In my lifetime there are events that stand out in my mind where I can tell you exactly where I was and who I was with. Third period religion class my senior year in high school when Kennedy was assassinated. In a barber chair the morning of 9/11. The night of the moon landing in 1969 I was in the Yankee Clipper bar on upper state street in Santa Barbara with three of my friends. We chose to watch there because it was one of our hangouts and they had a TV, a rarity in bars in those days before 24-hour cable news and ESPN. The TV was located next to large aquarium full of small fish and a very large, very ugly frog that we always refer when we recollect that night at the Yankee Clipper. Next to the aquarium was a small stage where there was a girl singer who could really sing, in fact her singing got better with more drinks.
If you can imagine it was here that we watched one small step for man. It hardly seems like fifty years ago. The anniversary of the moon landing brings back a flood of memories of that summer. It was the summer before I stared teaching. I worked as a ranger for the Santa Barbara County park department. I had some money for the first time in my life. That July I went to the USSR/USA Dual Meet in the LA Coliseum. I got to see Janis Lusis , Bob Beamon, and Victor Sanyev up close. The only worry I had was the draft, but I had an occupational deferment as a teacher. As a I look back it was time of great change with many portents of things to come, but that magic night at the Yankee Clipper will forever be imprinted on my mind.