Thanksgiving 2021 Adventure, Part 3 - Who WE are
Prior to arriving at my dad’s place near Tampa, I spent a day and a half in Savannah Georgia; a short but very intriguing visit that gave interesting historical, cultural, and political observations. I’m not going to tackle those here though as there is something else burning in my mind that I just can’t ignore; something my dad and I saw together that literally blew me away. I must share.
I’d been to Florida seven or eight times; several times as a kid, and the rest starting just after my girls’ seventh birthday (twins). As you might expect, there’s a big difference between visiting Florida as a kid and visiting it as an adult with kids. When you are the kid, you’re focused on visiting the pool and going to theme parks oblivious to the parental effort and cost. When you’re an adult, it’s hard to think about anything else; especially when money is tight and your kids want you to pay for two separate parks because, to fleece the public as much as possible, Universal has spread “Harry Potter World” across both. Five years ago, the cost of each park was something like sixty-five bucks a person. Of course, Universal magnanimously gives you five bucks off each ticket for kids and maybe a small discount for getting tickets to both (maybe). It’s insulting really and I remember thinking of a very specific thing Universal’s board of directors could do with that ten-dollar savings….
But I digress. The point is that when you travel with kids, it’s not actually your vacation; it’s everyone else’s’. When I started to think about this solo visit, I was determined to make the most of it. And after the last two years we’ve all staggered through, it felt like my own personal quest for the Holy Grail as much as a vacation and family visit in this case. The Holy Grail was finding a part of me that I’d lost. One of the things I’ve really focused on in therapy over the years, is the idea of thinking about what I want rather than what everyone else wants. We shouldn’t be our own afterthought. The more I held that in my mind, the more determined I became to do something uniquely “me” and free of politics so I could share it with my dad (he's MAGA... I am NOT).
I was born in 1969, three months after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon leaving that big footprint behind for posterity and the history books. Like so many guys of that era, the first thing I remember ever wanting to be “when I grew up” was an astronaut. That was followed, of course by Captain Kirk, but the astronaut was first. In the 1970’s, the Apollo space program was in full swing and between that and growing up with Star Trek (TOS) re-runs and the occasional Space 1999, I was all about it. And it wasn’t just kids that were energized by space exploration; the Apollo program was part of our national identity binding people of all ages, from all walks of life, all ethnicities, and all races and genders together. People were glued to their televisions with every launch while Cape Kennedy’s launch site attracted thousands of viewers outside the fences.
Cape Kennedy Space center: that was the answer. When I mentioned it to my father, he was all in. Not only did the space center have the renowned Apollo and Saturn V exhibits, but the Space Shuttle Atlantis as well. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small part of my brain making the additional calculation that Cape Kennedy as a federal site would enforce mask mandates. Several days between Savannah and Tampa over the course of my trip had made it clear that a large swath of the public in those states questioned whether Covid was real and thought that the vaccines might have been created by Communist Pagan Gods bent on the destruction of Christianity and American Democracy as we know it. Well, at least as they know it.
We chose to visit the day after Thanksgiving and eagerly jumped into the car that morning and hit the road. Route 4 cuts across the state heading northeast from Tampa towards Orlando. Now, I know what some of you must be thinking; that this must have been a long and boring drive across the pancake of a state that is Florida. And as much as I have a bit of fun at Florida’s expense from time to time, I do find some things about it quite interesting in both good and bad ways; but interesting is interesting.
Seeing grapefruit and orange trees in random places is cool; especially having grown up in the Boston area where the closest citrus trees were probably a thousand miles away. I once saw an old grapefruit tree on a McDonalds property next to the drive thru. Awesome! And although some of the forests I’ve seen in Florida are filled with maples, oaks and other deciduous trees familiar to my Northeast upbringing, Spanish Moss drapes across them and hangs down like tattered blankets. The juxtaposition of those two things makes for an interesting mix of North and South.
Florida has some of the most interesting and flat-out terrifying wildlife of anywhere in the world. On the one hand, you have a variety of vibrant bird species, dolphins and even manatees. And on the other hand, you have creatures that frankly scare the shit out of me; alligators the size of canoes and swamps filled with ginormous pythons that eat alligators the size of canoes. And as if that’s not enough, there are myriad poisonous spiders, other deadly snakes, and that horrifying brain-eating amoeba thing. A lot of Florida’s nature seems bent on our destruction and yet, the folks here don’t seem to mind.
Here's a perfect example: On the last day of my visit as I walked around my dad’s retirement community on some of the paths that wound their way past a small golf course, a shuffleboard space and some other activities, I came across a very cute little pond. I was chatting with my brother via cell as I walked when I saw a very strange-looking log with weird ridges along it’s top. A point of family history; my brother attended the University of Miami for three years. So, when I realized that the “log” was actually a seven-foot-long alligator, he was all over it.
