When you've lived in the same town for decades, you pretty much know the area. You know where the roads take you. You know where you can get a Mexican Coke at 2am (well, we used to know that before everything changed in 2020...). You knew the people, knew which roads were cleared first when it snowed, and which neighborhoods had good yard sales.
But, when you move, you're starting from Square One. Something my wife and I have been doing on the weekends is going on Sunday drives. Last Sunday, we got in the van and took a trip south, then turned west, then north a little, then west again. We drove out to Promontory Point--the spot where America's first continental railroad was completed. We decided not to spend the $20 for a tour (we'll do it another time...) and we headed back.
We drove east until we reached the main road, a road that goes right by the Northrop Grumman rocket-building facility, formally Morton Thiokol. I'm sure they do other things, but the site is most famous--for good or bad--as the place where the booster rockets for the Space Shuttle were built.
And they had one on display.
I grew up in the space age. I remember watching the Apollo moon launches on TV. I don't remember much--I was 3 1/2 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but I remember the ones that followed, watching the astronauts be picked up from the ocean, seeing the big orange and white parachutes.
I was out of the country for the first shuttle disaster. The world turned to that same plant as questions were answered and blame dispensed. Still, seeing that huge rocket beside the road was amazing. It's another cool thing about living here. Not everyone can say they live so close to a place where they make NASA rockets.
But we can.
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