End of an Era

During 1958 I stood on the banks of the Indian River with my brother
and my father who worked at "the cape" we had recently moved to the
area from upstate New York and I hated it. It was flat and hot and the
were a zillion mosquitoes. There was no air conditioning yet and I did
not know any one else in the elementary school that I was attending
and it seemed like all the other kids had fathers who also worked at
"the cape". I wanted to know why the heck we were standing down by the
banks of the river getting eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes and my
brother just wanted to go back to the house. Of course all of the
launches were supposed to be secret then so dad could not say anything
about it he just told us to look across the river at the
searchlights.....and sure enough we saw our first launch. It looked
like it went up all of about two inches then slowly came back down.
there was a brief explosion and all was dark again. Dad rushed us back
to the house got in the DeSoto and rushed off to "the cape". A few
years later we had moved over to the beach and the mosquitoes were not
quite so bad. I graduated from highschool in '64 bummed around for a
couple of years and soon found my self on an all expenses paid
vacation to Vietnam. I arrived back in Brevard county in time to see
the Apollo take off for the moon in 1969 and left to spend a few years
at the Univ of Miami. I had only seen one shuttle launch on a visti
back home one time in the 90's but watched as many of them as I could
on the tube. in 1986 I was in Colorado when the Challenger blew up. I
spent a day alone in the mountains thinking about that and almost came
back to Florida then. some where along there I got married and raised
a fine daughter. Finally the wife and I did move back to Florida and
this morning as we sat on the beach not far from the house I grew up
in, waiting for the final Shuttle Lift Off, I had time to reflect on
how the space program really affected the better part of my life. The
space shuttle is being retired and I and not far behind. I can only
hope that someday we look to the stars again.