The First Moon Landing

Today is the 40th anniversary of the day Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. I know because (1) it is the major story in all the newspapers and (2) Turner Classic Movies is featuring "moon" movies all day (Have Rocket, Will Travel with the Three Stooges just ended and Walt Disney's Moon Pilot starring whatever happened to Tom Tryon comes up next).

But whenever I think of the first moon landing the thoughts that come to mind have very little to do with "That's one small step for man..." I think of the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Moody Coliseum, old U.S. 75, piranhas, splashdown parties, short heroes and quarantines. I'll explain.

The night before Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, the Rolling Stones performed a concert at Moody Coliseum. Chuck Berry was the opening act and I first began to feel somewhat past my prime when I heard the person sitting right behind me say to his companion ("Do you know who this Chuck Berry person is?"). As soon as the concert was over, I hopped in my car -- a 1969 Pontiac GTO (I knew how to travel back then) -- and headed south for the apartment UPI rented for me at the Portofino Arms across the highway from NASA in what is now known as Clear Lake City.

Back then, Interstate 45 wasn't completed all the way between Dallas and Houston. From Fairfield to just north of Huntsville, it was still a two-lane, windy, hilly highway, U.S. 75. All along the roadway were signs designating how many persons had been killed in traffic accidents along that stretch. As soon as I hit this two-lane stretch I noticed a pair of headlights in my rear view mirror. Whenever I came upon an 18-wheeler and found an opportunity to pass it, that car behind me did the same. After I while I began thinking "How do I shake this clown? What's he doing staying right on my tail?" By the time I got to Huntsville, I needed to get some gas. When I pulled into the station, my "stalker" pulled in right behind me. As I got out to pump my gas, my follower pulled alongside. A rather attractive woman extricated herself from the auto and thanked me profusely for "guiding" her through that two-way stretch. The way she was talking she would have never made it on her own and that I probably saved her life. I kid thee not. We talked. It turned out she was on her way to Houston to take on a new job. We agreed to meet again for dinner in Houston later in the week.

During all the Apollo missions, UPI brought in lead writers from all over the country to man its space station bureau. I was brought in from Dallas to run the overnight with the great Ron Cohen from New York. Another writer brought in from New York was Lou Carr. When I first came to UPI, all I knew about Lou Carr was from the notes I received from him over the wire that were signed simply LC/NX ("NX" was UPI's designation for its New York City bureau). From these notes I pictured Lou Carr as a three-piece suiter and was pleasantly surprised when, on the first Apollo mission we all covered, I met a Lou Carr who was dressed in jeans, a psychedelic shirt that would make Jimi Hendrix jealous and a scarf. Yes, the man wore a scarf that I imagine trailed out nicely behind him when he drove his MGA with the top down through the Catskills. There was a clubhouse at the Portofino Arms (UPI rented out the entire complex during the Apollo missions) and the clubhouse contained a bar. The bar contained an aquarium full of piranhas, of all things, and we all got a kick when the bartender dropped some meat in the tank and the fish tore it to shreds. As we left the bar, Lou, the crazy SOB, would stick his hand in that tank and pet the piranhas. And they would let him!

The splashdown parties were late-sixties/early seventies bacchanalia. They commenced as soon as the astronauts were recovered safely and they were held poolside at a designated home in the astronaut community around NASA headquarters. Cohen, Carr, another great UPI writer named H.D. "Doc" Quigg and I would have a standing bet with the winner being the person who came closest to guessing how many minutes would elapse between the start of the party and when the first clothed female would jump into the pool. All the other astronauts and their wives would attend the splashdown parties. Now, I always looked up to the Apollo astronauts. They were true heroes in my book. But I never got over the shock at each splashdown party of seeing how short all these guys were, most of them at least a half-foot shorter than me. The Apollo capsules were comparatively small to begin with and fitting a trio of humans in there made it pretty snug. Thus, the maximum height of an Apollo astronaut was 5-10 and most were shorter than that.

On the pre-moon landing Apollo missions, the splashdown parties signaled the end of our stay in Houston. But Apollo 11 changed all that. Fearing the possibility the astronauts who walked on the lunar surface might have come in contact with some sort of extra-terrestrial life form that could have caused heavens-know-what if the astronauts brought it to earth (I mean, you did see the movie Alien, didn't you?), the astronauts were quarantined for two weeks upon their return to Houston. I don't know I got the short stick on this one. Perhaps it was because I was only 250 miles or so from home while the rest of the writers UPI shipped in for the Apollo missions were from New York, Washington, D.C., Miami and Los Angeles. Regardless, I got the assignment of covering the quarantine. You talk about a boring assignment. For two weeks I was stuck in Houston covering a trio of inaccessible astronauts. The bright side was that I was able to duck down to Manuel's in Galveston a couple of times a week for some great seafood.

So those are my recollections of the Apollo moon missions in general and Apollo 11 in particular. My memories are going to be different from most others, but there you have it.