I was 4 years old and standing by the window in the living room next to the black-and-white TV. I’m pointing at the moon in the sky trying desperately to see the moon lander, squinting and asking my mom why I can’t see it, well I was 4!
Ok, so I started at the end of the story and maybe a bit of filler would be helpful. We were living in a flat over a flower shop in Bearwood*, on the main Bearwood Road. The windows were tall Victorian windows with low windowsills which made it easy for a 4-year-old to look out onto the street and also up at the sky. But why would I do that, we had a TV, when it was working, and when the electricity was on, so most of the time my head would be pointing at that, the tireless babysitter.
I’d been hearing about the moon landing for weeks and weeks, maybe months, I don’t know, I was not long 4, but today was the day it was all going on. I’d watched the launch, heard all the talk on TV about the trip and everything that could go wrong etc. It was a massive thing to me, any Lego I had was now a rocket, or the moon’s surface, or both. I’m not sure if this is why I loved Doctor Who and Star Trek so much or maybe it was the other way round and why I loved the Moon landing so much but it is the earliest memory I have of space and space flight so I’m thinking the 2 were linked. Also dinosaurs, I mean I loved those too, and they were definitely on my Lego moon!
So the point between the rocket taking off and the landers arrival I would have driven my mom potty I’m sure, I would have been very hyper due to the situation… and due to the fact she used to make me milky coffee in my bottle with 4 sugars in it! We sat on the 2 seater sofa opposite the TV which I was glued to, she would have been smoking a cigarette I think and drinking tea.
So the detail, nope I have little memory of that now, but I do remember once the TV displayed the astronauts leaving the lander I went over to the window, pushed the nets to one side (common to have nets on windows back then, privacy) and kept looking between the TV and the moon through the window. I just wondered if you could see something, anything of the event happening on the TV. And of course, you couldn’t. Mom explained it was just too far away which I accepted with a sigh. After that, I went back to sitting on the floor watching the TV, playing with Lego rocks and plastic dinosaurs.
The people who say it was fake, just stop it, don’t ruin a young boy’s memories and dreams. It wasn’t fake, it was magic, the quest for space, the rocket ship, the adventure… at the time I wasn’t aware of the political race between toxic empires, just the amazing effort it took to make this happen and what I thought mankind was, at that time, dreamers and magic makers. It’s a shame how cynical I am and how obvious the greedy are in pursuit of their own glory, power or just money, I couldn’t see that as a child.
I was and still am enamoured with the moon, and one of my earliest memories when I was a little younger, probably 3, is of the moon and how magical it seemed. I remember travelling down a road one night, in the back of Uncle Charlie’s Austin 1100, standing on the back seat (no child seats… or seat belts back then) and watching the moon through the rear window. “Mom, why do all the houses get smaller while we are moving but the Moon stays the same size”, mmm fascinated I was (thanks Yoda).
*Bearwood is a town just outside of Birmingham, its mainly houses, very little of it is wood and there are no bears!