Typo, Apollo 11, not 15.
Sorry.
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, Randy Danniel <milepost206@...> wrote:
>
> In July 1969 I was working a regular job 3rd trick in Burlington yard
> as a snake. Apollo 15 was slated to land on the Moon early Sunday
> evening and then in the early morning Neil Armstrong was to make his
> historic "Leap for mankind." So I grabbed my sister's B&W 19" TV
> since it had built in rabbit ears and headed off to work at 11:00.
>
> Unlike most Sunday nights, we were busy. It was hot and humid with no
> breeze. Your clothes stuck to you like thin slabs of fresh liver.
> When word spread there was a TV in the yard office, everyone
> including the operator at BN, seemed to adjust their schedule to
> coincide with a necessary trip to the yard office just before their
> Moon walk. The depot was completely empty.
>
> Everything stopped at Burlington for about 45 minutes. Even the
> Dispatcher's phone was quiet. The lights were shut off so we could
> see the picture. To this day I can still see a couple of the old
> heads that saw steam yield to diesel and jets drive piston airplanes
> into retirement just sit there, absolutely mesmerized (as we all
> were) by the grainy picture captured off the rabbit ears. Just when
> we were all enjoying our extended break the radio came alive when
> Jack Myler on the wayfreight screamed they were by Lone Tree with a
> red board at Connett, the screen door slammed and you could hear the
> operator beating feet up the cinders to the depot screaming, "Tell
> him I'm in the can."
>
> And as any railroad story goes, there was always someone with a
> contrary opinion. I was working the West End switch engine a couple
> weeks later with one of the yard office moon walk historians. During
> the supper break, Kenny claimed in a deadly serious, conspiratorial
> tone, "That moon landing never happened. The moon is like a soda
> cracker. If you went there you'd just punch a hole in the Moon and
> shoot out the other side." I asked if Kenny had been watching the
> same TV I had been a few weeks earlier. He said, "That was all staged
> in Hollywood."
>
> Years later I asked Kenny if he changed his mind, he never waivered.
> The Moon was like a soda cracker and Neil Armstrong climbed down that
> ladder in a Hollywood movie studio.
>
> Randy Danniel
>
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