Forty Years Ago Today We Landed On The Moon

Forty years ago today my first wife and I decided to take a ride outside of Houston. It was a hot summer Sunday. We were tired of life in the big city. We wanted to see the countryside and fresh air. We had a 1969 Blue Mustang Mach One. We decided to take Highway 90 rather than Interstate Ten because it would take us through more small towns. The Google map link is below:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Beaumont,+Texas&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=55.411532,79.013672&ie=UTF8&ll=30.085731,-94.100647&spn=1.915442,2.469177&z=9&iwloc=A
We were following the progress of the Lunar Excursion Module with Neal and Buzz on board on our car radio. When the critical point of the actual landing was in progress, we stopped the car in a rest area and just listened in fascination as Neal Armstrong guided the Eagle to the surface of the moon.
It was a tense and an exciting moment. What we did not know is that Neal and Buzz had arrived at the assigned landing area picked by NASA. They saw that it was full of boulders, craters and other obstacles that would make a normal landing impossible. Neal Armstrong took over the controls. He proved once again that he is just an incredible natural pilot. He guided the Eagle around until he found a satisfactory landing spot. He got down to 35 seconds of fuel remaining. The book said that he should have aborted the landing and returned to the Apollo capsule. Neal took matters in his own hands and made a perfect landing.
Those of us listening were blissfully unaware of the high drama going on some 250,000 miles away. When we heard that landing had happened and the rocket motor was turned off, we were full of incredible pride and joy. We listened to Walter Cronkite describe the incredible moment. We were proud to be Americans. We were sure this was the start of a golden age of great scientific discoveries, exploration, and a new hope for all of humanity. We listened in fascination for over an hour. We then made the drive back to Houston and our apartment on Waugh Drive. We lived in a small apartment building owned by an MIT graduate named Larry who was also a NASA employee. The Google Map details are below:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Waugh+Drive+Houston,+Texas&sll=30.085731,-94.100647&sspn=1.915442,2.469177&ie=UTF8&ll=29.757332,-95.398117&spn=0.007507,0.009645&z=17

We came home and watched the moon landing story develop on Channel 11 (CBS) with Walter Cronkite keeping us informed. We watched man take his first steps on the moon. We were especially surprised that Houston had played such a big part on this momentous moment.
At that time, my wife and I were both working for what was then called Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. She was a secretary in the public relations department. I worked as a first line supervisor in the data processing department. My dear friend Ralph Wallace III had got me the job. He went on to be a big politician in Texas before he sadly died at age 58 of a heart attack. My boss was a man from Beaumont named Charlie Weaver.
My first wife and I went out for a quick Mexican dinner. We then went to the offices of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. We were thrilled that President Nixon had declared the following day, Monday, a national holiday. We both would be off work. We got into the building and went up to my office. Workers were on duty at the various computer and data entry stations a television was set up. My supervisor Charlie Weaver was there. We watched Neal Armstrong standing on the moon and taking the famous call from President Nixon. We were sure this was the beginning of something magic. We forgot about the Vietnam War where one of my friends, Larry Joe White, had just died. We gave little or no thought to my close call with death in January, 1968 when I got orders to a motor patrol boat squadron operating in the Mekong Delta that were later canceled when I passed the test for Officer Candidate School. We forgot about all of the pain and hard work of having to go to the University of Houston downtown campus all day and work at Southwestern Bell until twelve each evening. We forgot about all the pressure, sadness, and uncertainty.
It was a magic moment in my life that I will never forget.