• ‹ previous
• 124 of 324
• next ›

What Cars and whatever the newest Pixar film is for this generation of boys, the Apollo program was for my generation in the late 60s / early 70s. I had all the models, knew the terminology ("LEM" and "yaw"), visited Cape Kennedy, and collected the stuff.

Most of my stuff, like the Apollo program in general, I discarded after the ever-so-disappointing detente-promoting Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. As much as I'd expected for us to be space denizens, it became clear during the Carter administration that the USA no longer dealt in grand expectations. And turn down your thermostat and wear a sweater, while you're at it. So I blew up my Lunar Excursion Module in some little army men operation (along with the USS Lincoln, if memory serves). And filed everything else that was flat.

So this is what's left: a coloring book (never touched by a crayon), an Apollo 11 patch, and "To the Moon and Beyond" a Golden Stamp book. I love the unthinking optimism about the books written in that time. There was just no doubt that the USA was the best thing mankind had ever done. Next stop Mars, bitches.

But mid-70s ennui -- begun by Nixon & Watergate and capped off by the Iranian hostage crisis -- put and end to not only to the goals of what the US could do, but dreaming about the goals as well. And when it returned, the dreaming had been outsourced to the movies. And instead of wanting to become Neil Armstrong, the boys of today want to become an animated car -- which might be a tad more unrealistic than getting abck to the moon.

• ‹ previous
• 124 of 324
• next ›