March 28, 2024

Time Flies, Just Like the Astronauts

Rehoboth Ramblings

Posted

This summer everyone is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in July and Woodstock in August. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating the 40th anniversary of these events. Time flies, almost as fast as the astronauts did. What an amazing achievement the moon landing was, especially when you consider how primitive computing was in those days compared to now.

Neil Armstrong and the other astronauts of that era were truly remarkable people and all the behind-the-scenes scientists and other people involved in the moon landing deserve every accolade we can give them. How much intensive work went into that space mission, and every space mission really.

I watched the Apollo moon landing in unusual circumstances, on the display TV in the window of an appliance store in Nantucket. My friend Mary Ann and I had chosen that week to take a road trip from Ohio to Cape Cod. We were all set to take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and then the incident at Chappaquiddick happened. We wisely chose to go to Nantucket instead that day. Yes, that was an eventful week to be on vacation.

On this trip to New England, I was driving my friend’s snazzy new Mustang (my own first car was a used Rambler, not vacation-worthy) when we got to the creepy old Jamestown Bridge, which we naively thought was the Newport Bridge. Now that was one scary old bridge. Then having got across without incident, we saw the Newport Bridge looming up ahead. But it soon became clear that this was a nice new bridge, and now the “new” bridge is 50 years old this summer. I recall that I also managed to get the car stuck in the sand, I believe it was at Scarborough Beach. A motorcyclist came to our aid, though with a certain amount of condescension.

We had discussed going on vacation later, maybe to some big festival they were having in upstate New York, but passed on that idea. I have never regretted that decision, that summer or since. Hanging out in the rain and mud with half a million people was not my idea of fun then either. Can you have claustrophobia outdoors? I’m sure I could. I’m just not a festival sort of person, never was.

I wonder whatever happened to that gauzy silver and white mini-dress I bought in Provincetown that July? I loved that dress, even though it had huge puffy sleeves that undoubtedly made me look even shorter. This summer I saw a cute sundress that could have come straight out of the 1960’s on display in a store window (the price tag was a bit steeper).

Perhaps sundresses are always in style, but it suddenly dawned on me that if, back in 1969, we had worn dresses that could have been in fashion 50 years prior to that, we would have been dressing the way they did in 1919, just a few months after the end of the First World War! (Downton Abbey, anyone?) This is a sobering thought: 1969 was halfway between then and now. And despite the staying power of 60’s fashion and music, 1969 undoubtedly seems as distant to today’s youth as 1919 did to us.

Little did I realize, while driving through southern New England in 1969 that I would be living here within 10 years. I’ve been here ever since. New England has always felt like home to me and a good place to live, with many places to vacation nearby, though I would choose fall rather than summer to visit the Cape these days.

Speaking of the passing of time, I recently received a class booklet from the women’s college I attended in Cincinnati. For better or worse, they used our senior photos in cap and gown, probably to jog our memories about classmates we had forgotten. It was a great equalizer, that dumb-looking mortarboard on our heads, since most people look rather silly wearing one. It was daunting to see the names of all the old classmates who had died over the years. It reminded of that phrase I keep hearing, “Old age is a privilege denied to many.”


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