My Dad The Rocket Scientist Part Two

I grew up outside of Sacramento, California in the sleepy suburb of Fair Oaks on three acres with some orange trees, a giant oak for my treehouse, and lots of lawn to mow. Dad worked at Aerojet General, a major supplier of rocket engines back in the late ‘50s and into the ‘60s. We’re talking big rocket engines, the ones that powered ballistic missiles.

Aerojet General would test their rocket engines way out in the country, some ten, maybe fifteen miles from our house, and you could hear them from that distance. There would be a sustained, distant thunder that would rattle the windows and sometimes cause the kitchen table to shake. As a boy, I was often amused by the look of terror on visitors’ faces when they first experienced this. To me it was commonplace.

One summer evening Dad took me for a drive. He didn’t tell me where we were going and I didn’t care. It was a lovely, warm evening, the hot day gone and the chill of midnight far away. Dad drove our Volkswagen bug way out into the country, beyond any place I knew or recognized. We took a dirt road off the pavement to a gravel parking lot. He nosed the VW between some other cars and up to a cable strung between short timbers sunk into the ground.

The air was warm and humid and the sun was just setting, shading everything with a dusky umber light. A full moon, the color of a polished penny, was cresting the opposite horizon. What stood out above all was how still it was as the light retreated toward evening. It felt magical to me, as if the very atmosphere was imbued with a crisp awareness. We sat on the VW’s hood and gazed out at the wide field before us.

There was a big mound some distance away. In the dim light I couldn’t tell how far, but it had to be a quarter mile of more. It was a long dirt mound without distinguishing features, shaped somewhat like a melted lozenge. One end was open, and part of some obscure device stuck out a little bit. That part had lights shining on it. There was a closer mound several hundred feet away, a smaller version of the large one, a bump on the slowly darkening landscape. The side toward us was blank, covered with stubby golden grass. A thin black pipe poked up out of it.

We sat for I don’t know how long in the warm summer air, lost in mystery and the silent stillness. The rising moon was beautiful, the delicious air smelled of dirt and dry fields, and I was on an adventure with Dad. I knew something was about to happen, but wasn’t sure what.

Then a thin plume of white smoke went up from the close mound’s pipe and I suddenly got a feeling of scale. I could tell from the way the smoke rose that it was not a small trickle. Dad told me it was a bunker. That meant that the large mound was very far away and really big.

A loud speaker clicked on from the bunker mound. The man’s voice that spoke was loud and echoed off the distant, larger mound.

“TEN… ten…ten…  NINE… nine… nine…  EIGHT… eight… eight…” and so on down. I was fascinated.

Finally: “ONE… one…one…”

There was a second’s pause.

Suddenly a white-hot tongue of flame shot hundreds of feet across the dim landscape from the nozzle of the rocket engine buried under the huge mound of dirt. It lit the encroaching night with a brilliance more stabbing than sunlight. It was a glorious sight.

And then there was the sound.

Overriding all else came a deep, earthshattering roar from the massive buried rocket engine. I felt my ribs vibrate, the marrow in my bones liquify, and my skin curdle under the thunderous intensity of the engine. It was a deep and richly penetrating sound that caused the hood of the VW to shake beneath me and the polyphonic standing wave to beat at my chest with fists of air. It was a sound so loud that my ears stopped hearing. I could feel it in my skull. The god-like voice of the incandescent display filled my world. This went on for a timeless time.

And then it stopped.

The bright fury of the rocket’s flame fell back to the mound as if some giant hand had turned off a valve. In moments the distant flame went from huge to not so large to a brief blue bubble that went pffft and popped out of existence. I was left stunned and deaf, still vibrating, bodaciously amazed.  

That’s where the memory ends: with the heart of the sun pouring forth across the land and a vast voice of overwhelming power shaking the marrow of my bones. Something spoke to me that night, some revelation of flame and thunder and science and how humans (like my dad!) could control the Brobdingnagian powers of wonderment. For a young boy it was a spiritual experience.

Much of my childhood is a blur, but that particular evening stands out above all others. On a warm summer night, with a polished penny moon resting on the horizon, in the wide-open stillness of rolling grasslands a voice of infinite power spoke to me. And I have never forgotten.

My dad helped build that. My dad the rocket scientist.