edgar-mitchell

36
The Way of the Explorer
The accommodations at Edwards matched the austere desert landscape.
The ambiance of the place was most poignantly represented in the
bachelors quarters where I stayed, which were more akin to barracks (with
a communal toilet), and in the charred ruin of the mythic Poncho’s Bar. In
the evenings I taught classes of my own on energy optimization and space
navigational theory to aspiring astronauts, and in the morning I breakfasted
on coffee and donuts at the cafeteria before climbing into the cockpit
of some jet to fly the day’s mission.
Though I had come a long way since choosing this course of study, in a
few weeks I would be 36 years old. My time had come. What I needed was
that elusive phone call from a man by the name of Deke Slayton, who was
head of flight crew operations down in Houston, and I needed it soon.
They knew everything about me—my education, my pilot skills, but
most importantly, they knew of my ambition to join them in their mission.
I had prepared myself in every way possible through flight and engineering
training, and it had taken me 36 years to arrive at this level of experience.
I had gained accolades and early promotions. I had a wonderful family.
For the last nine years I had identified what I wanted in this life—but I
needed that phone call.
Even in my boyhood on the plains of West Texas I could recall this impalpable
sense that something extraordinary was just around the corner,
without knowing exactly what it was. Now I knew. This was a voyage to
that luminous crater-marked world that orbited our own, and I fervently
believed that the machinery was now in place that could finally take me,
or someone, there. Through the years I felt I had managed to position
myself rather precisely at a critical juncture in the history of humankind.
The phone, however, wouldn’t ring.
Not until one evening in the late spring of 1966. Not until then, as I sat
at the dinner table surrounded by my family in Los Angeles, would I know.
The voice, a little fuzzy through the long-distance connection, identified
itself as that of Deke Slayton. He promptly stated that he would like me to
come work for him down in Houston, and I promptly said I would. The
conversation was concise, with the air of firm decision about it. When I
carefully placed the receiver into the cradle, I quietly contemplated the
news. I then walked over and told Louise. We smothered each other in
hugs, and took the girls up in our arms. Then we began our preparations
for yet another life in Texas, where I would henceforth prepare for a very
long, and, to me, sacred journey.