Photo by SHILWANT roy on Unsplash
July 20, 1969
I remember it well. I arrived at Mississippi State University the day before the landing and moon walk.
Earlier that year, in May my father had died leaving me parentless after my mother's death eighteen months earlier. In the Fall of 1968 I applied and was accepted into a program for high school students between the junior and senior years of high school. The program was called Special Program for Academically Talented Students (SPATS) and we participants were able to take college courses for credit to give us a head start when we enrolled after graduation. Because of Daddy's death I was allowed to attend starting in July violating a major SPATS requirement of attending both Summer terms. The advisor/counselor for the program called me and suggested that he "boil down" the orientation I would miss in early June. He told me to NEVER tell any of my professors or fellow students that I was a SPATS (you can probably guess the clever insults that acronym generated) because we would be harassed by students and some professors! We were younger than the Freshmen starting in the Summer but we lived in an air-conditioned upperclassman suite while they were living in huge unairconditioned Freshman boys dorms (which in Starkville, Mississippi in July and August is cruel and unusual punishment ). Some professors thought that it weakened the University by allowing people who had not even graduated high school to pass (actually often ace) their classes so some of them graded SPATS harder!
The night of the Moon Walk I was scheduled to attend the regular freshman orientation and my fellow SPATS warned me again to keep to myself and avoid even talking to others because they would ask what dorm I was in (which we were to keep secret) etc. etc. I was anxious because as an extravert I didn't naturally keep to myself.
The auditorium was about three-quarters filled and I took a seat near the rear. Several freshmen sat next to me but everyone looked as nervous and anxious as I did. Since Mississippi is made up primarily of small towns and Mississippi State is the choice of rural farming students they were as out of place as I was. On the stage was a small professor with shoulder-length hair and he basically said the following, "You are in college now. It's time to figure things out for yourself, to become an adult. All of you should have enough judgment to skip this session and be sitting in front of a television while the most important event in human history is unfolding. We have landed on the Moon people! If you have questions about where the library is or where restrooms are, ask some of your fellow students. I'm not going to miss the Moon walk telling you a bunch of things you should be old enough and smart enough to figure out for yourself." He either said, "sheesh," or "shit," as he walked off the stage.
Two of the freshmen sitting near me said that they were going to the Student Union to watch because it was too hot in the dorms and asked me if I wanted to go with them so I did. We had to stand for the next few hours until Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon. We missed what he said because the crowd of students gathered there broke into applause. Then Walter Cronkite was saying that he didn't understand the first part of what he said, he only made out "...one giant leap for mankind."
About a third of the students left immediately so we were able to sit down. I was tired and wanted to go back to my room to finish unpacking but I was nervous about walking with the other freshmen and having to veer off to the upper class dorm so I stayed even after they left. Later as I walked through the campus groups of students were talking about what they had just seen. I passed one small group arguing because some of the students said that it was all staged, that what we were seeing was taking place in a television studio in the desert. I was too young and inexperienced to understand that part of being in college meant that there was always someone with a difference of opinion who wanted to debate and discuss.
The next several weeks are less clear in my memory as I experienced what college was all about and found that I loved being called "Mr. Gardner" by my adult professors. I remember vividly one of my English classes when we were asked to read a short story and write an essay about metaphors in the story. I wrote that I thought the rocking horse was a metaphor for masturbation and when we got our grades back the professor said that I was the only one to get the right interpretation and asked me to explain but I was so embarrassed I couldn't speak! My last clear memory of that Summer was when Hurricane Camille devastated the Mississippi Coast and actually brought thunder storms all the way to us in Starkville. In the Union that night some students were saying that our landing on the moon was responsible for screwing with the tides and causing the worst hurricane in history - I think some of those students were the same ones that said the whole Moon landing was staged!
I mostly remember that I felt different in the Fall when I started my senior year in high school - we had landed on the Moon, I had completed two college classes, I was on my own managing money and my life, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was wiped out, the Vietnam War seemed to be cranking up even more, the Courts had ruled that every school in Mississippi would be fully integrated no later than January 1971 - adult life was taking off like a Saturn rocket.
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