Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
Mike Flugennock wrote:


So now, I'm wondering what the generational markers are for those of us
who were school kids pre-Mercury, as opposed to post-Mercury -- between
the kids who could only look at books and imagine what rocket ships looked
like, and the kids who had TV's wheeled into the lunchroom so we could
watch the Gemini launches and who knew _exactly_ what a _real_ rocket ship
looked like.


In my case (born same year you were) the markers would be:
1.) Did you demand to your parents that the barber give you a crewcut,
because that's what the astronauts had?

Damn. My dad took me for crew cuts because that's what _he_ had
(Sergeant, USArmy). I wanted to look a little more like Paul
McCartney.

2.) Did you habitually use the term "AOK" when talking?

"AOK" was a bit before my time. By the time I was into it, we were all
replying to the teacher with stuff like "Affirm", or "copy that". My
buds and I knew damn' near every 3-letter abbreviation and acronym
there was. You should've heard us in the lunchroom, a bunch of junior
FIDOs, EECOMs, GUIDOs, and FLIGHTs, we were.

3.) Was your school pencil sharpener a plastic Mercury capsule?

Nah, it was all either Gemini or even Apollo stuff by then, especially
Thermos kits.

4.) Did you develop a real fascination with tubes of toothpaste, because
there were tubes just like that that contained _food_ rather than
toothpaste?

The toothpaste tubes never held my interest much, but I loved stuff
like Chunky bars and Hershey Miniatures because they were uniform
shapes wrapped in foil, like the Gemini crews' "power bars".

5.) Did you ever own a plastic Col. McCauley helmet with a "microphone"
that had a sheet of plastic in it that gave your voice a buzzing sound?

I had a real cool helmet, which I remember wearing while watching the
Friendship 7 launch, but it was long enough ago that I'd never
remember if it was _the_ Col. McCauley. I do remember it looking like
a cross between the old-style jet pilot's helmet and the Mercury
helmet. I remember one of the things I especially lusted after,
though, was those little ear-clip interphone headsets used by MC and
the Gemini/Apollo crewmen (without the "Snoopy"). I thought those were
the coolest damn' things around.

6.) Were rubber buckle-up snowshoes a really cool thing, because they
looked like part of a pressure suit?

Now you're talking. They were especially good in new, fresh snowfall,
because you could mash a foot down into the snow and pull it away, and
have it look like Aldrin's first boot print at Tranquillity.

7.) Did you ever think that Sister Linda, your fifth-grade
teacher....might be a lot of fun in the sack?

You mean, while you were in the fifth grade? Actually, I went to
public schools myself, but I thought my sixth-grade teacher was cute
as hell -- _while_ I was in the sixth grade.




..
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Mike Flugennock, the Sinkers, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org