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First Moon Landing

During a recent jaunt to my favorite cafeteria I came across a clipping from The New York Times dated Monday, July 21, 1969. It was framed with metal and glass above the urinals in a men's room. Being less than a year old when the newspaper containing the article hit the newsstands, I was not aware of astronauts, the so-called space race, the amount of force needed for a rocket to break free of Earth's gravitational field, nor the myriad events that had lead to the U.S. space program and the landing of humans on the moon.

So the wave of excitement and the growing space-age frenzy sweeping through everyone in America at the time, did not consciously sweep through me. I learned of the events of those days, later in middle school and high school, and again later still in college.

Each time I read the books, listened to the lectures and watched the latest movies, the story became more and more rendered by sensationalism and nostalgia. Even the history textbooks were influenced by our mass delusion of a popularized past, a mostly fictional past. This failed to capture me, failed to sweep me with the waves of possibility and pure astonishment that had surged through the minds and hearts of the generations of the 1950s and 1960s.

Today, expectations of the future perfect have faltered and our hopes seem to be caught up in exemplifying the past. Granted, many things have changed in the intervening years, sensation is the norm. So, when I read the clipping in the men's room, it was the way in which the article was written that struck me the hardest.

Its headline ran in bold uppercase letters, "MEN WALK ON MOON." Then, under that, smaller, "Astronauts Land On Plain; Collect Rocks, Plant Flag," and still smaller, just below that, "a powdery surface is closely explored." These words were referring to the crew of the Apollo 11 who made landfall at exactly 4:17:40 PM on a cold and airless afternoon unhindered by the usual level of gravity we experience on Earth.

The succinctness ofAstronauts land on plain; collect rocks, plant flagtook my breath. There was no sentimentality, nor any hint of sensationalism. From men walk on moon to powdery surface closely explored, it was simply a list of what had happenedmacro to micro, like the trip to the moon itself.

Whether this effect of straightforward language was intentional or not doesn't matter now. In reading the words I did not need the help of computer graphics, data crawls, or a news anchor's personality to appreciate the message. Humans had made it to the moon! We had touched the surface, collected its secrets. It was not made of green cheese, and from there Earth was truly magnificent.

I had been underestimating the power of print and its ability to stir the senses. A manned rocket landing successfully on the moon it was an amazing feat. One that had taken at least a century of imagination and collective thought, money and physical effort to accomplish. And I had never really felt the immense quality of it in my heart until reading that headline.

Learn more about this author, K Shawn Edgar.
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