posted 02-19-2015 03:52 PM               

"Neil Armstrong's widow finds artifacts from moonwalk in a closet" read the headline on CNN.com last week. Seeing the story brought me back to the day just over two years ago when a 26-foot moving truck pulled up in front of my house. My mom had called to warn me of the truck's imminent arrival; nonetheless, I was dumbstruck when the guys opened the back gate and the sun poured in, revealing a cab tightly packed from floor to ceiling.

Inside was much of the contents of the house in Huntington Beach, California, that my mom shared with astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander of Apollo 12, the third man to walk on the moon. She was his second wife. They married in 1990, and he died in a motorcycle accident in July of 1999. She sold the house and put the bulk of the contents into storage — too grief-stricken to rummage through their memories, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Now, almost 15 years after his death, what remained of the life he and my mom had shared had been shipped an hour north to me in Los Angeles...

posted 02-20-2015 11:16 AM               

My American Airlines variant of Pete's flyer credentials didn't land in the yard (eBay find some years back) and no 'family element' involved of course but the feeling was quite similar.

I always imagined that as a Navy man he liked the Admirals Club best. Perhaps he broke a few House Rules along the way

As I was cleaning up the driveway, I stumbled upon Pete’s frequent-flyer ID card, from TWA. I stood there for a minute, looking at it, thinking: A guy walks on the moon, and then, the quotidian objects of his life randomly find their way into my yard in Los Angeles. How strange it was to hold this token of flight, albeit the type of flight we mere mortals take all the time rather than the otherworldly sort that Pete set records doing.

posted 02-20-2015 05:22 PM               

This happens more often than you'd think, and sometimes the really good stuff goes out like that.

A pal of mine stumbled across a yard sale of stuff from a famous WW2 cartoonist, including several books from his collection. He was nice enough to mail them to me, and he now kicks himself for not buying more stuff (especially since I've researched this guy's life and have a large collection of his work). I imagine most people buying stuff had no clue who he was.

Many years ago, there was a estate yard sale at a house on the corner. Out of boredom that day, I walked over and found the guy had been awarded the Medal of Honor in Korea. Almost all his service stuff was for sale. Sadly, another collector beat me there by 5 minutes and was frantically stacking stuff into a pile. I got a few small items. The other guy was downright spastic, insisting the medal MUST be in there somewhere and that he had to have it. Never mind it's illegal to buy and sell a Medal of Honor.