On the Moon

I had graduated from high school less that two months before. I was kind of a loner at school, but for some reason, perhaps the excitement of a long awaited release, liberation, brought about an outgoing emotional transformation, and I was ready to try to start anew. I say “try” because while in school there were many attempts at anew, but in the same old structure that never fit, or changed, cycles just repeated and I never did start doing my homework and become a better student as mother would have wanted, or whatever else I thought would be better. Or get people to not complain about my performance, my self. 

Was is the last day of school that I approached him? What did I say? “Hi neighbor, will you be my friend?” (Was Mr. Rogers even a thing back then?)

Whatever is was I think he was a little taken aback, but went along with this and soon I was running with him and his smart and somewhat fast crowd. 

People might get the impression the the 60s were drug filled. Not in Ohio. Not even at the 60s very end as this was. I had never seen of been offered marijuana, let alone LSD. Oh I had heard all about it but there was none available to me as far as I knew. 

Anyway I had a lot of fun with them and we did the what we had, beer. Maybe some cheap wine. Boone’s Farm was apple flavored sugar, while The Full-Tilt Boogie Band drove Janis to, well, boogie with her Comfort in hand. It was known as her brand. I remember that night at the Chelsea Hotel, but that’s a different fantasy. This was outdoors the Cleveland Orchestra summer venue. Someone had pot and I smoked the first time. It felt like, I don’t know, I was drunk. We got down front at the end, quite drunk by then, but so was Janis wasn’t she? Rock on. Back then you could bring in coolers filled with anything. That’s what we did, and sat on the sloping lawn. The last time I went to an outdoor place like that in New Jersey. They made me dump my Poland Spring at the entrance search and buy inside, and they would not let me have the bottle cap. 

We used to drive out of town, south an hour or so. It was more rural and there were abandoned strip mines where we would go swimming. There were cliffs to dive from. I don’t know why is was full of water, or the quality of the water. One night we camped there. I got really drunk and took of all my clothes on the cliff at night 

I can’t handle alcohol. Too powerful.

So that night was apparently a Sunday, I looked at a web site calculator thing. We were having a party, hanging at a young woman’s apartment. One of the main people in our little crowd. She was already in college and had an apartment in a nearby college town. She had a car and ideas of stuff to do. A leader. 

I guess we knew what was going to happen. There had been a launch and all. But there were sort of a lot of those before. Sheppard, and John Glen, and Russians, but they were not us so not so newsworthy. 

There was a TV and we gathered around and saw this B&W video of a man in a space suit walking on the moon. In prime time. 

Then we went back and listened to more music. You know the stuff, they still play it constantly.  And we had more beer.

 I don’t know, it was kind of like one of those military things. Clean cut Right Stuff in jump and space suits. 

I just didn’t want to get drafted.