Lunar Lunacy – A short Story
5-27-14
Lunar Lunacy
Do I remember the moon landing, did you say. Sure there was never, in all our lifetimes a single moment more enthralling and uplifting for all of mankind than the moon landing. I tell you, the Yanks surely outdid themselves on that one. Wasn’t that Saturn V rocket the most enormous engine ever built by the hands of man, hell you could drive a cattle truck into any one of those five enormous nozzles. Then those three lads strapping themselves into that little tin can on top of five and a half million pounds of deadly rocket fuel, burning fifteen tons of it a second, seven and a half million pounds of flaming thrust. Then they rode the bloody thing a half million miles to the frikkin’ moon man. Un-be-lievable..!
Oh yes, sure everyone recalls when Armstrong said, “Roger Houston, the Eagle has landed” touchdown…! You’ll never forget a moment like that. Then there was the other “one small step for me” bit, well no, actually as a matter of fact I completely missed that. Why you say, well that’s rather long story, a little embarrassing to tell the truth. But sure, I’ll tell you, it’ll be a load off my chest ,one I’ve carried a very long time, so why not.
I guess it was 1969 right, yes, July 20th in fact. Collins, Aldrin and Armstrong are hurtling through space at some ungodly speed, while way down below on the ground I’m bouncing along on an old Massey Ferguson at about ten mph, pulling a hay turner over a freshly mowed meadow in the lush green drumlins of Co. Meath, Ireland. Drumlins are these rolling little hills that stretch as far as the eye can see in the heart of Irelands deep green cattle country. Sure, I was rather young to be doing a man’s work alright and it would be a while before I could waltz into Duffs pub, slap my money on the counter and demand a pint of Guinness. But you make hay while the sun shines as they would say down there and if a smart arsed kid from Dublin down for the Summer holidays says “sure, I can drive a tractor” why wouldn’t you put him out to work the fields.
At noon I see my younger cousin Orlagh meandering across the haggard field casually swinging my lunch basket to and fro. So I kill the noisy diesel engine only to hear a chorus of hissing grasshoppers and the cackle of crows arguing over the hayseed my hay turning has uncovered. From the shade of a stack of fresh grassy bales I thank Orlagh kindly and reach into the deep wicker basket and find a flask of sweet milky hot tea, a huge doorstep of a homemade brown bread sandwich, heavily buttered with a shocking amount of rich cheddar cheese in the middle. I imagine you would pay a small fortune for a sandwich like that these days if you could find one. As she turns to leave Orlagh murmurs, “ Mam’s away in Ardee and your aunt Tessie made your lunch, she says to be sure to look down the bottom of the lunch bag” as she saunters off toward the farmhouse with an air of relief at having completed her most mundane mission of feeding the young gurrier from Dublin. Once the edge is off my thirst and hunger I explore the bag further. There’s the newspaper with headlines all about the moon mission, but beneath it, hello, carefully wrapped in a napkin is a bottle of Guinness extra stout and then, what’s this, a packet of ten Carrols fine Virginia filter cigarettes. I pop the Guinness and stare down the length of my reclining legs on this glorious sunny day, over my sweaty wellies and on to my little red tractor sizzling in the heat. I have another good ten acres to turn before I can hurry over to Jimmy Ludlow’s house to see the landing, but right now, life is good. Tessie has left a little note for me that reads, if you send a boy out to do a man’s work, you should treat him like a man and she surely had. Who knows what sort of trouble she was stirring up but this “feeling like a man” stuff was deadly all right. It would be another forty years before I quit lighting cigarettes, Guinness, of course I still enjoy.
Now Jimmy was from the midlands of England, the son of an Irish immigrant steelworker. His dad came home to raising cattle when his brother made it big renting color television sets in the UK and bought the farm beyond Footstown. Like a duck out of water, Jimmy, a well groomed, polite suburban English boy found himself in the rustic heartland of Ireland shoveling cow shite for Paddy, his perpetually angry father who in the fashion of steelworkers was built like a cowshed wall. Paddy was of the belief that nobody anywhere knew what a decent days work was anymore, he was however determined to teach Jimmy just what it meant. Anyway, me being from the city and all and having a modest amount of urban sophistication, Jimmy and I quickly became best friends and spent long summer evenings together planning our lives out. Jimmy would be a Royal Navy commando, whereas I, having issues with the English Empire would of course be in the Irish army. In case of a conflagration between our two nations, we swore never to fight each other on the battlefield. Both of us naturally were more attracted to the US military where we would clearly have a better opportunity to distinguish ourselves in combat.
Directly in front of Footstown House was a large and ancient earthen structure we called the mote. It had in early pre-christian days been the site of a long ago decayed wooden fortress. The massive amounts of earth required for this structure had apparently been hauled up from the bottom of the hill which then became a swampy wasteland known locally as the Covert. Heavily wooded and fenced off, this area featured in many local tales of mysterious disappearances and even of supernatural occurrences. It was also the refuge of the wily Irish red fox who would cleverly duck in there when pursued by hounds and aristocratic huntsmen blowing bugles. Rumors abounded in the region that Jimmy and I were building a spectacular wooden fort of our own in the heart of this wasteland and this then explained the vanishing of various tools and chunks of timber about the farm, not to mention the din that could be heard the length of Davinstown Road. This rumor of course was true, for with such resources as tractors, chainsaws and so forth at our disposal, we had embarked upon the creation of the greatest tree hut ever, a marvel of engineering and human perseverance. It may still stand to this very day.
