Once upon a time, the fact that I watched the lunar landing (You know, “One small step for man one giant leap for Mankind.”) marked me as a modern child growing up in an amazing time. For the adults in my world, especially my grandparents who had grown up on farms with horse drawn farm equipment, this landing on the moon was an incredible thing.
It didn’t seem like such a big deal to me when we watched the live broadcast on our black and white TV during the basement sale we held the summer after kindergarten. It seemed even more ordinary to me when the televisions on carts were rolled into our classrooms so we could watch a lunar landing when I was in first grade and again when I was in second grade and then again when I was in third grade. It was something I was used that some of the grown-ups couldn’t seem to get over the way my daughter and her friends are used to hand held video games and phones that take pictures and of course googling anything that pops into our head on the laptop computers we carry in our bags and use every day.
But just as suddenly as the reality of a man on the moon came into our lives it disappeared, like some beloved relative , once the star of family gatherings who is no longer in attendance and nobody tells the children why.
The moon landings stopped. Then there was an oil embargo. Everyone worried about gas prices. (According to Wikipedia the stock market crashed in 1973.)
Mattel replaced their astronaut action figures with The Sunshine Family, dolls that camped, gardened and made pottery and leather goods to sell at craft fairs.
Lots of parents got divorced.
Mothers got crockpots to make easy one dish meals and went back to work.
The Waltons and Little House on the Prarie were on TV and The Adventures of the Wilderness Family was in movie theaters.
The same parents who had fed their children orange powdered Tang and Space Food Sticks were making homemade granola and sprouting alfalfa seeds in jars.
It was as though the culture had over-reached and then retracted. Children were bewildered.