By Larry Berz
A father walks tentatively with his son. The crowd looks on towards a small alter grounded in a remote corner of West Virginia wooded wilderness. Years of bitterness, hostility, defiance, recrimination, and above all, generational misunderstanding lay behind them. No one dares guess what lays ahead. The crowd looks on, a silent witness to the outcome.
The son turns to the father hesitantly, yet poised with hope and heart: “she won’t fly unless someone pushes the button,” he offers. No reply.
“She’s yours if you want it,” the young man presses. From deep within, from a place known only to one who has suffered without shame comes a nod of acknowledgment. An outreached hand takes the control without eye contact as the father and son stand poised before the unknown yet unmistakable shape of a 3-foot tall ballistic rocket.
“10, 9, 8 … (the son leads the chorus).
“7, 6, 5, 4, 3 … (glimpses of individual witnesses).
“2, 1 … (an image of the girl whose heart now belongs to the boy).
A rush of discharged gas explodes, consuming the past and inflaming the new morning with awakening, jaws open agog … the missile arches and towers above all petty fears and concerns terrestrial … and announces a declaration of destiny “look at this one go, she’s gonna climb for miles! A grocer inadvertently looks above boxes of produce and stands transfigured by the projectile before him, blue collar gazes in sanctification … the dying look through cross-latticed windows of hope and blue clouded horizons.
The son was spared; the sacrifice roared skyward.
And the father’s arm rises, a slow ascent around his son’s shoulder in the recovering thunder of that redemptive deed, and turning disarmed his face to his seed, his gentle eyes speak what words could never utter in forgiveness: “I love you … you are mine, forever.”
“October Skies” encapsulated in film form the story of Homer Hickam, West Virginia’s “rocket boy” who inspired and entranced by the passage of the Sputnik satellite in October, 1957 strove to overcome his roots to find and stretch his branches. From the crisis ridden economy of a poor coal mining “cold war” community, Hickam wrestled with the angel of his adolescent adventure to discover his better nature. His obstacles appeared formidable — a hard driving non-nonsense dad essentially married to his coal mine and its management. His older brother triumphed, mounting the traditional pedestal of star football athletics and subsequent collegiate scholarship. A town shackled to the realities of poor, rural post-war America doggedly dedicated to the hazards, hardship, and hardscrabble rewards of economic necessities. But once called, a dreamer dedicated to the proposition that space and space travel offered life and awakening could not, nor would not suffer nor tolerate deterrence.
Hickam’s dream was birthed, like all births, in pain and labor, over time. This teenager asserted his dream in a small community which had outlawed dreams for fear of personal and collective implosion. The energy, the faith, the devotion which one youngster brought to his adventure illuminated the power of the quest. The issue remains the same for us here in Aroostook County today in 2011. Who will overcome his or her personal inertia and begin to claim the sky?
Hickam’s world was poised upon a precipice of nuclear cataclysm, an arms race with no end in sight between two hostile groups of nations. Whether conscious of his quest or not, Hickam’s young life bore witness to a brave heart seeking resolution to global questions. His was a world in the invention of technology to cope with the mental demands of a new atomic culture. The question for all of us to consider, young and old, involves our decision when we are called forth by circumstances within the family or the community at large to declare where and with whom we stand.
The rocket served as the symbolic statement of the 1950s in a tense interlock with the weapons that our darker, destructive side piggybacked. In those years, it became a matter of exploration or incineration. Today, the personal scripts of our lives seem more complex and problematic. Identification of an enemy in 2011 offers no solace for our self-righteousness.
And how on Earth does a teenager today cope with the circus of surreal and existential energies advertised on the laptop screen, let alone the film screen. At the very least we older folks ought to extend our compassion and patience for the terrible choices often placed before our children and grandchildren. Hickam’s quest started skyward. Why can’t yours or mine? How many of us thrilled at the sight of a double rainbow.
Sunday, October 16 in the late afternoon? Solar and lunar halos with complex iridescence fairly float above us. Strange “sundogs” hang out near the setting sun, barking rainbow bars as days turn sharply cooler and clouds condense. Geese in flight and dogs that bar brightly mix and bite with other natural airborne occurrences that make October skies, to this observer, high theater. And surely the International Space Station passages offers even a brighter starting point than Sputnik for the night sky artist. Simply pivot to heavens-above.com and discover your own destinations. The hazy mystery of the Andromeda Galaxy races overhead. Giant Jupiter gleams above dew dappled pumpkins in eastern skies. Grasp and stabilize your binocular eye to pinpoint its steel-etched satellites first probed by Galileo himself 400 years ago.
I still hold that the starry night remains the fertile plot for your future. Sow your seeds now!
Larry Berz is director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
