On January 31, 1958 the United States launched Explorer 1 into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Not long after that, clear across the country, I was launched in Beverly Hills, California. Mom and Dad lived in nearby Culver City but the hospital was in Beverly Hills. So you could say I am the same age as the Space Age. We lived there for a few years. My parents grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado but Dad was following work. At the time he was making parts for jets. One of them was the Ryan X-13 Vertijet. Here is a model of it that they gave him before I was born. Mom still has it.
My first memory is sketchy. I remember walking beside a kitchen chair that was taller than I. I went out the back door and was standing on a red step. A little to the right of the step was a tree maybe four inches in diameter and next to that was my brother and sister sitting on the ground and playing with some dinosaur figures. That is where my memory ends. I have been told that I fell off that step that day. They also say my description of what Larry and Susan (we call her Sooz now) were doing is spot on.
My next memory is also sketchy. I was watching some kids playing baseball. For some reason I wanted to walk over to the other side and walked behind the batter. He hit a foul ball and when he swung his bat back to see where the ball went he hit me in the head with it. They laid me down behind the backstop while they waited for Mom to come get me. They tell me this memory is completely wrong. We were in the backyard, near that red step and the neighbor boy hit a foul and the rest is about the same. Mom says I had a bump the size of a golf ball on the side of my forehead. Concussion you think? Undoubtedly. Dad had the car so I never went to the doctor. Permanent damage is a possibility. I have been told I have a mild case of dysphasia. But that is a… what’s that word?
Soon we were at a baseball game. I had me a Dodger Uniform! We bought a Dodger bobble head too! Sure wish it had survived these sixty years! I remember being bored, eating lots but not sure what (bet it was a bunch of hotdogs or maybe popcorn). We were behind first base. Dad told me Sandy Koufax was pitching but I wasn’t paying attention (darn it!). Ain’t I cute in my uniform?
When we moved back to Colorado, we lived in Clifton. I remember them moving a piano out of the house we were moving into but that is all. About this time Mom started selling Avon. She would take me with her and one day I remember trying to pet a dog and was bitten.
One day we were playing football in the backyard. I was five years old now. I had the ball and our neighbor, who was my brother’s age or about nine or ten tackled me. He grabbed my arm and swung me around and threw me and my newly dislocated arm to the ground. Off to the doctor.
My first day of school was a traumatic experience. I cried for a long time. When school was out I did not know what I was supposed to do so I started walking home. They found me about to cross the railroad tracks about a half mile from the school. I knew where home was. Everyone was mad for some reason.
We liked to play all kinds of games and sometimes we were quite innovative. One day we took a few coffee cans and punched holes in the bottom with a hammer and nail. Then we would fill the cans with water from the ditch. As the water ran out, we would run around the yard and if it ran out of water we had to stop where we were (“ran out of gas”). The object was to see how far you could go before running back to the ditch for a refill before it ran out. If you did run out of water you would wait for someone to come by and share their water so you could make it to the ditch for a fill-up. Soon we heard it was time for dinner and to quit playing in the ditch. I still had water in my can so I said “just one more time!” When I came in I was in trouble and received a smack from Dad (that kind of punishment was rare but in those days, it was “acceptable”). I think I dodged because I hit my head on the door. I cried and Dad came back from the kitchen, put his hand to my head and it was covered in blood. It sure smelled like ketchup. As I think back on this, I have come to the conclusion that Dad was afraid I would get sick from playing in the ditch, ordered me to get in the house, I refused, and he got mad and slapped me on the butt for insubordination. When I hit my head, he felt bad. Come to think of it, it may have been the last time I was spanked… well, by my parents anyway!
Me with my “Johnny Seven.”
