“We never went to no Moon!”

So I said to my niece’s boyfriend at a recent get-together.
“Biggest trick ever foisted on the American people,” boyfriend said.
“Walter Cronkite and the TV-News, in cahoots with Hollywood.”
Boyfriend was retelling where he was when Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon.
I forget details, only that it was broadcast on TV at some ungodly hour.
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
“Distort the video, fellas. Gotta look like it’s from the Moon.”
I do remember “Houston, uh.... Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
We were returning from a family reunion in northwestern PA. My wife’s father was driving their refrigerator-white ’63 Valiant four-door.
We were far from humanity in Potter County: “God’s Country.”
He had the radio on.
Down a hill we drove next to open pasture. “The Eagle has landed.”
YOWZUH! We did it! Kennedy’s promise fulfilled.
It’s interesting none of this is real to newer generations. John Kennedy was never assassinated, we never went to no Moon, etc.
My left knee was replaced on December 7th: “a date which will live in infamy!”
I say that, and many don’t get it. December 7th (1941) was the date Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese.
“Another Hollywood fast one, I tell ya!”
My brother’s wife in northern DE questions Andrew Jackson on the 20-dollar bill. “Who’s Andrew Jackson?” she asks. She suggests Ronald Reagan, an estimable choice.
I bet she knows Andy Jackson was our nation’s seventh president. Back in the early 1800s, which of course are another Hollywood fabrication.
The War of 1812, Napoleon, etc; are all stunts. Delivered by hoity-toity intellectuals to dissuade us from being anti-Trump.
And of course everything is hunky-dory to Trump and his cohorts.
As much a distortion as what they accuse.
What happened that history no longer exists? That “facts” prompt “alternative facts.”
Suddenly those of us born in the 20th Century are full-of-it.