Friday, August 31, 2012

Goodbye Neil Strong Arm

When I walked out of the house this morning I looked up and saw the full moon. My first thought- Oh man they're burying Neil Armstrong today. Neil Armstrong was a test pilot who flew over 200 types of aircraft including the 4000 mph X-15. He did this after spending a few years being shot by catapult off the deck of aircraft carriers.
He flew armed recon missions in Korea. On one mission part of a wing was sliced off by a pole- while he was flying 20 feet off the ground
He also exploded away from earth leaving a trail of flame and smoke miles long in a tin can that was powered by thousands of tons of explosive and flew 200,000 miles away from Earth and landed on our moon. When he got there he stomped on it's surface and then stabbed it in the face with a stick topped by the American flag. He then said those immortal words, I. Own. You.
The first moon landing is literally my first vivid childhood memory.
I was five and I remember it like it was yesterday.
Men went to sleep at night and dreamed of waking up and being him. Women went to sleep at night and dreamed of waking and being pregnant by him.
He didn't die from old age. He had been considering getting a degree in medicine and learning the guitar and then becoming a rock star/brain surgeon, but he decided, Nah, I'll leave that to the mortals and then having nothing else left to do he punched the eject button and said, Goodbye Earth one last time.

3 comments:

an Donalbane said...

Yeah, the moon landing, like Lennon's murder, the attempt on RWR, is one of those times that I can remember exactly where I was.

I was a bit young (just two weeks younger than John-John) to remember the JFK assassination, though as a kid, I ingrained most of the images from the Four Days book not long after.

el chupacabra said...

Hey Don. I remember my brother taking pics of the TV with a Brownie type camera and recording the audio with a reel to reel recorder.

an Donalbane said...

Ha! Those were the days...