Christmas was always a big event at our house. We would get all kinds of small gifts but we always got one big one. When I was about nine it was a bicycle! I was scared to ride it. Finally a couple of months later, we were living in Brigham City, Utah. Dad was making parts for Apollo by now. After the fire in Apollo One, they needed machinists and Dad had quite the experience making parts for Jets back in the fifties. We were in California (San Fernando Valley) just before going to Utah. He liked to tell a story about drilling holes in a ring that went around the heat shield area for his boss but that is a long story I’ll save for another day. Expect a story on all the “tall stories” people have told me over the years that may or may not be true. In Utah he said he was making hinges for their seats. But back to Brigham City, I finally learned to ride it there. It was fun riding on the smooth sidewalks. By June we were back in Clifton. The only place to ride was on the graveled roads around our home. As I improved I started to try to do tricks. One was to clap my hands while I was riding. For a second it was “no hands.” One day I tried to clap twice. On a graveled road. The dirt in the cuts on my arms was the worst part. Another time, I rode to the top of a small hill near our home. It was actually a big pile of dirt left over after they dug the canal. When I rode up the hill, I didn’t figure I would have to ride DOWN the hill. Something I had never done before. A friend said just ride the brake. I landed in a big patch of sage brush.
Not everything ended in pain. My favorite toys were ones related to space. The ultimate was “Major Matt Mason.” He came with a moon base, a moon crawler, a jet pack and a moon sled. The jet pack could be attached to the base of the sled. The pack had a string that you could pull out and attach to something above and as you pulled the string he would slide up the string. He flew! It would also make the sled “fly” across the lunar surface. I loved him so much that even after all his bendable arms and legs broke, his crawler quit crawling and his moon base slowly lost all its parts, I hung on to him. In fact I found him in a box a couple of days ago. Couldn’t resist. I cut his arms and legs off, put wire in and glued them back on. Not as good as new but at least he can hold a normal pose now. I see him a few feet from me right now. Back pack needs a harness though.
It was somewhere around this time that I started doing everything as a count down. “Five, four, three, two, one, blast off!” I did it so many times I STILL find myself doing it. Fill a glass with water. Hmm. Looks like about a six second job. “Six, five, four, three, two, one, FULL! Maybe that baseball bat to the head did some damage after all.
We moved sometime in 1965. I do not remember the move. That house was haunted! But that is another story. (See “The Haunting of Copley Castle.”)
Sometime later, I was staying the night at a friend’s house. In the evening I fell out of his tree, scraping the inside of my right arm. I ran home, let Mom clean it up and she put Bactine on it. We slept out on the lawn that night. Sometime during the night I woke up and a cat was licking my wound. I shooed it away but something was wrong with my lip. My lower lip was swollen. I ran home, woke up mom and she says I said, “Mom a cat was licking my arm and look at my lip!” Off to the doctor. Diagnosis was an allergic reaction to Bactine, but I think it was my cat allergy that I have to this day. Maybe I had been bitten by an insect. Who knows?
Not too long after this I and a different friend of mine made spears from willow branches. They were about five feet long, an inch in diameter and we had whittled the ends into crude points. We had fun trying to get them to stick in the ground. Suddenly my friend said “Look out!” Then I saw stars and found myself on the ground. My head hurt behind my right ear. I put my hand to it and my hand came back red. “Mom!” I lied that some guys beat me up when I told Mom about how it happened (my brother had recently been beaten up for reporting some of his classmates stealing parts off of his car). I came clean a few minutes later. Could never lie to Mom for some reason. She is a very honest person and I think it has rubbed off. Another trip to the doctor. He said another inch or two to the left and I may not have survived or ended up paralyzed.
Not sure of the order of these things but another time we were playing with fireworks. I had a smoking cap stick that just didn’t want to light. It was glowing but was not smoking so I blew on it to get it going. It sparked and started smoking. At least I think it did. When it sparked, a spark landed in my right eye. It felt like a hot poker had been stuck into my eye (I guess technically one had been). I ran to the hose and literally drenched myself when I stuck the hose into my eye. ANOTHER trip to the doctor. Scratched and slightly burned cornea.
One day I was riding my bicycle when a different friend came by riding in the back of his parent’s truck. “We’re going to the store, want to go?” “Sure.” I left my bike by the side of the road and I went to the store with them. The bicycle was still there when I got back. Try that these days. We were riding on the tailgate and when they dropped me off, I jumped off before they had stopped. The back of my head hit the pavement like Marty’s in Back to the Future. Stars! “You okay, Dave?” “Yep, I’m fine,” and off they went. I stumbled over to my bike and rode home. I was all over the rode but I made it. I never told Mom but I had another nice goose egg for a few days. Concussion you think? I do.
