Sofas in the Spaceship
It was the fall of 1961, a year of gigantic accomplishments for the United States in its competition with the Soviet Union, and a seminal time for its space program. At the end of that January, a Project Mercury capsule rocket had launched a 37-pound male chimp into space. In May of the same year, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space aboard Mercury-Redstone 3, a feat quickly repeated by Gus Grissom aboard the Mercury-Redstone 4 capsule in July. Meanwhile, earlier in the year, President John F. Kennedy had announced before a joint session of Congress his intention to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
During that exciting time, I was a C student in the 9th grade at Beverly Hills Junior High School, in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb and, except for an innateability at artistic things, had little interest or skill in my studies. Whenever I had free time I would invent variations of my model train layout that each year sat in the living room of our small apartment in the Stonehurst neighborhood of Upper Darby.
Early in the first semester, our biology teacher, Miss Mathews, announced an upcoming science fair whose projects would be on display in the lobby of the school during the month of November. It was an extra credit program to give students the opportunity to apply their knowledge of physics, biology and chemistry.
I signed up in hopes of improving my grade point average, which was marred by continually poor test scores, as well as a lack of participation in class discussions in an interest of the subject matter taught in the class.
What I really enjoyed was model building, which I applied to my 4’ x 8’ train platform that took up much of the area of our living room. Begun as a Christmas project, it had been my central focus for the past few years and remained in place until late that spring when I dismantled it so that my parents could retrieve some living space after losing interest in the current layout. Though a few of the houses were made from manufactured plastic kits, most were handbuilt from cardboard and balsa wood as scaled down versions of actual buildings in my neighborhood. With few tools at my disposal, and little money for materials, I was determined that my science project would be a showpiece that would highlight my creativity and originality.
Though I was well aware of the space program, and had been one of those children who had unsuccessfully watched for the Sputnik satellite to pass by during its three months in orbit four years earlier, I understood little about the technology used in launching the small orb, except that it was made by the Russians, who were enemies of the United States. During the next three years, innumerable advances in the propulsion systems, technology and design of spacecrafts made by NASA placed the U.S. toe-to-toe with the Russians before besting them later in the decade by landing humans on the moon and then safely returning them to Earth.
The concept I had for my science project was based on Saturday morning TV shows including Flash Gordon and Space Patrol, which featured single- stage rockets with wings that bore no resemblance to the actual rockets currently being launched by NASA and the Russian space program.
I don’t know whether my father had any better understanding than I did about the technology it took to send a man into space, but he was cooperative in assisting me as I began building the body of a space ship from sheets of balsa wood, gluing it together and curving it into shape. The nose of the vehicle was difficult to form in that I assumed it should be rounded and an integral part of the craft. No passengers were intended to be in the nose cone, since, for all I knew, the rocket may have had to land front first into the Moon or other object on its mission.
I knew of decompression chambers, as they were often shown on the TV series Sea Hunt, where they enabled humans to adjust to various pressures under water. I believed that I would need to incorporate a type of such a chamber into my design, but knew nothing about the technology required to build airlocks designed for astronauts to equalize pressure when entering a space craft, and I assumed a cardboard wall would suffice.
I spent a great deal of time fashioning furniture for the ship, with bunks made from balsa strips and scraps of colorful fabrics provided by my mother for pillows and blankets. The living area had sofas, chairs, end tables and a bookcase filled with simulated books. A control panel featuring large TV monitors displaying static images of earth from space took up most of the flight compartment, which resided in the middle level of the ship. Simple chairs, similar to those used in a kitchen, were located at the work stations.
There were no engines in my spacecraft, nor openings between layers for astronauts to travel between decks. There was no consideration made for the lack of gravity in space that would have caused the books, bedclothes, lamps and equipment to float around, bumping into each other. My use of technology was limited to a painted cigar box containing two D cell batteries and a few wires soldered between a toggle switch mounted to the box lid and lamps on the end and side tables located on the various levels of the spaceship.
During the construction phase, I communicated with Bob Kodadek, a tech-savvy friend whose science fair project was a device that would measure a mouse’s heart rate as the animal was lifted by helium balloons high into the air. Although the measuring device never truly provided correct information, Bob had created display panels that showed the construction of the harness suspending the mouse, as well as photos of the device rising above the trees in his neighborhood.
I was impressed with what he had made, but I had no doubts that the work I put into the detailing of my spacecraft would surely win me an award.
My completed spacecraft measured approximately 4 feet in height and 2-1/2 feet in diameter. The wings which I attached during the final stages of construction were fashioned of aluminum foil stretched over basswood strips, as was the nose cone of the ship, which, unfortunately, could not be made smooth or even. Because we had no car, I had to walk the project to school, so I lightly fastened it to a double-thick segment of corrugated cardboard found in the trash to prepare it for travel. Despite my efforts, due to the wind it was a difficult journey from our apartment complex along a half mile of railroad ties, across a trestle, and down an unpaved slope through two blocks of row homes, to the school entrance.
When I reached my homeroom I placed the project on the floor in a rear corner of the classroom. There were a few questions about it from classmates, and I was proud to flick the switch and turn on the tiny lights and explain the construction and the furnishings created for the various rooms.
