Yes, not always better. 1962 was a violent year all around, and the Superpower-Near Superpower standoffs of today don’t have quite the panache of being 4 hours away from nuclear war (although none of us really knew that at the time). Still, “growing up” really did mean growing up. Not being coddled or cocooned or forbidden from taking risks.

I had a discussion over the weekend with someone about how grammar and spelling are used and abused these days. Her conclusion was that “spelling that’s close enough” enables the student to be a free-thinking individual. My conclusion was that the lack of respect for spelling gets further translated into a lack of respect for a lot of other social conventions and traditions.

If you got your head caught in the bars (or e.g. flew off your bike over the handlebars), no one went running to an attorney to sue the city or manufacturer. Abject lessons about “playing safe” were learned while playing not-so-safe. I got boinked on the head a couple of different ways but learned never to boink my head (or feet or hands) the same way twice. And that chipped tooth I got after running my bike blindly into the back of a car? Another good lesson about keeping my eyes on the road so I wouldn’t have to visit the dentist for repairs.

He said his role in the recovery operation was “third redundancy,’ meaning he was on board along with two other primary radar repair guys. If the first two guys fell overboard or something, and the radar suddenly went on the fritz, they wanted someone onboard who knew how to fix it on the fly. That’s how they did things back then.

He never mentioned meeting Shepard, but I think he did meet Gus Grissom, a fellow Hoosier.

Just as fair warning to anyone curious enough to click, the linked piece is indeed about the Brackett rocket, but it’s also a slightly over-the-top bit of critical moralizing.