Lovely story Mr. Wood. Very moving. It brought me back to that whole time of Mercury and Apollo. My first telescope was a Moonscope, a reflecting telescope, put out by Harmonic Reed Corporation in the 50's and 60's.
Thanks Jim! I realized after reading your comment that my telescope was probably bought because I was so into those early moon missions. In some ways the Mercury program is bigger in my mind than Apollo, because that's when my space obsession began. Appreciate the comment!
Reminds me of a telescope of my youth. It was a 3 1/2 inch refracting telescope. It was a bit of a mystery where it came from. I think that it may have been a ships telescope. Mostly brass. It had an "inverting" lens which put the image the right way up. It had a few different magnification lenses.
It was on a handmade equatorial mount made out of motorcycle hubs and water pipe. A heavy thing. I think it had a fine worm wheel for tracking.
Anyway, it was Apollo moon landing time and a mate, and I spent many freezing nights out at the farm convincing ourselves that we could see them circling the moon. I think we knew that this was "unlikely", but it was nice to feel involved.
Where the telescope came from was always a mystery. It just appeared. Perhaps I was too young to notice. There was some suggestion that it belonged to an ex-boyfriend of my mothers. A mariner was the rumour. This pretty unlikely in itself but it was on loan and I remember that somebody came and reclaimed it. We had it for possibly 20 years.
Recently I have been going through some of Mother's stories, and it is possible that it belonged to one of the characters in a story she wrote. She would have called it a fiction, but she often wrote very close parallels to history. It's a good but dark story. Check it out.
Lovely story Mr. Wood. Very moving. It brought me back to that whole time of Mercury and Apollo. My first telescope was a Moonscope, a reflecting telescope, put out by Harmonic Reed Corporation in the 50's and 60's.
Thanks Jim! I realized after reading your comment that my telescope was probably bought because I was so into those early moon missions. In some ways the Mercury program is bigger in my mind than Apollo, because that's when my space obsession began. Appreciate the comment!
I'm going to forward this to my husband who is a telescope freak. Me, I'm still waiting for an alien spaceship to come and pick me up :)
Reminds me of a telescope of my youth. It was a 3 1/2 inch refracting telescope. It was a bit of a mystery where it came from. I think that it may have been a ships telescope. Mostly brass. It had an "inverting" lens which put the image the right way up. It had a few different magnification lenses.
It was on a handmade equatorial mount made out of motorcycle hubs and water pipe. A heavy thing. I think it had a fine worm wheel for tracking.
Anyway, it was Apollo moon landing time and a mate, and I spent many freezing nights out at the farm convincing ourselves that we could see them circling the moon. I think we knew that this was "unlikely", but it was nice to feel involved.
Where the telescope came from was always a mystery. It just appeared. Perhaps I was too young to notice. There was some suggestion that it belonged to an ex-boyfriend of my mothers. A mariner was the rumour. This pretty unlikely in itself but it was on loan and I remember that somebody came and reclaimed it. We had it for possibly 20 years.
Recently I have been going through some of Mother's stories, and it is possible that it belonged to one of the characters in a story she wrote. She would have called it a fiction, but she often wrote very close parallels to history. It's a good but dark story. Check it out.
https://theoneabout.substack.com/p/the-subtle-serpent
Sorry to have drifted a fair way from your topic but that's what memories do.