Forty years ago, way before I composed this post that WordPress decided to not remember and so now I’m writing it again, I was jumping off a jungle gym into the hot west Texas sand. This may or may not have been the day that, while jumping, I lodged my front tooth into the gum of my mandible to be discovered three years later as my adult tooth moved into position. Regardless, it was on this day (or possibly a couple of days later, as 40 years ago was on a Sunday) that time stood still and we were instructed to crane our heads towards the warm yellow sun and stare at it.

Like Dag I would repeat this exercise throughout my early childhood until my eyes would bleed with tears. I thought it was something I was supposed to do regularly but only on those summer days when the temperature and cloud conditions were right. I would step off my red tricycle, stop the game I was playing and stare until my eyes were wet.

It was only many years later that I understood what I was supposed to be looking at on that hot El Paso day at Kiddie Korner: it wasn’t the sun, it was the moon. And possibily the moon was visible on that day or maybe it was only something we couldn’t see but were still supposed to believe.

I won’t get into a huge diatribe about whether or not we landed on the moon that day, but I think we’re all going to be in for a big surprise in 2030 when the Chinese send their moon probe out and there’s no indication of an American flag or a Banana Splits-style moon rover waiting for them to drive around.

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Joe Braun’s photography can be enjoyed here. Please support freelance photographers.