Awesome Moments

While driving home tonight my mind treated me to a stream of memories. They were moments from my past that seemed profound at the time and continue to be important to me.

Walking across the Misissippi
When I was 12 years old I hopped across stepping stones spanning a ten-foot wide stream that is the headwater of the Mississippi River. It flows from Lake Itasca in Minnesota. As I stepped from stone to stone I could visualize the entire course of the great wide river that stretched wrom whee I stood all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Between me and the distant river delta meandered North America's mightiest waterway. Awesome!


Passing through the Straights of Gibralter
As a sailor in 1964 I sat at the radar scope and watched the image of the Straights of Gibraltor draw nearer. Just before the our ship slipped through the narrow passage separating two great continents I stepped out on the deck to view the Rock of Gibralter looming overhead as we entered the Mediterranean Sea. It struck me then that I was gazing upon the same view that met Christopher Columbus as he left the secure waters of the known world to begin a voyage of faith toward the unexplored western horizon.

Observing a nuclear milestone
One weekend in 1968 I read an article in the paper treporting that reported the last iron drawbridge crossing the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal would close and begin disassembly the following day. I drove to the bridge that night and saw it raised fo the last time. As I stood at the end of the walkway I watched a most unusual ship pass beneath the elevated span. It was a freighter of modern design, painted white with blue trim. On its hull, just below the bridge, was a symbol of the atom, a nucleus with orbiting electrons. The ship passed in wha seemed an eerie silence. I saw its name painted across the stern as it glided by, Savannah. The story of the mystery ship appeared in the newspaper the next week. It was the world's first nuclear-powered commercial cargo ship on its last voyage, sailing to its final destination to be decommisioned and mothballed. The vessel was a technical success but its operation was too expensive to be profitable. I would discover the ship again decades later, on display at a nautical museum in Charleston, South Carolina. The experience that night in 1968 was filled with irony; a futuristic ship on its final voyage into obsolescence had passed beneath an equally obsolete bridge in its final night in operation. Before me lay an intersection where diverse times and technologies converged one starry night. For a moment I had stood in the Twilight Zone.

Targetted as an assassin
Jimmy Carter campaigned in Saint Petersburg, Florida during his presidential run against Ronald Reagan. I worked in an office building that bordered the same city park as the building in which Carter was speaking. From an eighth floor window I had an eagle's view of the crowds and the presidential motorcade parked below. Most interesting to me were the security teams stationed on the rooftops of neighboring buildings. I spied on their activities through the long telephoto lens of my 35 mm camera. Each team was composed of six to eight men, some in civilian clothes, others in military fatigues. They were equipped with radios, binoculars and scoped sniper rifles and they were busy observing the surrounding buildings and the crowd in the park and streets below. As I scanned from team to team it suddenly struck me that each team seemed to be turning to the same activity, looking back at me. Not only was I being watched through binoculars but the snipers were beginning to train their rifles in my direction as well! It made no sense. I lowered my camera and looked around the eighth floor elevator lobby behind me. I was alone. Could they really be looking at me? I raised the camera again. Every man on every roof was staring in my direction. I lowered the camera, confused. Then my blood seemed to run cold. They considered me a threat to the president and I began to understand why. It was my camera! I had attached a portable tripod to its base. It was folded forward, sitting just below the telephoto lens and pointed in the same direction. I found it convenient to keep the tripod in place because it served as a convenient grip, enabling me to handle the camera easily while the heavy lens was attached. The tripod was a foot long tube, black and as thick as a broom handle. Three folded legs were stored inside and in its end was a hole, threaded so it could attached it to a base or floor stand. I remembered thinking to myself as I had attached it to the camera earlier that day, "Gee, this thing almost looks like a gun barrel, I hope no one mistakes it for a weapon." Suddenly, I was filled with fear. Should I gesture to the security teams in some way to indicate my peaceful intent? Should I remove the handle there in front of the window while they watch? The longer I stood there the more fearful I became. I was afraid that policemen might be running up the stairwells behind me or, worse, that a bullet might crash through the window at any moment to neutralize me. Holy cow! As calmly as I could, I walked down the hallway and turned a corner, out of view. Then I quickly walked to my office, stored the camera in my desk, rode the elevator to the street below and lost myself in the crowd. All that day I waited for hands to grab me from behind and wrestle me to the ground. It never happened.

There are more moments like these that are burned forever in my memory, but it is late and the alarm clock will signal the beginning of my day early tomorrow morning. I'll save those stories for another time.