In light of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing this week, I have a photo to link up ukuleles and lunar exploration (yes, it can be done!). But first, the story…
Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, our neighbor was the aerospace industry. My father—and the fathers of many of my friends—worked on various aspects of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and later, the space shuttles. For us, space exploration wasn’t just a Walter Cronkite soundclip on CBS—it was something that was spoken of at the dinner table and the subject of playground talk.
Many of our fathers had worked directly with some of the astronauts—and they regaled us with accounts of what these space heroes were “really” like–which had short tempers and which enjoyed raucous practical jokes interspersed with the seriousness of their work. My father (who worked at Autonetics in Anaheim, shown above left) would bring home color NASA photographs (this in the days of black and white everything) of space capsules, lunar modules and early morning rocket lift-offs in Florida. It was great stuff—and I shared it proudly at “show and tell” the next day at school.