Earth To The Moon

Thursday March 17, 1966 I am 7 years old. I go to school. I am in the second grade. My school is in the small town of Dwight, Nebraska. I live on a farm. School is 8 miles away from home.

I have to ride a big yellow school bus to get there. It seems like it takes forever to get home from school. I think it must be something like an hour. There are kids in my class who also ride this bus. We usually play while we are riding home.

The big news yesterday was the Gemini 8 space mission with astronauts Armstrong and Scott. The newsman said that they had a very scary ride. Something went wrong with the mission and they had to make an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean.

I don't really understand what happened, but I know that people were very concerned if the crew was Okay.

Today when I was riding home from school in the bus, my friend Joey and I pretended that we were the astronauts on Gemini 8. The metal seat back in front of our seat was the control panel for our Gemini spacecraft.

I decided that Joey would be Astronaut Neil Armstrong. I would be Astronaut Dave Scott. The reason that I didn't want to be Mr. Armstrong was that on TV when they showed his picture, his hair was really short. I never really did like having a crew cut.

Since Joey was Armstrong, he sat on the left side of our seat. I was Astronaut Scott, so I sat on the right side. It was pretty small in our Gemini capsule so we scrunched down in the seat with our knees up against our control panel.

When we get thirsty we drink some orange Tang. That is what the astronauts drink. It doesn't taste so good, but I don't think space food is supposed to.

My friend Joey ... oh, I mean Mr. Armstrong had a twin sister named Patty in our class. After the splashdown we had her pretend that she was our recovery crew. Before she opened our capsule to let us out, she sprayed down the outside with water. We thought that would be a good idea, because it might be hot, or there might be seaweed stuck to it or something.

This happens to be the first space mission that I can remember. I don't know why this is the first space mission in my memory, it just is.