Now on this particular night there would be no time for wooden forts and such and when the last row of hay tumbled over on the headland by Crevagh Cross. I raised the hydraulic and put her in top gear to speed back across the twenty acre field toward the farmhouse. Not being one for extensive tidying up, I was soon on my merry way across the mote field to Jimmy’s house choking on the cigarette hanging out of my mouth. Now being in the higher latitudes, the Summer evenings in Ireland are endless. There would be no darkness ‘till about ten p.m. and then the crows in the rookery by my upstairs room probably wouldn’t settle down ‘till after eleven. Jimmy was still shoveling cow shite when I got there, but after a scorching lecture from his father about what lazy little over-privileged wasters Jimmy and I were, he wandered off to his nightly drinking ritual leaving us to camp out around the TV and watch the landing. In stark contrast to his father, Jimmy’s mom was an absolute sweetheart. She was the tenderness if you will that nurtured Jimmy’s sensitive bi-cultural soul. She kept chickens and a few goats, just for the love of it and her great pride was the tiny patch of lawn, the size of a rug, in front of their farmhouse which was perched on the top of a hill along the back road to Ardee. On one occasion she had Jimmy and I down on our knees plucking all of the little white Daisies out of that lawn, she seemed to feel that they were somehow rather common. But right now she was being an angel and bringing us snacks and drinks as we monitored the historic events unfolding on the lunar surface.
Like me, Jimmy felt that NASA had bungled some of the more subtle, but none the less serious aspects of the space program. Consider if you will having a man called Armstrong being the one to first step out onto the moon. Armstrong. Sure anyone could be an Armstrong. There were Armstrongs in Ardee selling pots and pans, there were Armstrongs pushing brooms for the Dublin Corporation, but tell me this, where else on earth would you find a “Buzz Aldrin” I ask you, except in the good old US of A. Aldrin was clearly the man for the job, no mistake about it, sure I had a cousin Neil who couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag. Very disappointing, really. So anyway, here we were, the boys are on the ground, so to speak, the Eagle has landed, there has been a rash of TV commercials and commentary and we are almost out of popcorn, so when are they going to open the shaggin’door and step out onto the lunar surface. Really lads, I thought, how long does it take to put your helmets on and do this thing. The wait went on and on, commentators, yapping about all the preparations to be made, the system checks, the beeps and rogers and so forth but it is slowly starting to get dark outside and there is just no way I’m hiking home past the Covert in the black of night. Jimmy, sensing my anxiety, tells me he thinks the astronauts have decided to each have a bowl of Corn Flakes before the much anticipated moonwalk. Who knows, he says, it may be their last and at this I take a lazy swing at his lower abdomen which he swiftly blocks, pulling me to the floor with one of his patented Royal Navy commando hand to hand combat moves. We tussle on the floor for a while, loudly proclaiming our various wrestling holds, that is until I freeze, I can see out the window, what, it’s almost completely dark outside.
Jimmy and his mom are reluctant to let me go, but sleepovers were pretty much unheard of in rural Ireland back in those days and besides there were cows to be milked in the morning. So with great trepidation and thinking I’ll be home before the next commercial break is over, I set off down the hill into the darkness. Jimmy accompanies me for the first hundred yards or so, and then bolts off back up the hill to his TV set. At the foot of the hill the little road turns into a dark tunnel of overgrown hedgerow into which I cautiously crept. As the last sounds of life disappeared from back up the hill I found myself in almost total darkness hearing only the wind in the tall Ash trees and the far away sounds of a dog barking at the clouded over moon. Sudden mysterious rustling noises in the ditch make my heart leap. I inch forward, occasionally stepping in the fresh droppings of cattle that have breached their fences to graze what locals slyly call “the long acre”. In another twenty paces or so I should see a gap in the hedge leading down to Georgie’s meadow. With the gap in the trees there will be moonlight enough for me to take a deep breath and make a dash past the Covert and beyond to the Mote field and home in time to witness history being made.
Just when the blackness was beginning to seem about as thick as home-made strawberry jam I spotted the tractor trail through the ditch leading down to the meadow. The meadow itself covered a soft rising hill bounded on one side by huge swaying Beech trees and on the other by the mysterious Covert.
