NCC-1701 Blueprints, Hamsters, and the Age of Mobility

Enterprise NCC-1701 Blueprints
Originally uploaded by g_suttenfield

Okay, my first real ebay experience has ended, and just as I had heard, everything happens in the last minutes and seconds of the auction! I was out-bid in the last seconds of both I had bid on. HOWEVER, there were a couple others that had a Buy Now option, and one of them was cheaper than my previuos high bids, including shipping! So, I am the proud owner of not one, but two sets of blueprints, one of which will be a birthday gift for a friend of mine.

So why am I talking about blueprints for the Starship Enterprise, much less buying them? Because I remember owning these as a kid, of course. These were published around 1975, and figuring I didn't get them when hot off the press, I suppose I had them around 1976. I would have been twelve years old, in 6th grade at Lake Silver Elementary. Interestingly, that is the only elementary school grade for which I can't remember my teacher's name. Not only that, I have no clear memories even of kids that may have been in my class. Here's one theory: I had been at Lake Highland Prep the previous two years, had lost my ties with kids at Lake Silver, and being painfully shy and introverted, pretty much became a wall flower in 6th grade. I have more memories of 3rd, 4th, and 5th (to be discussed in future posts) in which I was a sort of cut-up, always being reprimanded for being a bit loud or disruptive (the report card category "Self Control" always had the "Needs Improvement" checked box), but from 6th grade on, I was quiet as a mouse with far fewer memories. What happened?

It's interesting to think I got these blueprints around that time. Possibly a Christmas 1975 or birthday 1976 gift (unlike my own kids, we didn't get gifts unless there was a major gift giving holiday, or birthday, or we bought it ourselves with money from lawn mowing or bottle returns - more an that later). A few things I do remember from this time:

Being chosen do be on Safety Patrol at school. I was called to the principal's office one day (anyone remember his/her name?) and informed I was a candidate to do this job if I wanted to. I got a fluorescent orange sash and belt, but coolest of all was the badge! A silver badge like any good officer of the law would have. I remember there was a particular method of rolling the sash and belt up, so that it ended up in a neat, tight almost ball, badge on top. I should have more memories of the actual job: stopping traffic at crosswalks and maybe something having to do with the bus loop is all I think there was to it. I really don't remember, though this exercise is beginning to open that up a bit.

This is also, I am just realizing literally as I write this, the start of a major new era of mobility in my life: I began to ride my bike to school. I don't know exactly when that started, but surely that was the beginning of a new phase in my understanding of the world. How did that come to be? Did I ride while Mom took John and David in the car? Did they start riding to school around then? How did I feel that first day I rode my bike to school? Did Mom follow in the car the first few times? Did I carry a lunch box? If so, what kind of lunch box did I have? I don't think we had backpacks at that time, did we? I have a memory of riding with a brown paper lunch bag that is possibly from my high school days, but very possibly junior high also. I would wrap the top of the bag around the handle bar and hold on to it as I steered the bike.

I would ride my bike religiously through all my remaining years in Orlando.

Lunch boxes: now I remember having at least one of the standard metal lunch boxes you can still get today. I can just glimpse an orange top on the thermos. I can't quite make out the image on the box though I can still smell that 'lunch box' smell you get when you first open it up - a kind of metalic-peanut butter- and banana on white bread with canned peaches smell.

Was this now the time of Little League, or T-Ball? I think I will be able to find out the ages those sports allow, then relate them to other events. Might I have ridden my bike to practices, part of my new found freedom?

I think I had my hamster, Francis, around this time (for some reason, that seems right)

I have a very vague memory of going to a summer camp around that time: my main memories are being on a school bus that drove on a dirt road through orange groves to get to the camp area; making a Gumby character; and taking some kind of swimming test after which you were labeled a Minnow, something, or Shark, maybe something else (I remember getting in the wrong line accidentally, the Minnow line being the one I was supposed to be in, and ending up being rated at the level just above Minnow, whatever that was).

I would like someone to fill in the info about that camp: was it just a day camp (I don't remember staying over)? What were those swimming levels? Whose camp was it?

Well, this is the end of an exciting week: I earned my LEED accreditation; our office got a big job with UVa I helped interview for; and I have picked up blueprints of the Enterprise. Not bad.

Cheers,