Word: houston
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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THEY were joyful. They were uninhibited. They were grandly, gloriously drunk. They were puffing cigars, hugging girls, waving miniature American flags, and pushing each other -fully clothed-into pools. The kissing never stopped. The noise level was astronomical. And so it should have been: the NASA communities of Houston, Huntsville and Cocoa Beach had sent three men to the moon and back. The revelry at splashdown time was fittingly feverish...
...Nassau Bay motel, across the street from Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, NASA engineers, secretaries and technicians gathered around the large pool to feast on barbecued chicken and beef and corn on the cob. Before the sun was down the celebrants numbered close to 3,000, and one of them-a shapely blonde-had been heaved into the pool. A man in a business suit dived after her. Another dived after him. A bikini-clad go-go dancer go-goed it on the diving board (to the low-down accompaniment of a group called "The Astronauts"), while leering spectators...
...seller at the bar at the Houston Press Club was a little something called "The Moonshot" (two ounces of cognac, three ounces of orange juice, and three ounces of champagne). The concoction was so mesmerizing that many hours later one flight controller was still muttering, to anyone still around to listen, "Don't forget that behind me there were eight other good men the public never saw. Just remember, that behind me were eight...
While the rank-and-file celebrated at bars close to the Spacecraft Center, the nabobs of the space industry were rubbing elbows some 35 miles away at Houston's swank Marriott Motor Hotel. There, 25 Apollo contractors kicked in a cool $20,000 for a more sedate bash featuring pâté de fois gras canapés, massive ice carvings (the handsome, irrelevant figures of an antelope, a pumpkin and two dolphins) atop the serving tables, and an all-star guest list of 2,000, including Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, director of the center, was there...
Despite the wild enthusiasm, there was little harm done at any of the splashdown brawls. Drunken geologists in Houston paraded around with a decorative boulder they had taken from a motel courtyard, explaining that it was a moon rock. A few barefoot guests at the Nassau Bay motel poolside picked up splinters from broken glasses and bottles. And the four-man police force of the city of Webster (adjacent to the Manned Spacecraft Center) gently arrested a dozen happy drunks. The county sheriff's officers, however, seemed unable to find any wrongdoers. "This was a proud crowd," explained Captain...