Talking about the fun we had in 1976 with Ian Cole got me thinking about another summer, five years earlier, when the three Lockhart ladies had a remarkable summer adventure with his mother, Brooke.
Starting in her senior year in high school,
Elsa & Mim would make the occasional trek from Pennsylvania down to Florida
to watch Apollo rocket launches. Elsa
would ultimately see four and Mim five.
Their first space shot was the lift-off of
Apollo 12. Mim has a snapshot of Elsa
standing on the roof of the van, scanning the horizon with binoculars - her
right foot in full cast. She broke it
just before they were scheduled to go down.
I cannot figure how she was able to scale up the van to the roof with
that heavy cast on, but they say she did it with ease. Oh, the wonders of being young.
By the time their third trek down was in
the offing - I cannot remember which one - came around, they started trying to
lure me down with them. I was
complimented they wanted their old Mom to come down and share all the
excitement they had experienced, but I was sure that Pete would not want me to
leave him for over a week.
Ha! He thought it was a wonderful idea.
The next obstacle - money. It was not that I could not picture asking
Pete to finance such a spree, but for some reason it meant everything to me
that I foot the bill myself, however crazy that sounded, since I did not work
other than do Pete's billings and that was as his life partner, not paid
employee. But there I was, stuck with an
unreasonable but deeply felt bee in my bonnet.
What to do?
Out of the blue, my brother, Bob, sent me a
check, repayment of money he'd borrowed literally decades before and which I
had long since written off. The very amount I needed to finance my way. There I
was, with both the time and the money, and on my terms. Still gives me goose bumps!
With me going along, Mim felt comfortable
asking Lach and Jean if Brooke, who was in elementary school, could come
too. They gave their okay, so one hot summer
day found the van packed, the four of us buckling up our seatbelts and Pete
waving farewell. We were off to Cape
Canaveral!
Our first night, we stopped at Weldon,
NC. I will never forget going to the
local Holiday Inn restaurant and ordering a bourbon and water, only to find out
it was a "dry" county - no liquor.
I practically got down on the floor and kicked and screamed, I was so
disappointed.
It was the only low point in the trip.
I remember Brooke getting ready to go to
bed that night and turning to the three of us with this interesting look on her
face. "I just realized," she
said slowly, "that this is the first time I have ever gone anywhere that I
did not arrive there on the same day."
That was an interesting thought!
Even more interesting – and sobering – was Mim’s response ~ “And you
don’t even know that what you’re going to watch will even take off!” Definitely sobering.
The next day - or it may have been the 3rd
day, I am not sure - saw us in Daytona,
driving down the beach and making a special visit at Brooke's request to the
Speedway. Oh, it was HOT at the
Speedway, but a promise is a promise.
We went to bed early that night, planning on
getting up around 2:30 a.m. to head down
to the Cape. I remember that Mim or Elsa
rang up the desk for a wakeup call, only to be told the desk closed down at
midnight, but they could lend us a wind-up alarm clock. We took it, but all three of us Lockhart
Ladies spent the rest of the night checking and double checking to see if it
was working, we were so anxious about getting off when we wanted. Brooke, thank goodness, was sound asleep.
The alarm did ultimately go off and we
dragged our weary selves out of bed and roused the half-awake Brooke, who was
conscious enough to get out to the van, then dropped back to sleep on the
mattress we had in the back. The three
of us Ladies were too excited to sleep.
I remember driving down I-95 in the black
of night. After a while, off in the
distance, there was a very faint suggestion of light, which grew stronger and
stronger with each mile.
"What IS that light?" I asked
Mim.
"That," she replied, "is the
rocket."
On that, am off to bed and memories of hot
and happy days!
Love - Space Age Mom
No comments:
Post a Comment