Trips down Memory Lane

Ready Set Blast-OFF

We were just little tykes with a large vision of wonderful things to come. I have no doubt that the United States space program was plugged into our heroics. My brother Kurt and I knew just what to do with the remains of a refrigerator box. Our imaginations were ignited and bursting with the knowledge that future astronauts only dream of. It was about 1960 when our minds went climbing into the clouds. We revelled in our journeys going up and rear-ending ourselves down the steps and flying on our socks on waxed floors. I would grab the railings four steps from the bottom and went flying.

On this particular day Kurt and I, only four and five years old decided to offer our lives and minds to the rudiments of aerospace engineering. With a box and blond striped wooden step miracles and wonders could happen. Kurt and I went to work immediately designing our craft. We knew what we were doing and so it took remarkably little time to put our plan into effect. Our only problem was that we needed someone to test our craft out. That was the way it was done and we did not want to go against the rules.

Our sister Lori was all of two years old.
"Hey Lori, how would you like to have the ride of your life".
It is all in how you sell your idea to a willing party.

Kurt and I got all kinds of pillows and blankets. We were going to do everything in our power to make sure this flight was a success. We made sure we found a blanket that Lori liked. Then with all the enthusiasm two brothers could muster. Lori was put into the spaceship. There was a short countdown-neither of us could count very far and then off the rocket ship went to the bottom of the stairs with Lori in it. Kurt and I were jumping up and down laughing and whooping it up.
"Atta way Lori, we did it."
The rest of the morning we took turns going down the stairs until Mom and dad got home. Boy were they going to be surprised?

Mom and Dad were not especially impressed. There were expletives, but we were too young to know what they were saying. We only knew that they were not that happy about the whole idea.

Sacrifices have to be made for the sake of the nations and the world. That was the kind of kids that we were. The space program was put on hold. That did not mean that we could not think of something even better. Even now we plot and plan.