[ExI] letter

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf
Of SR Ballard

> On 21 May 2017 at 11:44, SR Ballard  wrote:
>> My view of Trump comes from the lower middle class. My parents have 
>> to decide every year if they want to spend their tax returns on their 
>> teeth, or on their cars ...


This thread has me pondering my own misspent childhood and the recent 48th
anniversary of Apollo 10, since that was the first one I remember clearly.
The only space stuff I remember before that was the first Saturn V launch
and the pad fire in 1967.

Whenever there was a launch in those days, which was about every couple
months, The New York Yankees would show up.  Not the ball team, I mean the
literal yankees from New York, mostly retired people in their Winnebagos.
Oh that was a trip.  Winnebagos were the new hot rage back then, so the rigs
were new and shiney, the occupants wealthy and generous.  The special
editions were 15 cents but only cost us 11.5 a copy.  Half the time a yankee
would pay a quarter and give the dime as a tip, which was a profit margin
more than double the investment.  All that time, I never had to eat unsold
papers... nor did I ever keep one for myself (oy vey what I would pay for a
copy of one of those today.)

In our town people had jobs but not high-paying ones, so we didn't have
Winnebagos.  But down along the Indian River they just set up a temporary RV
park any time there was a launch.  There were two shopping malls with big
parking lots.  RVers would set up camp there too.  The shopping mall people
didn't mind: they RVers had major bucks and the willingness to leave some of
them with the local merchants.  The constables didn't mind, so long as they
were in an RV, even if parked illegally all along US 1 during launch events.
If someone tried to camp in a tent down there, the constables would urge
them to move along.  Everything is legal if you have plenty of money,
otherwise not.

If anyone had a little money to invest and some creativity, they could make
a fortune.  For instance, a Winnebago has a fresh water tank and two waste
water tanks.  Our town had no legal places to dump that I know of, so were I
there today, I would rig up a wastewater tank on a 2 ton flatbed and a fresh
water tank, go offer to fill and dump for about ten bucks, which was a pile
of money then, but RVers are used to that.  A prole could sell batteries,
propane tanks, or just learn to fix the 8 most basic things that break on
nearly every RV: be a roving RV repair-guy.

We kids could sell stuff to tourists.  I sold newspapers, but any food or
snack item, any individual wrapped anything would be hawked down there by
children: granola bars, moon pies, cold sodas, candy and so forth.  It was a
festive occasion once the Apollo program got back on its feet.  To sell any
food item not wrapped such as hot dogs and such required a vendor permit,
but the authorities mostly looked the other way if they were selling to the
New York Yankees.  Perhaps they tried to discourage the teenage girls from
selling their wares to grandpa while the grannies went to lunch together,
but other than that, it was a multi-day bacchanalian festival down there.

They brought money into our community.  Money is always welcome everywhere.

In retrospect it just seems like such fun chaos.  We kids made money, the
tourists had fun, it was a blast.

spike