Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

Halftime arrived and we were escorted onto the field, where we formed a single line facing the crowd…if it could be called that. There were tens of Houstonians to greet us, most of whom were engaged with the beer or hotdog man. Obviously some things had changed since the days of the Mercury Seven.

A ridiculously enthusiastic commentator boomed our individual introductions.

“Please welcome astronaut James Buchli from Fargo, North Dakota!”

“Please welcome astronaut Michael Coats from Riverside, California!”

“Please welcome astronaut Dick Covey from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida!”

On it went. With each introduction I could barely hear a handful of claps over loud cries of “Beer here!” The applause reminded me of the clapping heard during the credit roll for the television show Laugh-In.

As each of us was introduced, we would step forward, wave to the empty seats, and receive a Houston Hurricanes T-shirt from one of the silicone-enhanced cheerleaders. At least she was clapping. Regardless of the vacant seats I still felt nervous to hear my name booming from those speakers. I couldn’t wait for the voice of God to pass over me and go to the next in line. I noticed the other TFNGs appeared equally self-conscious and anxious to receive their shirts and melt back into the anonymity of the group, with one exception—Big Jon McBride from West by-God Virginia. Jon was a heavyset navy fighter pilot with sandy hair and a ruddy complexion. As his name was announced, he stepped forward just as the rest of us had. But here, all conformity ceased. Instead of a nervous wave and a quick step backward, Jon seized the startled cheerleader, swept her backward off her feet, and planted a kiss on her. Then he pulled on the Hurricanes T-shirt and waved a greeting to the crowd. Now there was applause. Even the Beer Man was cheering. Jon was a man for the masses. The rest of us exchanged wondering looks. Clearly Big Jon was cut from a different mold.

It came as no surprise to any TFNG when, in his retirement, Jon ran for governor of West Virginia. Unfortunately he lost in the Republican primary. If only his campaign had shown the video of him accepting the T-shirt from that cheerleader, he would have carried every county. After such a display of leadership, every good ol’ boy in West Virginia would have voted for him.

For our one-year anniversary some of the class organized a celebration over July Fourth weekend. About a dozen of us went together to rent some stone cabins near Canyon Lake in the Texas hill country. We brought our wives and children and barbecue grills for fun in the sun. My daughters immediately fell in love with John “J. O.” Creighton, a bachelor navy fighter pilot with a midnight blue Corvette and an awesome ski boat named Sin Ship. After rides in both, the kids ran to me shouting, “Dad, why can’t you be like J.O.?” Apparently they were unimpressed by my choice of family car, an un-air-conditioned 1972 VW station wagon, powder blue in color except where the rust had rotted out a door panel. I silently prayed for the day J.O. would have six kids and be driving a Dodge.

After a day of swimming and waterskiing we adjourned to the cabin compound and fired up the grills and campfires. One of the physician TFNGs used a hypodermic syringe to inject vodka into an “adults only” watermelon. This fruit cocktail and an array of alcoholic drinks soon reduced mothering to an occasional, halfhearted warning to their broods: “Somebody is going to get hurt.” A few of the kids were in a tree trying to remove Fisher’s aluminum canoe that had previously been installed there by a group of intoxicated TFNGs.

Inside one of the kitchens the wives drank wine and chopped vegetables for a communal salad while outside the men flipped burgers and drank beer. We were just about to declare victory with the burgers when a loud pounding on the kitchen window caught our attention. We turned to see three pairs of naked breasts pressed against the glass. Three of the wives had pulled up their swimsuit tops and served us an hors d’oeuvre of six nipples under glass. We shouted and whistled our approval and lofted our bottles in a toast of their daring. The women dropped their tops into place and went back to the salad preparations. The TFNG wives were thoroughly enjoying their new roles as astronaut spouses. Ultimately they would pay for the title in crushing terror. But for now that was too distant to spoil the fun.

After dinner a load of illegal fireworks materialized from somebody’s trunk. My kids suspected J.O. since he was so cool. Whatever the source, the astronauts were all over them like the eighth graders the alcohol had rendered us. Even “flaming hookers” didn’t hold the promise of entertainment like drunken astronauts playing with fireworks. Soon the night was alight with sparklers, fountains, and assorted illegal devices normally seen only in combat firefights. Aerial bombs exploded over the campsite. Rockets swished into the black. If it hadn’t been for the dampness left by an earlier thunderstorm, we would have burned down the surrounding forest. A couple of the wives were sober enough to shout at us, “For guys who depend on their eyes and hands for a living, you’re sure taking chances,” but we laughed away the warnings.

It was great fun until a particularly wicked aerial mortar fell off its stand. Balls of fire spewed into the crowd. There were shrieks of panic as mothers swept up children and hustled them behind the cabin walls. I flattened myself behind Fisher’s canoe (finally extracted from the tree) as one ball whistled by my head. I was quickly joined by my son, Pat. With fear swimming in his eyes, he exclaimed, “Dad, don’t you think this is kind of dangerous?” Even a ten-year-old could sense the idiocy of our play. We had become the kids. We were bulletproof. We were immortal. We were astronauts.

After the last bomb had exploded and the kids were asleep, the adults settled around a fire. We were growing close. Our competitiveness and the differences in personality (militant feminists to sexist pigs; propeller-headed scientists to Chuck Yeager clones) would ultimately strain relationships. It was impossible to throw thirty-five people together and not have some acrimony. But, like the fear the wives couldn’t yet see, it was still too early for the enmity to get in the way of our fun.

As a sign of our closeness, we now had our class name: TFNGs. There was no official requirement that a new class of astronauts name themselves. It just happened. The Mercury 7 astronauts had become the “Original Seven.” The class of 1984 would later become known as “Maggots,” a play on the derogatory term that marine drill instructors used in reference to their new recruits. None of these names were ever formally put to a vote. Only through constant usage were they legitimized. For us, TFNG stuck. In polite company it translated to Thirty-Five New Guys. Not very creative, it would seem. However, it was actually a twist on an obscene military term. In every military unit a new person was a FNG, a “fucking new guy.” You remained a FNG until someone newer showed up, then they became the FNG. While the public knew us as the Thirty-Five New Guys, we knew ourselves as The Fucking New Guys.

Deep in the heart of Texas, the fire crackled and glowing embers swirled skyward. More beers were popped. Brewster Shaw strummed his guitar to an Eagles tune as our talk turned, as it always did, to when we might fly in space. Like teenagers wishing for Saturday night to arrive, we wished for miracles to speed us to our launches. Our dreams were of the incredible things we would do. We would fly missions into polar orbits and fly jet packs on tetherless spacewalks. We would carry every science satellite, every military satellite, every communication satellite. We would use a robot arm to grapple satellites and repair them in orbit. We were going to do it all…The Fucking New Guys.