I received a bow and arrow set for my birthday twice. First one was when we were in Brigham City, Utah. It had rubber suction cups for arrowheads but there was very few things I could get them to stick to. When I tried to get one to stick to Dad, he broke the bow in half. The second one was a few years later. It had regular target heads but even though it was meant to be safer and used only on targets, they still could be fatal. That fact was not lost on me and I did not consider Dad as a target anymore. But my neighbor and I could not think of anything to safely shoot at so we launched them from my yard into his, targeting his back lawn. We did not hit anyone (luckily) but one shot hit his roof – and stuck. I heard later that he got smacked for that. Not sure what that entailed but it was one of two I was partly to blame for.
In late 1971 a stomach flu was wreaking havoc with my sister and I. She threw up on the coat of a lady sitting in front of us while we were watching Romeo and Juliet at the Cooper (now Avalon) Theater. If that lady is reading this my sister felt sick about it and I don’t mean the flu. A few days later it hit me. I at least kept mine to my room and the bathroom. ALL OVER both rooms! When we were well and started back to school after the New Year, I slipped and fell on the ice while crossing a street at school. I remember it was Tuesday, January 4th, 1972. Why can’t I remember birthdays and anniversaries? I had my hands in my coat pockets. I cracked the bone in my left elbow. The same one that was dislocated about eight years before. A few days later I was feeling ill again and thought the flu was back. It got worse on Friday afternoon. By Saturday I was in very bad shape, probably had a fever but we still thought it was the flu. Sunday morning I was deathly ill and had terrible stomach pains. Off to the doctor. Diagnosis? Ruptured appendix. I have been told my fever hit 106 degrees before surgery but I have no recollection of much of Sunday. I thought I was dying and was so sick I didn’t care. I also had my left arm in a cast!
My sister came to see me the next day. My hospital room was empty and she thought I had died. They had moved me across the hall. They moved me to three different rooms if I remember right. It was always a big deal because I had tubes going in the incision and out below my belly button flushing the infection out. It was a long, painful, boring seventeen days in the hospital. (Side note: Mom still has my bill for the whole thing. $1100. Inflation says that is $6800 in 2020 dollars. I bet the same would cost $80,000 now. And you don’t think we need healthcare reform?).
Seven months to the day after my fall, I was all excited to play freshman football for Palisade High School (I had played one season in seventh grade but was not very good). I thought I needed a ride on a motorcycle to help pass the time. Sign up was scheduled for the following Monday. I had my own little Honda (65cc but was “full size”) but my brother let me borrow his Montessa 125cc dirt bike. I had ridden it many times. My rides on either bike would consist of riding about 200 feet on the graveled road on our street up to a dirt road that curved around the hill I crashed my bicycle on a few years before. Then I would ride down the canal road to a cement bridge that crossed over the canal. It had rails on only one side but it still only left about three or four feet clearance. It was also a drop of several feet down to the bridge and then the same back up the other side. Always a thrill. Then I would ride across a hill that was between two farms. I would cross G Road and ride along the side of the road but about thirty feet from G road until I got to the overpass crossing I70. I would ride all over Mount Garfield’s foothills and then retrace my path home. Where do you think everything went to hell?
I was fine for quite a while. I came home, crossing I70, G Road and the highline Canal just fine. I think I remember riding faster than usual along the canal road but I’m not sure all these years later (I never rode very fast anyway so we are not talking more than about 30 MPH). I know I slowed down when I came to the so-called road that passed around that hill I told you about earlier, but there was a young girl on it heading toward me. I slowed down even more but she was not riding straight. She veered over in front of me and then back to her side of the road. I moved over to the side of the road, hit some soft dirt and went down. I remember going down and getting up again but nothing in-between. She asked if I was alright and I said “yeah I’m OK” and she rode on. The motorcycle was upside down, wheels in the air and spinning. It had only flipped upside down and not more than a few feet from when I went down so I had not been going very fast. The handlebars landed on the kill switch, so it was not running. I looked where I was headed before I went down and there, just on the other side of a sage brush, was a rock the size of a large dog. It would have been bad. I up righted the bike, but my left arm was sore and weak. I tried to pull in the clutch so I could kick start it but I could not squeeze it far enough. “Crap!” I knew then it was broken. I cracked the bone in the same spot as seven months before but the crack went farther up the arm. Back to the doctor and another six weeks in a cast!
