OPINION: Station wagon vacation amidst moonwalk

We gave no particular thought to the space shot in 1969 when planning our first station wagon vacation.
Our kids were 7 and 3 when we discussed driving to Florida to meet friends, and we didn’t know how they would travel, particularly the younger one. How would he do on a pretty long road trip? We decided to chance it and planned to break the trip into as short parts as practical.
Of course, we were excited about Apollo 11. That was the space shot through which it was planned to land the first men on the moon and get them back to earth. We were paying plenty attention to that but did not connect it with our plans.
We left on July 19, 1969, and spent that night in Jacksonville, limiting the time the kids would be cooped up in the car. Apollo 11, carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, had been launched on July 16.
Our second day we headed down the Florida east coast, making brief visits to St. Augustine and Daytona, and were so busy traveling, we were not too conscious of Apollo 11 progress.
We planned to spend a night in Cape Canaveral, then take the short drive across the peninsula to meet friends in Tampa. As we approached our goal for the second day, it was about mid-afternoon. We passed signs saying the Space Center was to our left. We made a quick decision to run over there and see if we could get a tour before going to our motel.
We had wondered if the Space Center would be closed because of the space mission, but it was not. At a visitors center, we signed up for a tour, then boarded a bus and the tour began. As it happened, the Eagle, the little capsule that was to take Armstrong and Aldrin from the spacecraft to the moon surface, had started its descent.
Our tour went along and stopped from time to time where the guide explained what we were looking at — all of it stuff involved in the space program, of course. We had a broadcast of the moon mission piped through into the bus PA system, and Armstrong and Aldrin were nearing the surface.
As we approached an impressive launch site, the guide told us that was where Apollo 11 had been launched a few days earlier. We took a short break there and got off the bus. We got back on, and were listening on the radio when the Eagle landed — or mooned, if you prefer.
So when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, we were at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad from which the mission had departed. This, ladies and gentlemen, is my main claim to fame.
Later at our Cape Canaveral motel, we watched coverage on TV, and the moonwalk (not Michael Jackson’s) was to be late that night. The kids went to sleep quickly, and then my wife went to sleep and I was watching alone.
I recalled a sign at a neighboring hotel saying there would be a moonwalk party that night, and everybody was asleep anyway, so I eased out and went to that hotel.
It was some party. There were tourists and local residents, but to me the main participants were people who worked at the Space Center. There were televisions and noise and then quiet as Armstrong took “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Then the noise returned on steroids.
When the astronauts placed a small U.S. flag on the moon, the crowd spontaneously jumped up and sang the National Anthem. There was excitement and pride and tears. It was just great to be there.
The next day, I think it was, we were on the drive across Florida when the Eagle lifted Armstrong and Aldrin back to the command spaceship. It was some relief when it worked. Think how miserable all of us would have been if it had failed and stranded them on the moon.
In Tampa, our 3-year-old got his claim to fame at Busch Gardens when Gussie Busch, CEO of Anheuser-Busch patted him on the head.
Moonwalk? OK. Patted on the head by Gussie Busch? Big.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News. He can be reached at .