The Landry Family in July 1969

Last night we watched the movie “First Man.”  It is about the events leading up to the first moon landing in the summer of 1969.  Since I was living way back then, I had memories of those long-ago events.  I also have photos to remind me of some of the things that we did back then.  And somehow, I have another reminder of some of those events.

Five years ago I posted a photo from the same event.  That was in honor of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.  Just recently we passed the 55th anniversary of that time.  I had planned on posting this photo soon after that other one.  Mainly because it is a better photo of all of us, though this one is with our mom.  The other one was with our dad while we were standing in front of the Lunar Landing Module.  (or a replica of one).

This photo has us standing in front of the splashdown capsule from one of the space missions.  It wasn’t from Apollo 11, because that one had just splashed down with Armstrong and crew a day earlier.  Yes, the Landry family was at NASA on July 25, the day after the first visitors to the moon landed back on Earth.  We even saw some commotion with some official-looking cars and such.  We just knew that it was either the astronauts being brought into quarantine or some of the moon rocks being brought in for examination.  What an exciting visit!

I always find it surprising that the first “Star Trek” series was before the first moon landing and it actually ended the month before.  You would think that all of this excitement of traveling in space would have created an audience for the show so that it wouldn’t have been cancelled.  I was definitely a big fan.  Sure, my mom’s first cousin Mel Keys built the model of the U. S. S. Enterprise that they used to film those shows, but I didn’t know that back then.  I just loved the stories about space.  So I was definitely excited to go to NASA that summer.

But that wasn’t all that was happening in July of 1969.  I’ve been planning on writing about a few events from the beginning of that month for a while.  That’s because somehow, I have notecards that Karen wrote on about some of those events.  I’m glad I do, because they give a glimpse into how things were back then.  

The day was July 6, 1969.  We left Jennings and went to Lake Charles to drop Jodie off at band camp.  Karen seemed excited that she got to go in and help Jodie get situated.  Jodie was 15 at the time and Karen was 12.  Band Camp was held at McNeese and it lasted a week during the summer.  After leaving Jodie there, the family went looking to visit family.   

My dad was from Lake Charles, and he had six siblings that still lived there at the time.  The last of all of those eight siblings just recently passed away.  So it looks like we went to his sister Wana’s house first.  It was closest to McNeese.  But, as Karen said, “Nobody was there.”  We headed to the other side of McNeese to see what was going on at Uncle Johnny’s.  Cousin Mona was sick, so we didn’t stay there for more than a bit of a chat.  Then we went to his sister Frances’s house, and everyone was there playing cards.  It’s what they did.  I’m sure we joined in on the games.

We then went to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor for dinner.  We had pizza and balloons.  I’m thinking that we maybe got balloons because Jamie’s birthday was the day before.  It would be another seven years before our family became the entertainment at that Shakey’s location.  I can’t imagine the pizzas costing that much money back then.  Karen didn’t say how much it cost.  But she did talk about the price of dessert.  When we got back to Jennings, we stopped at the Bulldog Inn.  For some reason Al decided to treat everyone to ice cream.  He was rich back then!  Even with seven of us (Jodie was at B. C. in L.C.), the total price would come in under 40 cents.

Those were the days.