I was in a garage band called Nero and the Flames in Reseda California in the summer of 1969.  I am the one with the bass guitar on his knee. My father was an engineer and worked on our first satellite-the Explorer Program in the late 50's. I wanted to be an astronaut and astonomer. I was 8 years old when Alan Shepard arced into the sky and he is still my hero. When my other heroes lofted off to the Moon back in July 1969, I was a “freak”—a cynical hippie.  Nixon, the war, the draft--I was not a big fan of where America was going.  But when we launched Apollo 11, I was happy, hopeful, and anxious all at once.  I was so into the program that on the night of July 19 I sewed a dime store American flag over a hole in the knee of my Levis jeans, I was proud of America and wanted to show it!
I went to the beach July 20, the day of the Moon landing. There, I observed a motorcycle officer giving jaywalking tickets to long hair kids who crossed Pacific Coast Highway, and so typically sarcastic, I asked him where the nearest crosswalk was (at least one mile away in either direction). He looked at the flag on my knee and arrested me on the spot.  It caused a big scene with a large crowd harassing the lone officer, until the patrol cars arrived and I was whisked away to Santa Monica Jail—I was 15 years old. They took my Levis and I sat in jail for over four hours until my irate parents came and sprung me (with some heated words exchanged between my anti-war Mom and the Lieutenant).
When I arrived at home, Neil and Buzz were unfurling the U.S. flag in those over-exposed, blurry but incredible live television images. Images that I had waited so long to see; images I could not watch as I ran to my room angry and betrayed. I had found a bit of patriotism in a country I had lost faith in and they took it away from me!  I was convicted a year later in California Superior Court on three counts--“defacing/defiling”; “improper display”; and “mutilation” of the flag of the United States of America. Ironically, that experience and my Mom’s concern that we knew less about the oceans than the Moon led me to become a U.S. Government marine geoscientist only 7 years after Neil and Buzz walked on the lunar surface.