Moon Over Talahi

Forty years ago we watched and waited for Neil Armstrong to take his first step on the moon up at the lake house, Talahi. We'd invited two other families up for the weekend, the Muellers and the Flannerys. The Muellers had five kids, the Flannerys had seven kids, so it was rather crowded. The two-bedroom addition had yet to be built on to the cottage, so us fourteen (!) kids slept in this huge army-surplus tent outside. At least, it seemed huge to my five-year-old self. I remember the smell of wet, rotting canvass that was the tent.

It was dark, and we were watching the landing on an old black & white 19-inch TV that got horrible reception, but we didn't care. When my mom told me that the module had landed, I went outside and looked up at the moon, trying in vain to see the little astronauts walking about on its surface. Needless to say, I did not succeed, and it had to be explained to me that the moon was very far away.

I based "farness" when I was young on how long it took to drive up to the lake from Oak Park (about two hours):

How far away do great grandma and grandpa live? Answer: it's like driving to and from the lake four times.

How far to California? Fifteen Lake House Round Trips. (LHRT).

"How much longer do we have to drive?" "Only about one more LHRT".

So, when I asked how far it was to the moon, I was told it was something like ONE THOUSAND LHRTs:

"Well, if we drove to the lake, turned around and drove home, we'd have to do that one thousand times in order to get to the moon!" my dad told me.

I thought he was nuts, and it sounded like a booooring trip, but it was no wonder I couldn't see the LEM on the moon that summer night in 1969.

So here we are, forty years later, and nothing really more has happened vis-a-vis manned space exploration. By now I expected us to all to be able to have cottages on the moon, for chrissakes.

Oh well.