The summer of 1969 was one of changes for me. My parents had, from my point of view, ruined my life. They had uprooted the family, and moved from Orange County California without previously having located a place to live or secured any means of support. So, we went to my Grandparents farm outside Westville Oklahoma. The Allied van that carried our belongings across country unloaded everything into the unused milk barn where all was to remain until we had another home. Our city toys, like skates, skateboards and bikes, went into storage too. There just wasn’t anyplace to use that type of thing on a dirt road farm in Oklahoma. Life in Oklahoma in 1969 was very, very different from life in southern California. Mom and Dad went to various towns within a day or two drive to check out jobs and the cost of living. My brothers (age 5 and 3) and I stayed with our Grandparents.
The only good thing about the summer was that one set of my cousins lived in a nearby town. Their Mom, my Aunt, was a school teacher, so she was off for the summer, and they visited often that summer. We, two 11 year old girls, one 12 year old boy and one 13 years old boy, had free run of the 200 acre farm which included a spring fed ice cold creek. We picked blackberries, played in the hay, swam in the creek, caught fireflies, and dodged June bugs.
On Saturday evening June 20, 1969, we were playing outside in the dark, the best type of hide and seek ever, when the adults in charge called all of us inside. On a TV that barely had any reception on a good day (not at all like SoCal), we all watched as the first man walked on the moon. I don’t recall thinking it was some great moment in time. What I recall is a bunch of kids squirming around on the braided rug, picking at each other, waiting for whatever was on the TV to be over so we could finish playing outside. When enough time had passed that the adults felt we had absorbed the event, we were released into outside freedom once again.
It was years before I realized what I had been forced to watch on the hot summer night in Oklahoma. And it was a truly great achievement. But what I really remember is one of the best hide and seek games ever was interrupted by a man walking on the moon.
My Random Life 