“Don’t get anywhere near it. Those things can run like 30 miles an hour for short distances,” he warned. “If they get near you, run around them in circles. They handle like a Grand Torino station wagon.”
As if I needed additional incentive to get as far away from the damn thing as possible. Maybe it cornered like a pregnant yak, maybe it didn’t; but I wasn’t about to find out. When I got back to my dad’s place, after warning everyone I saw along the way to stay clear of the lake, his response to my panicked recap was as follows:
“You just ignore them,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” I pressed. I wanted to be a good citizen and save lives, or at least a bunch of small dogs owned by the retirees that would serve as nature’s “chicken nuggets” for the gator.
“They (the authorities) only come if the alligators are over ten feet.”
It still stuns me, but such is Florida apparently. I guess that explains why so many people there don’t seem to care about Covid either; it’s not ten feet long.
Anyhow, we cut across the state and as we passed through Orlando a few hours later, it became clear that it was taking a lot longer than we had anticipated to get there. I had done some research prior to leaving and had learned that because of Covid, or maybe just because of the sheer volume of visitors, the Apollo and Saturn V exhibits were only accessible by bus, and appointments for the buses had to be made when you arrived. I hadn’t thought this would be an issue, but the later it got, the more I revisited that assumption. When we got there around one in the afternoon it was already too late. I was disappointed, but I’ve seen traveling exhibits from the Apollo era and the Space Shuttle still awaited us. There was no way we were going to miss that.
After a delicious burger in their pretty decent cafeteria, we hurried as best we could through the throngs of masked visitors towards (as the web site says, “…a mighty full-scale space shuttle stack of two solid rocket boosters and orange external tank” that rose up over a massive sign which read: “The Space Shuttle Atlantis.”
Beyond that, the entrance to a creatively architected building highlighted with rows of windows that swooped over the entrance as if were the thruster blast engulfing the structure loomed.
Once inside, we discovered a long line of fellow NASA lovers (or people dragged there by their NASA loving friends and family) snaking its way around several corners. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as it looked and after a twenty-minute wait, the doors finally opened and they ushered us into a large octagonal room three massive video screens hanging above a bank of three double-doors. The docents had us sit on the floor (why they didn’t have seats I will never know… I could have googled that question or asked someone but then I wouldn’t’ have been able to use that “I will never know” line.)
What followed was a brilliantly produced documentary-style reenactment of the inception of the shuttle program starting at the with a fateful moment when a team manager walked into a room full of engineers and scientists and threw a model of a simplistic shuttle design at them like a paper airplane and boldly declared that this was the future. The presentation ended with an image of Space Shuttle Columbia sitting on the tarmac on April 12, 1981 waiting to make her maiden voyage that would change spaceflight forever. As the screens faded to black, the three double doors open below them. The docents led us through them and into a roughly octagonal theatre room with multiple screens everywhere that showed different angles from within the shuttle looking out as if we sat in the cockpit. Directly ahead of us the screen showed the control panels and instruments lit up some of them blinking with urgency.
The lights dimmed and the quintessential NASA launch countdown voice echoed through the theatre. “Ten… nine… eight…”
“We have a go for main engine start,” a second voice declared.
“Seven…six…five…”
“We have main engine start,” the second voice again. The building shook as the simulated rockets fired with a deafening roar.
“Four…three…two…” Both voices synchronized.
“One… zero… we have lift-off!”
The scene out the “windows” shifted and the launch tower fell away as the shuttle hurtled skywards. The Earth spun around us as the “shuttle” performed its first roll successfully. It looked and felt so real, I had to reach out and take my dad’s arm to steady both of us as we got dizzy. Minutes later we were in a simulated orbit looking “down” at the great blue orb we call home. We were so fixated on the screens above and around us we didn’t notice that the wall in front of us had opened completely leaving behind only a dark mesh screen between us and what lay beyond.
As Earth orbit spun above and around us, the lights came up and there she was…
Atlantis.
She hung at an angle as if locked into orbit around the planet. Her cargo arm was extended as if reaching grasping at a satellite. Adrenalin rushed through me at the site of her and my eyes opened wide in amazement. My hands tingled and my breath caught in my throat and for an instant, I had never seen anything so beautiful; Atlantis seemingly floating in the air before us. The mesh screen slowly rose into the ceiling and I stepped forward.
I thought about how far we had come from the moment of that first launch, when America really was one nation despite our political differences and when there were no billionaires. A strong democratic government belongs to all of us just like that beautiful girl hanging before me. And government spending on projects that realize the dreams of what we can become and accomplish as a nation and as a people is not socialism any more than the concept of multi-millionaires and billionaires is capitalism. There is a word to describe a system where a small segment of the population has a disproportionate amount of the wealth. It is called Monarchy and in an increasingly more monarchical system there can be no more shuttles. If we want to be a great nation again, we have to be better; we have to come together, take back the wealth that belongs to all of us and channel it into changing the world.
It's time for a new dream; a shared dream. It’s time for a new Atlantis.
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