Late on Thursday night, I turned on the TV, and after some of the usual news stuff, there was a segment about divers working on a documentary for, who else?, The History Channel, finding a portion of the Space shuttle Challenger on the ocean floor.
Take that in, how big is the Atlantic Ocean and how small{comparatively} was/is the Challenger?
And I remembered, in one way or another we all witness history happening, and this....well....
Every day, I took my little guy for a walk, get the mail, chat and usually buy a loaf of bread. January 28, 1986 was a a dull wintry day, both of us needed to go for a walk. When we got to our town's Mom and Pop store, the owner greeted us with, "Please , sit down and watch this with us. This is history happening. " Seating ourselves on one of the chairs in front of the TV, his wife handed me a mug of coffee with milk in it and them presented a mug of milk with a dash of coffee in it to my son. Times were different them, they seemingly lived in their store, and townies were more like guests than customers. A few people gathered to talk when the mail came in, there were wooden folding chairs to sit on, coffee, sometimes even cookies, usually broken because whoever was stocking the shelves dropped the package! But as usual I digress.
Others sat or stood, chatting, drinking fresh perked coffee, and soon, our eyes fixed on the small screen, we all joined in the count down. Cheered when the challenger lifted off, then it got really quiet, "was it supposed to do that?", "OH Sweet,Jesus NOOOO!!!", "no one can survive that"
