On September 28 1980 my grandpa went up to the second floor of the two family flat to repair a jammed door nob. The door which exited onto the narrow wooden porch was jammed. The middle-aged couple that had moved in since my mother remarried and left Edward's, were trapped inside. The soles of Grandpa's worn brown shoes easily crushed the flaking blue paint of the porches' floorboards. He had carried his heavy tool box up and after a few minutes of fiddling, easily released the patient couple. The cool autumn air had just come to St. Louis the stifling humidity of summer were gone. The days were getting shorter and it was almost dark at 7pm. Grandpa kindly refused a can of beer picked up his tool box and collapsed head first down the old wooden stair case.
I sat indian style on plush brown shag carpeting in the living room of a story and a half brick home on the south side of St. Louis. Pat, my mom's new husband was working the late shift at the Anheuser Bush brewery. Mom was at the far end of the unfinished attic I could hear her through the plaster ceilings as she clomped on the narrow gangway over the ceiling beams and pink insulation. She was hanging laundry in the unfinished attic half dressed as usual on a laundry day.
I had a paper plate sitting in the lap of my crossed chubby legs and about 1/4 of a microwave burrito that I was eagerly choking down my throat. The molten beans were burning my pallet and I put out the fire by taking a swing from a two liter plastic bottle of root-beer.
I was sitting close to the television. The round television nob was switched to channel nine the local public broadcasting station.
I sat totally enthralled in the glow of the television, lulled into some other world by the cinematic soundtrack. I was taking my first journey into a realm I have dreamed about for years. I was whirling past the planets out of our solar system and to the edge of of galaxy looking back on our milky way. Then ever further through the cosmic ocean speeding past colorful nebulas, blinking pulsars and companion stars locked in gravitational embrace.
I was watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I had become Carl Sagan's traveling companion. I was in an other world as real as heaven to a young Catholic boy.
The phone rang and Mom rushed bouncing down the stair case two more scalding microwave burritos in her cooking mitt covered hand. Mom set down the phone and rushed me out of the house with out taking off her cooking mitt or putting on clothes
