I'd been asked to babysit for a neighbor for whom I had never worked... they asked me weeks and weeks in advance, so I assumed it would be for a very important and perhaps lucrative (50 cents an hour back then) evening !
While glued to the black-and-white screen (all any of us had back then), the youngest--a baby--awakened crying... odd that no one had indicated where I might find diapers? Then I noticed he wasn't wearing diapers, but a man's white t-shirt, folded into a diaper of sorts and assumed that was normal there.
He somehow settled back down in time for me to watch the grainy image of an astronaut stepping off and bouncing onto the moon's surface and listened to the immortal words "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Unbelievable! All these years later ... chilling.
Not too long after, the couple returned from wherever ... not even out till midnight! Guess at their party, one of the hosts was already asleep and it was a short nite!
Returning home (not too many doors to walk alone back then), I noticed that my Mother had hung out the American flag on the porch ... and I went in to bed. Before falling asleep, I heard a gentle rain begin; in the 60's, it wasn't appropriate to have the American flag get wet and except for this exceptional exception, I don't think it was to be displayed at night unless spotlit ... so I got up, went back outside onto the porch in my pajamas and gently unclasped it, hugged it to my body, and it felt so amazing to be an American.
And somewhere, far, far above us.... men were walking on the moon!
