When I was a kid growing up in the 60’s, being an astronaut was just about the coolest thing you could be. Believe it or not, being a regular Airline Pilot wasn’t that far behind. People used to put on their Sunday best when they went flying, and the handsome pilot fresh out of the Air Force with his Crew Cut and chiseled jaw may as well have been James Bond. And that’s just what the men thought about him! Good lord to be a Pilot in the 60’s, you’d have to be swatting broads off like flies just to have time to finish your martini in the cocktail lounge.

Yeah I wanted to see space. The “Final Fronteir” as they say. We all did. That was until we were told you had to be some sort of math whiz or some such. Sort of took the appeal away. For me at least. So I did like my daddy and his daddy before and took over the family farm. Every time I drove into town I’d hear people bitch and complain about stuff that wasn’t worth a breath, and completely disregard the stuff that should keep us all up at night.

I’d sit there on my porch at night with a jar of Daddy’s corn liquor and look at all them planes up in the sky and I’d remember Neil Armstrong. I’d think to myself “lord it would be so much better to be anywhere but here”. Earth had began to feel like a foreign land to me. America at least. I wasn’t even religious but sometimes I’d pray to god that one day it’d be possible to hop in a ship and leave this world behind.

But you know what’s funny? Now that we can and everyone has, it ain’t so bad down here. Lot more parking to boot. Reckon I’ll stay