Biology class was the third class of the morning, so I left the spaceship in my homeroom and circled back after second period to pick it up. When I got to science class, I was for the first time excited about my participation in that class. Miss Mathews walked over to me and helped me find room on a table on which to put my project. She was very nice to me, expressed interest in what I’d done, and remarked on the amount of time I must have spent building it. The bell rang and when the class was seated, Miss Mathews explained our next class project, which was to be the dissection of a fetal pig. We had already dissected some frogs, and I don’t remember how many pigs we had for each of her classes, but I remember the blue latex that replaced the blood in the veins and arteries of the pig I worked on.
At the time, it seemed fascinating, but as with most of the projects we worked on in biology, it never really caught my interest after we began the dissection. A disorder that neither I nor my teachers knew about, but which was later diagnosed as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), was a major detriment to my educational success. Teachers, at the time, considered my type of failure simply a lack of studying, which it may well have been, since after the 6th grade I never learned well in a classroom setting.
Despite my disorder, I greatly enjoyed having the time and freedom to create my project for the science fair, and anticipated many positive reactions from students and teachers alike. The mere thought of my impending success kept me interested in science... for the moment.
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The science fair was scheduled for early November, and I remember counting down the days until I’d become a star. I had viewed several of the projects as they were delivered to the science room, and was impressed by many which focused on nature, astronomy, and the physical sciences. There were a few terrariums that arrived with animals and plants supposedly codependent for survival and which required regular upkeep. Miss Mathews kept these glass globes on tables near the windows where they would get enough light, and the students would add water each day, and bring grubs or bugs as food for the various reptiles and insects living inside. Later in the year, terrariums would become a focus for the entire class, at which time we were asked to select a woodland scene, a desert or a bog, which we would create and populated with plants, insects, or small animals native to the selected environment.
Digressing from the science fair: When Miss Mathews announced the building of a terrarium as a homework assignment, I enthusiastically chose a bog and dug up plants along Naylors Run, a tributary of Cobbs Creek that ran through Upper Darby Park. I remember that I found a spider and a praying mantis, but some kids told me that it was illegal to have a praying mantis confined in a bowl, so by the end of the project, after the spider died or escaped, there were no insects, tadpoles or animal life of any species in my bog which, for the most part, had turned into a muddy mess filled with dead or dying plants.
Now, back to the science fair. As I recall, we were not privileged to know which entries were selected for the fair, or who the judges were. I thought that everyone’s project would be included, and I also assumed Miss Mathews was to be a judge, but those assumptions were never confirmed. So the first time we were able to view our projects on display was the opening day of the event, at which time we got to see the entire exhibition, which occupied the entire first floor from the entrance area out through the hallways between the classrooms. At the time, I didn’t know if winners were selected before or after the opening day, but I soon saw ribbons of various colors on some entries that included a miniature version of woodland landscape and the model of Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7, which looked nothing like my space ship. I found Bob Kodadek’s entry, which didn’t get a ribbon, and many complex projects that I figured must have required a great deal of parental guidance to build, along with roughly-created displays featuring test tubes, petri dishes, and a variety of mechanical inventions worthy of Leonardo DaVinci created of wood, plastic and girders and motors from Erector sets. Other projects included displays of mold growth over a number of weeks, the dissection of a dead robin found near its nest, numerous vehicles propelled by wind, rubber bands, or clock springs, and two volcanoes that mimicked eruptions.
I continued to wander the hallways searching for my entry, but it was nowhere to be found.
Today, I still don’t know whether other projects failed to meet the standards of the judges. The only thing I do remember was that we were asked to pick up our projects when the fair was over, and my spaceship stood high above others awaiting my retrieval.
I never did take it home. I left it sitting on the table until it was silently removed by a custodian or my teacher. Miss Mathews never brought the spaceship up to me, and I never asked why it wasn’t included. In looking back, I think I understood its failings, especially after viewing the skillfully crafted version of Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7. But I buried the remembrance of the outcome until my middle years, when I chose to create a video of the project as I focused on the issues of ADHD.
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I failed at many jobs I attempted as I tried to stumble out of poverty and into a field in which whatever skills I possessed might be of use. It took me longer than I had expected, far longer than for most of my contemporaries, but by my early 30s I was able to combine enough talents to craft a business in which I could work within and around my limitations. Over time I discovered that I’d learned a lot while in school. But one of the greatest skills I gained was my acceptance of failure, and the ability to continue moving positively forward, even through times that were turbulent and scary. I grew particularly thankful in my middle years for my junior high school English teacher, Mr. Richards, who taught us words I still use today, even though I couldn’t remember them when asked to define them for his weekly tests. I now know that the teachers at the time weren’t taught to understand the various styles of learning, so they catered to those who seemed to be listening rather than to those who proved themselves oblivious.
I survived, but many students like me didn’t. I now wonder whether being appeased by teachers would have helped me more or less than the struggles I endured by their critical standards of success. I also wonder if growing up in a family financially secure would have made any difference in my life, or perhaps would have spoiled me for the longer journey I endured. Looking back over more than 60 years, it’s ironic that I still have the urge to prove myself, and continue to fight the demons of my past. All of those teachers, Mrs. Rae, Mr. Richards, Miss Mathews and those whose names I now forget, planted in me the seeds of curiosity, and the tenacity to use their teachings as I journeyed through life.
It may be my age that speaks, but I now wonder whether teaching is more about giving students the tools and letting them figure out how to use them, rather than appeasing students who fail, or congratulating those naturally inclined to be attentive, receptive and responsive. I can’t be sure which way is right, but I know that it seems to be of more value to be thankful for the gifts given than to be tortured by grievances endured.
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