Forty years ago today I remember standing behind my family’s home in Webster’s Corners, New York. A early 20th century place that my father had combined into a television repair shop and home. We had free reign of the place, as kids we could run wildly through the rows of televisions and repair jobs.

Today was special. Today was my birthday. And it was a special day because we were going to the moon. Not all of us. Not my family with brother and sisters, cats and Shaggy the dog who happened on the scene 6 months before.

Today was the day that President Kennedy had promised us would come almost ten years ago. No, I didn’t remember it directly. Neither did I remember the chaotic three or four years after that; aside from climbing the occasional fence to the neighbor yard and watching John Glenn’s launch on my parents Admiral 24 inch color TV. To be sure, I couldn’t remember the actual event but it had been re-run on all of the sets in my father’s TV repair shop. The words “… before the end of this decade” had filled my imagination.

And today was the day. The moon was there to see in the day sky. I put my hand up to cover it as though it didn’t exist and then strained to look through my fingers visualizing Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin striding around on the surface of that mystical blue marble. And today was my birthday. I was 9 years old. Today.

The grapes were coming fresh and the apples were green and today was the day that the moon was in reach and there was no reason to go to school. I spent the whole day fixated on the TV. All the TV’s. ABC and CBS and NBC had nothing else to say. All there was, was a far off land with a rocket that would launch this dream into the air. I could walk out into the back yard past the garage and the path that the local kids used as a cut through for their motorbikes. And I could gaze at that mirage, distant and the same color as the sky. I could visualize them standing there on the moon. If I squinted I could almost see our flag flapping there. On the moon.

Then the announcer on TV said that the launch had been delay for some arcane reason. One that I could barely fathom. NO!

They must launch today!

It was MY birthday! And it was special. A moon launch would make it doubly so!