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Still, as we entered the 1970s The excitement and promise of the space race was done and we had won. Congress forgot all about space for a while because Vietnam had taken so much energy from the country. Then we "lost" a war in that far away jungle and we came home relieved to be done with it and ashamed of our conduct there and at home. My most vivid memory of Vietnam was when that last helicopter lifted off leaving the grasping, desperate hands of so many frightened Vietnamese behind -- people that had thought we were their friends and protectors. The dire warnings of the anti-communists turned horribly real as millions of Vietnamese would be murdered or thrown in prison in that ruined country during the late 70s and early 80s. Even after he got us out, though, Nixon's presidency went from landslide victor to disgraced burglar in only a few short years.
The darkness and gloom deepened for the country.
Yet I was looking to the stars, to TV and books about space. I liked
comic books, too. But, truthfully, my family could not really afford them,
so I had to wait until I was in my teens before I really started to get
into them because it wasn't until then that I could go out and do
odd jobs for some spending cash. By that time we were approaching the end of the decade.
I was reading sci fi books like "they were going out of style,"
as my Mother would say. My Dad would buy them for me at second hand bookstores.
I began to feel I was too smart for my parent's religion. God? Bah,
there is no such thing. Technology seemed the answer, space the new frontier.
But this stubborn ball of dirt kept us hidebound to its crust and it was
becoming obvious that we weren't going anywhere.
I was starting my teen angst years when Carter put us in a "malaise".
My father got a new job which moved us three hundred miles away and things
just seemed to go from bad to worse as far as I was concerned. I was losing
all the friends I had grown up with and only two more years to high school
to go at that. I was lost, discouraged and mad at the world. The Iranians
helped tip us all further off the ledge we were peering over and made
our entire country into hostages. But there were a few bright spots in that
decade. In 1976 we were introduced to NASA's first space shuttle, the Enterprise. Then a few years later we had the debut of Star Wars making heroes palpable
again at long last.
By 1979 I was living in my new "home," and an unwanted one at
that. The world seemed strange, foreboding and uncertain. Would I make
friends? Would I be able to keep up in school? What will I do there?
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12|Epilogue|Footnotes