Monday, July 20, 2009

The Eagle

I tear up when I hear all the "the eagle has landed" sound bites of history they've been playing on the radio today.

It was the afternoon of 21 July, 1969 for me, not the night of the 20th. My family was spending the weekend at a military-run beach resort at the north end of the island of Okinawa on the other side of the international dateline. There were no TVs in our cinder block rooms, just one black and white set in the rec center. I can still picture the institutional blue room with all the adults camped out on the sofas staring up at the small box on the wall. Us kids were all running in and out, playing ping pong, making noise, and parents calling, "Shush," and "Come watch this, it's important."

Where were you 40 years ago?


 

2 comments:

Maddy said...

We were at school sitting in the dark with the curtains drawn watching a very teeny tiny black and white and grey and flickering picture!
Cheers

just me said...

Try as I might I can't remember :(
But I do remember seeing the Mets win the World Series (priorities...)