Just bought a new telescope. Below is the story of my first telescope. Sean and Pat were very young at the time. That first telescope was purchased when I was 11 years old - 57 years ago! Special thanks to Owen Thomas, Editor of the CSMonitor who published this piece in 2008. The title was his idea.
Tonight, the sky
is velvet. A bright treasure of jewels splash across its horizons.
There is no moon.
Already, Patrick
can pick out the major constellations, including the Big Dipper,
pointing toward Polaris and true north. In my imagination I picture
Jim, Huck's loyal friend, following it like a beacon to the land of
freedom.
Sean spots
Orion, holding a noble shield before him, his belt glittering in the
blackness. It conjures up images of the Greeks: the thick walls of
Troy, the beauty of Helen, the craft of Odysseus. I shiver in a
slight breeze that's rustling through the trees.
My eyes are wide
open, and so are the eyes of my sons.
There are many
stories in the night sky. Ancient astrologers claimed to read the
future in the stars; astronomers peer through the dark in search of
light. Forty years ago, my father and I spent many nights looking up,
tracking the phases of the moon and learning to read the drama that
unfolds in the heavens.
Back then, I was
completely satisfied with naked-eye astronomy, until the day I passed
by Breezy's Pawnshop on my way home from school. Breezy's was in a
colorful section of town delineated by an assortment of night clubs,
betting parlors, and diners with tiny windows.
Out front, there
was an old man playing his saxophone right there on the sidewalk. I
joined a small crowd to listen and sway back and forth with the
music.
Across the
street, a girl in a flowered dress was standing on a box decrying the
danger of the A-bomb.
Then I spotted
the telescope of my dreams in the window. It was a small refractor,
the kind Galileo had used to study the music of the planets and
redefine the universe.
In a flash, I
was mapping the universe. The mysteries of the cosmos were within my
grasp, but still a bit beyond my reach.
Inside, a woman
in a bright-orange dress was trying on rings. Breezy sat there
patiently while she spoke of the color and cut of the stones. He made
comforting sounds and nodded in agreement with everything she said. I
felt sure I had stepped onto an alien planet with strange customs and
languages foreign to the human ear.
Then Breezy
looked up, measuring me with his eyes, one eye enlarged by the thick
curve of a jeweler's loupe. A card-dealer's visor graced his hairless
head.
"Help ya,
kid?" he asked.
"Yeah. Can
I see the telescope?"
"Sure
thing. It's a beauty." He went to the window, removed the
instrument from its display, and set it down on the floor on the
other side of the counter.
"Come on
back," he waved.
It was love at
first sight: a smooth gray tube, wooden tripod, equatorial mount,
small black spotting scope on top.
"Belonged
to an old astronomer who hadda leave town quick."
I looked through
the lens and saw the musician up close. "How much?" I
asked.
He studied me
for a moment. I had heard that in negotiations of this sort, a droll,
disinterested expression is required.
I struggled to
wipe the joy from my face, which only widened my smile even more.
"How about
25 bucks? You can swing that for such a fine instrument." It was
an act of kindness: more than I had, but not more than I could raise.
Two weeks later,
I returned with the money. Breezy packed the scope in a wooden box
lined in red velvet, and I had it home in minutes.
That night, the
whole family assembled in our yard. In no time we were exploring the
mountains on the moon, sailing its mysterious black seas.
No one was more
excited than my grandmother, who asserted her royal position on the
family tree by commandeering the telescope as soon as a new object
floated into her field of vision.
Other nights
brought new and glorious wonders: the rings of Saturn, the moons of
Jupiter, even the polar caps on Mars.
The Earth has
swung around the sun almost 40 times since that perfect first night.
My family has changed, but that same sense of wonder remains in the
new generations.
Tonight, we can
see billions of miles above, and thousands of years back. While we
stand here in silence, a shooting star bursts across the sky. An owl
marks its passing from a distant tree. And for a little while, time
stops.
We peer through
that telescope again, and for one more evening we stand on the edge
of forever.
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