The Challenger Space Shuttle has exploded.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the disaster aboard the Challenger.  What were you doing that day?  I remember very clearly, I was cleaning house.  Now I do not remember because I never clean house and this was special, but there are somethings you remember because something else happened to remind you.  On the day JFK was shot, I made cinnamon rolls and cleaned a goose.  So January 28, 1986, I was cleaning house.

Kenneth had left about 8:00 AM to go out to the Eden yard with his cutting torches intent on cutting a railroad tank car in half lengthwise so he could make it into a rock trailer for hauling.  Daughter Debbie had come from town to help me clean house, more for company than actual work.  We got our coffee and then she remarked that the Challenger with the teacher was being launched and she would like to watch that before we fired up the vacuum.  So we set down to watch.

The astronauts filed by and waved to us and I remember feeling a sort of pride that America could do this and school kids all over our nation were watching the teacher lift off and fly into space.  The rocket raising over the cape was a beautiful sight, but then something did not look right.  There was absolute silence on the television and in my front room.  Then Debbie said, "Is it supposed to do that?" and I replied,  "Nah, I don't think so."  It was a life time before the man (Was it Walter Cronkite?) on the telly noted that something appeared to have gone wrong.

Thirty minutes later Kenneth came in the back door.  Of course we were still watching the reruns over and over, hope against hope that we would catch a glimpse of the Challenger emerging in one piece on the other side of the smoke.  Never happened.  Kenneth never went back and cut that tank that day.  He thought that might have been an omen, so he stayed home.  Deb and I rather lost our zest for cleaning house that day, also.

America took a giant step backwards in the space program that day.  Two years would pass before we tried again.  We had been kicked in the pants by a leaky "o" ring.  Ever see one of those?  The ones we used on the truck was about the size of a dime and just a very thin piece of rubber, open in the middle.  Ours cost about 7 cents.  Probably that was the most inexpensive piece on that whole rocket and for want of that tiny item, seven lives were lost.  Seven bright eyed pioneers of the great beyond that we call "space".

Some where in the back of my tiny mind, I am remembering a quotation.  Help me out here if you remember it correctly.  "For want of a horse, the rider was lost.  For want of a rider the country was lost."  Now, I know that is not right.  It may actually be a poem.  Bet my Sammy can come up with it for momma!

But you get the idea.  Another one Momma used to say was, "A stitch in time saves nine."  It all boils down to the same thing.  Make sure when you do it, you do it well and it will hold up for you.  If you do not mend your clothes at the first sign of a tear, you will end up having to do a real repair job on it later.

So there you have it.  Just some short musings of where I was 25 years ago.  How time flies!