I sat atop the iron gate for a moment to compose myself and consider my strategy. It seemed simple enough and when the clouds suddenly pulled back to reveal a bright magnificent moon, I was certain that it would be a piece of cake. It was probably at that very moment, as I turned and started to descend down the rungs of the gate that Armstrong began his own historic descent down the steps of the lunar module. Both of us would step onto a foreboding alien landscape. Roger Houston I thought, “I’m stepping off the gate now” but that was when I heard the sound. As my toes plunged into the soft grass below there came a clear strong moan, as if from the very ground itself, a bloodcurdling wail of such misery and sorrow I thought the earth itself would open up and swallow me. “Houston, we’ve got a problem down here” “Eh, Roger that Tranquility, what seems to be going on.?” “Eh Houston, we appear to be having an encounter here with em a Banshee”. Oooooohhheeeeeaaawww it went. Oh, laugh if you will, but it had to be the Banshee I tell you. Hadn’t Aunt Tessie herself told me stories of the Banshee at this very spot near the old judges favorite hanging tree just across from that portal to hell, the Covert . Sure isn’t the Priests grave just beyond in the next field over and doesn’t every last man and Jack know that I’m plonk in the middle of the most supernaturally charged acre of land in the entire County of Meath. “Eh, Tranquility, you need to get a grip on yourself..” I know I know I’m thinking to myself. Neil and Buzz are up there prancing around on the moon and here’s me stuck frozen on this silly iron gate on a country lane. It’s absurd and it’s unfair but my leg muscles just won’t listen to me. Uh uh, they say trembling, no way we’re going down there, back towards Jimmy’s house maybe, but you can just forget about this Covert thing. Abandoned by reason and even by my own legs, I paused to breathe and consider my options. High above me on that glimmering orb were two of the bravest men ever, poised to step out onto the surface of an asteroid that was once thought to be made of cheese. Put there by the very cutting edge technology that promised to lift mankind out of the mire of superstition and fear that had kept us clinging to myths, traditions and theologies for thousands of years. Here at this crossroads of history were men walking on the surface of the moon right above me, while I was paralyzed with fear and my heart pounding like sledgehammer at the frikkin gate to Georgie’s field. This self-loathing and disgust, though quite appropriate, was simply not enough however to release me from the cold grip of terror in which I was entrapped. Thinking I should man up a bit I lit a cigarette, no help there either, the tobacco vapors mixing with the raw bile of fear in my throat just made me want to puke. It was too shameful to go back, to terrifying to go forward and oooohhhawww.. there it was again perhaps even closer than before only more wrought with suffering and unrelenting pain. I could hear my teeth scraping against each other as I struggled to breathe in a state of sheer panic.
So how does this story end you may ask. Did I choke down my fear and make a mad dash for it, or did I skulk away quietly back to the safety of Jimmy’s house, to cry on his mothers apron. Well neither actually. It began at first with a rustling in the long grass a short distance before me. Instinct alone made my eyes look in that direction and there before me was the most adorable little four legged furry creature frolicking around like a lost soul. Soon there were several of them yapping and snapping at each other while just a short distance behind them and in a brilliant silhouette against the moon was their mother raising her throat to the sky and unleashing her long tearful moan. In an instant I was whipped from a situation of absolute mortal fear to one of profound natural beauty. I was sharing a domestic moment with a handsome family of Irish foxes in glorious Summer moonlight. I felt myself melt into a deep pool of warmth and calm as the pups clamored around me curiously despite their anxious mother’s pacing and clear disapproval. Soon I began to think of Buzz and Neil again. They had seemed so close to me just moments before but now somehow they seemed so many millions of miles away from me in a tin can filled with wires and transistors. Far from the embrace of those they cherished, far from the seed of life from which they came. How their hearts must thrill with love I thought, at the sight of us far below on our little blue planet, drifting through a cold and endless universe. It’s not so bad down here I said to them as I calmly set out across the moonlit meadow with a whole new sense of myself and my place in the great miracle of creation. The Covert quietly groaned to itself as I brushed through the tall grass smiling and then took the fence into the Mote field in one smooth leap. From the top of the Mote I could see the cozy lights of Footstown house and the smoke of the living room fire curling neatly up to the sky. Beneath my feet lay the bones of ancient bearded warrior men who raided cattle and stormed across the land with huge wolfhounds in their chariots. Above me were the brave warriors of a new age knocking on the very doors of heaven. This was indeed a very special time to be alive, particularly to be young, to be able to believe that anything and everything was possible and that we had only our foolish fears to conquer.
Back at the house I tossed my wellies by the door and headed straight to the parlour, just in time to hear the TV commentator say, “and that concludes our historic coverage of the moon landing tonight, be sure to tune in again tomorrow for blah blah blah” Did you see the landing my cousins ask, gathered around the huge fireplace with my Aunt and Uncle. Em, sort of, I mumbled as I turned to go upstairs to my room. Who would have believed that on a night when the eyes of the world were fixed on the historic events taking place high above them in the Sea of Tranquility that I was pinned down fast and hard, by none other than the wailing Banshee herself in the corner of Georgie’s meadow. Better to keep this story to myself I thought, seeing how I’ve become a man about the place now and all. “Sure they’ll probably run it again in the morning news” a voice behind me says as I turn down the hallway. Indeed they would run it again, they would run it again and again, for years and years and for as long as mankind continues to reach for the stars they will celebrate and replay that great moment over and over with pride and with joy. That moment I missed.
Do I remember the moon landing you ask, sure how would I ever forget.