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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 vist 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. |
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