I remembered well as I was emptying Chuckles drool cup into the large metal slobber bucket I carried around on my daily rounds, just as Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon. I pondered whether the lunar lander had a slobber bucket onboard. OK, not really. I was fifteen and watching in my parents living room. I was fascinated.
I don’t know why I hit LIKE on that, @hambone. You’re a sick pup.
11 days before I turned 9. I saw it on the news with my parents that evening. Because I was doing summer vacation from school. Which lasted almost a year subjectively back then.
Anybody else notice the timing that favored the US (9:32AM EDST)? That had to be planned.
15 watching it on a new band new Magnavox 12″ portable that Mom bought at Halles department store just for this event. I wuz riveted and amazed at the event! Yeah, I grew up without watching TV at home… and I survived!
I was in the 2nd year of my 6 year enlistment in the Marine Corps? Sand pit? I was a Parris Island Marine. Sand pit must be a MCRD San Diego thing. Semper Fi.
In a cardboard spacecraft with my brother with the moolanding on tv out the ship window.
On my elbows and toes (with the rest of my Marine Platoon) watching the landing at the Rifle Qualification Range during Boot Camp.
11 1/2 months later I was in Vietnam.
Eleven year old Lazlo was watching three feet from the Quasar, by Motorola.
The story told to me during one of the Lazlo Family Haboob’s was that I had announced, not requested that I was commandeering the TV to watch the moon landing.
Lazlo the Elder (the Old Man) who reserved Sundays for FBI, World at war, and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, was impressed by the young Lazlo’s temerity and merely cuffed me about and went on his way.
@PHenry I gave you a like back just to cheer you up. Don’t be a Debbie Downer. We are young. Life is fun. lol
@Obamaplease
Awww the memories.
That’s where I learned to reverse formation in a low crawl …. you could never be low enough.
Platoon 1112
-2
Huntington Beach, CA. Three months shy of 9. I said it was fake. So did my great grandma.
Was 9 years old and watched it on the one TV we had, a b&w set w/rabbit ears and tin foil, and two dials, one for vhf and one for uhf.
Was more amazed by Neil Armstrong’s ability to capture the moment in that phrase that by the science… I told my mom how smart he was and it was like poetry and I that if I ever had to say something at an important event, I wortied if I could think of something that good.
“Oh, honey, they had that written for him months ago,” she said.
Oh. Innocence lost. Everything is scripted. That was the beginning of my cynical phase… in which I still reside.
I was running down my mama’s backside making a stain on the sheets. They told me it was black & white but it looked brown and white.
I too was on the crapper.
Suburbs of Detroit. 13 yrs. old, I had really studied the Apollo program. I was into it in a big way.
As many of the less wisened here, my parents were attempting to have a child that turned out to be me some some time later.
I was at our house in Cocoa Beach. I’m pretty sure Dad was at the Cape working. He was on the Launch team. I was four.
Behind the camera with a Stanley Kubrick LOL!
Junopapa – Did it look anything like this:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/18/f8/18/18f818b45dba4ce0ca837e81481c4595.jpg
We had a Lebanese engineer and his Greek wife over to our house to watch it.on TV. Our then 6 month old daughter was aimed at the TV so we could some day tell her she watched the historic event.
@ Even Steven
Did you ever hear any stories from your father about the launch parties?
I just realized by your comments that all you kids here are just babes compared to me.
@PJ…. yes! The one I remember him talking about the most happened at The Mousetrap in Cape Canaveral. Apparently, one of the attendees keeled over dead from a heart attack, so people iced him down on a salad bar and kept partying. He said the after launch parties were all crazy.
It’s funny you mention it, because I designed the project, the rocket, the capsule, the computer, the programming, and the landing vehicle. I had a hand in the space suits, too, and engineered all the communications.
And that was really me walking around out there on the Moon – I (being extremely humble) let the other guys take all the credit.
I remember building a LEM model at the time.
Lunar Excursion Module. Or something.
At my then girlfriend’s parents hunting camp 5 miles from the Green Bank Radio Astronomy Observatory, inside the national radio quiet zone, thus almost no tv or radio station coverage. And no tv or radio at the house. Her parents had gone to the home of the people they’d purchased the property from to watch the landing on tv. So I never saw the tv report until a few days later after returning home.
And of course I married the girl & still spend a lot of time at the camp, which is much improved. Two story house with all the bells & whistles. But in 1969 it was only a rectangular box with 3 rooms & no running water.
It about 15 years later before I first heard the rest of story – of Neil Armstrong’s alleged second statement, ” And good luck Mr. Gorsky! “. And the story of why he said it.
Now Neil has denied several times that he said it. But I’m not so sure he didn’t. Test pilots are an ornery bunch. He may have said it as a joke, even if his childhood neighbors weren’t the Grosky family. And there was no Mrs Gorsky that was overheard making a commitment to her husband on a hot summer day when he was a young boy. That prompted him to wish Mr. Gorsky good luck.
And I also remember where I was when I heard the space shuttle Challenger had exploded. Second floor radiology dept., Mercy hospital, Portsmouth, Ohio.
I was going through Neil Armstrong’s sofa cushions for change while he was away.
@ Even Steven
We were supposed to contact one of DH’s friends from Purdue when we arrived in Cocoa Beach when we were on our honeymoon. Didn’t contact him until the next day unfortunately.
We did drive out to a beach to watch a night launch. Spectacular. When we finally did contact him, he said we could have come with him to the launch party for the launch we saw the night before. Bummer, we missed what was probably a rip roaring good time.
From what you related, the parties must have been doozies. 🙂
My dad sat on his favorite chair in the “TV” room – an extra bedroom, really, I watched from the foldout couch. I was 11 and half asleep, but determined to witness history. My mother and sisters got bored and went to bed. My dad and me were in awe as we watched the moon walk on our big b&w tv. A cherished memory.
I just finished watching Chappaquiddick. When we landed on the moon, Ted Kennedy and his minions were formulating their get-out-of-jail strategy for him leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to die. Same weekend.
Boy Scout camp, Saint Joseph, Mo.
I was all of 6. Dad was in Seattle for most of that summer learning about the yet to be released Boeing 747, so the family tagged along for part of the time. We were on a ferry to Victoria at the moment the landing happened. The boat had what was maybe a 9 inch TV on deck and all the passengers were crowded around. I got to see it from atop Dad’s shoulders. Never will forget that moment.
12 years old. We were on a family vacation in California staying at my Aunt Virginia’s place in Burbank. She had this fabulous house that’d been the house of some Hollywood cinema photographer and we were all gathered in the library where the TV was.
In the living room of my on-base housing unit at Fort Stewart, GA, a couple of months before
I got out of the Army.
in the air force, stationed at a secret air base in thailand…looking at film of the ho chi minh trail in cambodia for potential bombing run targets
Wasting a year of my life in Vietnam
I wasn’t a year old yet. Apparently my dad had me sitting upright in front of a big black and white console TV watching the landing.
Barracks 4, NAS Lemoore, CA, TV lounge. Standing room only! Much cheering and fist pumping!
@Mike You were a 206X0. Me too! 32nd TRS & SAC
Catching up here…
4, sitting on the floor, watching a small TV on a wire framed stand with wheels, in the living room of an apartment in the projects in the Bronx.
Mets won the Series the same year and could remember when skywriting planes wrote “WORLD CHAMPS, over that same apartment.
Responding late. I was driving to Virginia from Michigan on the 20th. Where was I? I was at home celebrating my 16th birthday! My parents have a picture of me in front of the tv, blowing out the candles on my cake with the lunar module in the background. Need to find that picture,