“I think it’s a terrible thing,” declared Donald Trump. “Total lunacy,” tweeted Senator Marco Rubio.
As someone who, like Rubio and Trump, has yet to see the movie, I feel compelled to add my two cents. Not only should Ryan Gosling have planted an even bigger flag on the moon, he should have also erected a statue honoring Stonewall Jackson. And while we’re on the subject, why isn’t Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA” our national anthem?
It so happens I was alive on that momentous evening of July 21, 1969, and I count myself lucky that we had grownups in congress, a grown man in the White House and a grownup on television in the person of Walter Cronkite. Oh, and I’m also grateful for the likes of Neil Armstrong, who expertly guided the LM to the lunar surface without a trace of histrionics. Not because it wasn’t scary, but because Armstrong was a first rate test pilot. In fact, none if the Apollo astronauts were drama queens. Some, like Frank Borman, were so boring that it was suggested at the time we send a poet, or maybe even an actor, into outer space. And now it’s happened; Ryan Gosling, Tom Hanks, Gary Sinese, Kevin Bacon—they’ve all to the moon and back.
At the time, I was working as a janitor at The Homestead Resort in Midway, Utah, but management allowed me to set aside my push broom that night and join the crowd that had assembled in front of the resort’s only television set. The image was fuzzy, the reception sketchy, but that didn’t matter. We were all sitting up, fingers crossed, holding our collective breaths, until at last came word from Tranquility Base that the Eagle had landed. Whoopee!
By and by Armstrong descended the ladder, hesitating on the last rung, then stepping off.
“That’s one small step for (garble) man, one giant leap for (garble) mankind.”
The whole world joined Cronkite in heaving a sigh of relief as cheers erupted in Mission Control. It was, indeed, a giant leap for mankind—same as the birth of Sean Hannity on December 30, 1961, was to prove a giant leap backward.
So moved by the moment was my boss that he gave me the rest of the night off, provided I punch out. I remember walking out under the stars, which in Heber Valley burn brightly. I looked up at an almost full moon in awe, knowing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were looking back at me. I thought of climbing to the top of the resort’s premier attraction, a 55-foot-tall “hot pot” formed over the centuries from sediments deposited from a sporadically overflowing hot spring. Atop the hot pot was a coin-operated telescope, which at the time was in use by two excited tourists. “Were they gazing at the moon,” I wondered. No, evidently the scope was trained on Heber City, six miles distant.
From below I heard one of them ask, “Does that sign read ‘BOWLING?’
Indeed it does. Some of the letters were burnt out, but, still, it was no giant leap to piece them together.
