By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Science says the moon causes only the tides, but legend and lore blame it for werewolf howling, vampire activity, and various other forms of earthly madness. I have my doubts. The real lunacy in my life started not with the moon, but with the moon landings.
The year before the first moonwalk in 1969 was sweet childhood bliss. My older sisters taught me to roller skate. I thrived in the second grade class of dear old Mrs. Stein, known for her kindness to students. My neighborhood buddies and I built mud dams in our curbside gutters and drove matchbox cars over them. When the gutters were dry, we played with our family collie dog named “Laddie” in the back yard.
And then Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and all hell broke loose.
I don’t know what else to blame. Besides the 1969 Mets winning the World Series, there were no other contemporaneous cosmos-shaking events.
I remember watching and hearing about the historic landing. Apollo 11 traveled 240,000 miles to the moon. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin landed on the lunar surface. Fellow astronaut Michael Collins stayed behind in orbit, helping ensure a safe return home afterwards.
Six hours later, Armstrong walked on the moon, a first for humans. He said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I saw it all on our grainy black and white TV screen. The moon walks continued through 1972, ending with the Apollo 17 mission.
Those three years of my life were a turbulent rocket ship ride, my own personal version of the ill-fated and explosive Apollo 13 mission.
I spent third grade at a new school, forced to deal with stern Catholic nuns and make new friends, only to leave them behind when our father moved us to California. Ostensibly, we were in the Golden State for an extended “vacation,” but he left us there and went back to his new Utah girlfriend. My parents divorced, leaving my mom in Sacramento with no car, no job, and no money. Two siblings soon moved away from whatever it was we called home.
I have no idea how I navigated it without failing, but in fourth grade I attended three different schools in two different states. Oh, and did I mention that the dog was poisoned by someone and died a rather nasty death? Sad as this was, it may have been for the best, because I no longer had any kind of a back yard through which I could chase him.
Thank God the moon landings ended in 1972. I am not sure we could have endured much more of the lunacy they seemed to unleash.
Fortunately, little events here and there after 1972 helped turn my personal tide…not changing schools, steady friendships (including with the monks at the Trappist monastery in Huntsville), and putting down some small but stable roots in my boyhood home town of Ogden.
In July 1979, ten years after the lunar madness started, I had my first “grown-up” job working as a cub reporter for the Ogden Standard-Examiner newspaper. One day, my editor told me to do a “man on the street piece” and ask people if they knew what had happened in July 1969. Some did not remember, but many did.
Even more interesting, these folks, recalled the first moon landing with fondness and even national pride. I wrote the story and, of course, left out how my life changed for the worst after July 1969. The differing perceptions of the historic event reveal that lunacy has a perniciously discriminating nature. It strikes with a very selective scalpel rather than wielding a broad swinging axe.
Fifty years after the first moon landing, I try not take Neil Armstrong’s actions quite so personally or quite so negatively. Maybe my giant problems after his moon walk were just a matter of coincidence. He and his colleagues were heroic. And he was right back in 1969, big things were afoot for mankind, and many of them were good for many people.
Yet, my own moon landing madness years, and maybe even a few other events of the last half century, teach another lesson too. Giant leaps are all fine and good, but when too many are foisted on you at once, you need small steps in between to recover and maintain your balance.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.
Wonderful story.
Thanks!