Summertime

Ken’s Story
Sam and Kay were part of the Nebraska Centennial pageant production at the fairgrounds in Auburn in August 1967.

In 1969 we took a vacation trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota. On the way out, we watched the Apollo 11 moon landing and television shots of the first walk on the moon from our motel room in Valentine, Nebraska.

Sam’s Version
Acting in the centennial pageant was a great honor. It was probably another one of those patronage deals, since neither Kay nor I are great talents. I played the part of the mischievous frontier school kid, slingshot in my back pocket. On cue, I whipped it out and plunked the school teacher in the back of the head. Caught, of course, the hickory stick was administered. But I had the last laugh, pulling a protective reading book out of my britches. I ran off stage unscathed, waving the reader over my head. Now that I consider it, I may just have been type cast.

The moon landing made a big impression on me. The motel in the Black Hills had a swimming pool. Kay and I would jump in the deep end and use the underwater “weightlessness” to bound across the bottom of the pool as if it were the lunar surface.