Fifty years ago, I bought a few things for the moon.
I had just graduated from high school, and when you can’t afford to go to college, you go to work. It was June 1968. The start of Summer in Somerville, warm humid days and soft breezy nights. I landed a job driving a truck for EG&G (Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier). In those days EG&G was a contractor for several U.S. government agencies, including NASA.
After my first week on the job, riding with an older driver to learn the ropes, I was excited to be working and looking forward to my first solo run. What could be better for a working class hippie? On the road all day, windows down, breeze blowing my hair back off my neck, radio loud and tuned to rock. That Monday morning my alarm buzzed me up at six o’clock, and I was showered, dressed, and out the door by quarter to seven.
At eight o’clock I parked my battered old VW bug and walked across the loading dock into the Shipping/Receiving bay of Building D at EG&G’s Bedford facility. Nate the dispatcher handed me the keys to my truck, a clipboard of purchase orders, my log book, and a fistful of cash. The POs were for the items I was to pickup from vendors all over the state. The cash was for paying those vendors with whom we had no open account.
I made stops in Newton, Wellesley, and Natick, picking up electronic components, fasteners, and cables. In Waltham I bought lenses and lighting systems, and at one place in Dedham a large roll of shiny golden Mylar. I had no idea what any of these things were for. The POs showed only the names of various engineers and labs. At the end of my run, I backed up to the loading dock, unloaded my truck, and settled up with Nate.
It seems my whole first year at EG&G was like that, and Summer gave way to Fall, and Winter blew in cold and frosty. 1969 seemed to come up really fast. I remember hearing about Apollo 11, scheduled to launch that Summer. But it was only a peripheral buzz at the edge of my consciousness. When that first moon landing finally happened on Sunday July 20 of that year, I watched the news like everybody else and got excited like everybody else—just another detached, remote observer of an historic event.
But when I got to work that Monday, there was pandemonium in the Shipping/Receiving bay. Everyone was whooping and cheering. I felt bewildered as Nate handed me a glass of champagne and yelled, “We did it!”
“Did what?”
“The moon landing! Don’t you hippies watch the news? I thought you knew. All those components, parts, and assemblies you picked up are on the landing module.”
I suppose I drank the champagne and joined the celebration, but I really don’t recall. I only remember feeling stunned at the thought that I had any part at all in something that big. I followed the story more closely after that and learned that when Armstrong and Aldrin lifted from the moon to join Collins in the command module, the bottom half of the Apollo 11 landing module was left behind. Magazines showed pictures of it, and I saw the golden Mylar heat shield.
The moon has never looked the same to me since. Whenever I see it now, I feel like I’m looking up at a small distant piece of my own past.
E J Barron
E J Barron 