men of a different era.

To be perfectly honest, I bought the book of old photos for the NASA pictures. Josh loves spacey stuff. We went to a fantabulous space museum in the middle of Kansas where he saw some astronaut jackets. He really wanted one, but they were ridiculously expensive. So he only bought some patches, which were still pretty pricey for what they were. Then when he got home, he went to the Army surplus store and bought a blue flight jacket for $40. He sewed the patches on himself, which I think is pretty cute. Maybe I'm just a sucker for his charms. Luckily, he seems to be a sucker for my charms, which even I have to admit have a limitied audience appeal. I only hope that everyone else in the world can find a sucker for their charms.

Anyway, I bought the photo album because there were some pictures of people in front of a NASA bus. I hoped that some of those people might be astronauts, but even if they were just engineers or administrators, that would be okay, too. Since I actually have no idea who they are, I can pretend whatever. What I like about this picture is how indicative of the time it is. Photos like this (and like all of them in the album) are like unintentional historical artifacts. There was still a space race going on. The general public was still interested in what might be up in the sky.


And the men! Men don't look like this anymore. They don't wear their pants like that, they don't stand that way, they don't ask for those haircuts, and they don't smoke cigarettes in pictures. These were men of a different era. I mean, probably, they acted just like men act now. Except they stub out their cigarettes before someone takes their picture.