I never did get to play football after that. I did learn to bowl with my arm in a cast! So much for my dreams of being a pro football player!
My neighbor had a canoe. We decided that we needed a body of water to float it in. Barring any lakes nearby, we chose the canal. We had a blast rowing up and down the canal, lying flat in the bottom when going under bridges and occasionally flipping it over and coming up under it, breathing in the air pocket it left. Someone on the bank would only see an upside down canoe floating down the canal and wondering if someone drowned. Eventually we carried it home and cleaned up. Yep. I heard he got smacked for that event too. I am surprised we were not arrested. Even then it was illegal and our not being aware of that makes no difference. As they say, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
One of my friends at school was a football player and wrestler. He was big, strong and a good friend to have but I never had to use his muscles in defense of anything. One day we were playing soccer (or real football) and we were on opposite sides. We were both going for the ball but he got there first and gave it a great big kick to get it far down the field. I blocked it with my face. Unintentionally you understand. They say my feet left the ground and I landed on my back. I laid there for quite a while. He felt terrible but I never held a grudge.
The rest of high school was relatively safe. I did throw the discus and the shot put. I just could not get the turn down and had to throw the discus by “switching it,” I think they called it. Neither coach ever came over to teach me how to throw. What does that say about a coach? I had a junior helping me learn the throw but being a senior, I didn’t have a couple of seasons to get really good. I fared better in the shot put. I even made it to the finals at the district meet but only placed sixth. I did well enough through the season to “letter.” I still have the letter but never did get a jacket for it.
By now I was really enjoying movies. I particularly liked ones with special effects. I loved movies about space but I was also intrigued by stop motion animation like the original King Kong and in Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad movies. I especially liked his sword fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. Dad had a wind up 8mm movie camera that had the capability of taking one frame at a time. Dad even animated my brother’s model cars. He would take a few frames, move the models an inch or two and repeat the process. When played back they were pretty jerky. I immediately took over, animating anything I could get my hands on. I took only one frame at a time, though and would calculate just how much I should move my subject, calculating for it being played back at sixteen frames a second and later at eighteen for Super 8. Thus my stop motion animation was very smooth. My favorite was a little alien I got out of a Cracker Jacks box. I called him a Martian. I took the base from a chemical rocket and inverted it and it was his space ship. If I couldn’t be an astronaut then he would be one! I would have used Major Matt Mason but by now his arms and legs were broken and I couldn’t make him look like he was walking.
Not long after this my interest turned to girls and has never really waned. Eventually I gave up stop motion animation as a possible career choice as computers were taking over special effects. I turned to photography and did my share of special effects using Dad’s 35mm Minolta. In 1978 I purchased my own Canon F1n and various lenses (spent about $1400, or about $5500 in today’s dollars).
The first year with the Canon I went through a little over one hundred rolls of film. Some of my favorite subjects are wildlife. Here are some examples.
I tried my hand at modeling but this is as far as I got.
I asked one of the cheerleaders out for a date but she said “no.” Smart girl… (She is the one to the lower right).
I have also purchased telescopes over the years. Astrophotography has been very fun but also very expensive and it is very difficult.
Now I was truly a “spaceman.” In 1997 my image of comet Hale-Bopp in three-D was published in Astronomy Magazine.
I could also travel to the planets.
So here I am retired. Still playing with all kinds of photography. Even doing three-D with GoPro cameras.
From underwater to the far reaches of outer space, I have gone from a six pound no ounce bouncing baby boy (bouncing off of bats, asphalt, dirt, grass and bushes) to an old, retired man who still can’t stop thinking of space but also loves everything under it.
Here are a few images, some of which are posted elsewhere on my blog.
Geeking Out with Dave 