The Moments of a Past Yet To Be

I see my 10 year old self quite often, like some half lucid dream. I see my long, hesitant finger white on an unusual keyboard. I'm with John McKinney, classmate and model rocket buddy, in his father's study in Turpin Hills, an upper middle class suburb of Cincinnati.

It was 1968, the space race was in full swing and we were doing our part. Today was launch day. Mr. McKinney was our basketball coach, so John invited me to spend the night after our Saturday morning game and I came with afterwards.

Mrs. McKinney was a plump woman with a passionate smile and huge, loving heart. She met us at the door, handed out towel and shuffled our sweaty heads to the shower.

After cleaning up met up in the kitchen for a hearty lunch. She loved the male species and knew how to handle them with a kind patience and strong willed disciple. Her husband, a math and science professor at the University of Cincinnati, was a bright and dashing character. His attraction to his wife was unashamedly written in his eyes. I was embaressed by the storybook twinkle in his eyes. I look back now and I realize how seldom I have seen it.

Our Mission Control Center was abuzz with activity. A small patch of concrete in the backard, attracted any number of neighborhood kids that came from nowhere with cats and dogs in tow. Who had leaked our top secret launch I'll never know, even to this day! Well, the launch didn't go without it's difficulties. My Yuri Gagarin Bostok blew up on the launch. Kinda disappointing since I worked on that model a for weeks after school, developing near brain damage from the glue sniffing. Still, the neighborhood kids seemed thrilled by the explosion. One girl told me years later that she had her first orgasm that day. I' d be lying if I didn't say I wish I had that freak of girl's phone number some nights.

John's launch, however, was successful, traveling upwards at least 250 feet, leavng a nice trail of white smoke. But our inability to retrieve John's rocket and mine shattered on the lawn left us both a bit dejected, like receiving only Grandma's homemade sweater and a black, clip-on bow tie as Christmas presents.

That evening after dinner, while John's family watched television, we snuck into his Dad's study. John wanted to show me something. On desk was some odd equipment. John pressed some switches and lights came on. A strange whirling sound came from a metal box. He picked up a telephone receiver and dialed a number from a scratch of paper taped to the wall. Placing the receiver in a strange kind of cradle, it was apparently "communicating" with something. After some almost musical noises, some writing appeared on a small tv screen. It had a list like format. He pressed some keys on a typewriter keyboard and something moved on the screen. "Wanna play blackjack?", he asked. " Really? What is this?", I asked, moving up on the edge of my chair.

There it was. The future.