Making way for change

It is a ritual many drivers have engaged in since shortly after the invention of the automobile:  the cleaning out of the former car to turn in as a trade-in on a newer model. I am, in a manner of speaking, between cars as my eight-year old Malibu is about to leave its’ home in the family driveway to make way for another Chevy.  I made the deal at a local dealership, and I spent a good part of the weekend clearing out eight years of life inside my car.

 I started in the front seat with a box and a plastic bag.  The box was to save things and the bag was for throwing things away.  I cleared out my bucket seat armrest where a half dozen compact discs were inside. 

Underneath the driver’s seat I found a lost Blue tooth from my cell phone.  I retrieved four empty water bottles from under the front passenger seat.

 I worked my way to the backseat where I gathered four coat hangers, two golf balls, and about a half ream of paper from various work and non-profit volunteer assignments.  There was also a throw pillow my wife would use when she drove the car.

 The trunk, as you might expect, was loaded with stuff.  Out came the golf clubs, pull cart, another four golf balls, a dozen golf tees, and a golfer’s organizer that my wife gave me one Father’s Day.  The irony on having something to keep my golf equipment organized is not lost on me. 

 I also found four audio books that I must have listened to sometime over the past eight years along with a coffee cup and saucer that must have been a Secret Santa gift from work one year.   These items went into a new grocery store bag designated for donation to charity.  I also found two full bottles of water and two legal pads. 

 In the trunk, I also kept a set of snow chains that I never used and an air pump that is powered by the cigarette lighter.  Both will move to the other car.

 So as I was about finished with this part of the car, I had one grocery store plastic bag filled with stuff to throw away.  The box of stuff to save was filled. 

 But on the wild chance there might be something in the spare tire well, I removed the trunk flooring where the spare is kept. 

 I now know that spare tire wells are where golf items go to die.  Inside the well, I found three more golf balls, two golf scorecards, eight golf scoring pencils, and at least two-dozen golf tees.  Add to that a dozen pens, about forty-cents in change, and a bottle of hand lotion I got from a hotel room and I was just now just about finished.

 With a sweep of a broom, and a final inspection, I think the deed was done. 

 The Malibu was the first car I purchased in California.  I had not owned a Chevy since college.  I took a chance it would provide me with safe and reliable transportation during my first years in the Golden State.  It did.

 I drove it to Sacramento the first night I owned it.  I drove it to Hollywood to see the Walk of Fame.  It crossed the San Francisco Bay Bridge too many times to count.  We drove it through the Rocky Mountains to visit my daughter one Christmas.

 I immortalized the Malibu in the book "9 From 99- Experiences in California’s Central Valley".  There’s a publisher’s note on the back of the second edition of the book that reads: “Steve Newvine has logged over 100,000 California roadways with the bulk of them on Highway 99.”

 And the bulk of those 100,000 miles logged on California roads were behind the wheel of my safe and reliable Malibu.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced. 

The Moon Rock and Memories

The Moon Rock and Memories

The picture seems just right for a guy who fell in love with the space program as a kid growing up in the 1960's. Taken by Joseph Minafra Of Lockheed Martin, there's a smiling yours truly holding a moon rock picked up by one of the astronauts during Apollo 16. Joseph and another colleague from Lockheed, were in Atwater on June 10 for the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Challenger Learning Center on the grounds of the former Castle Air Force Base.

Growing up during the formative years of America's race to the moon, I remember most of the rocket launches. All were televised by the three networks in these pre-cable saturation days. Whether you liked it or not, a NASA launch was the only thing on.

But I liked it. I was amazed by the firepower of those rockets. I took in with great interest the grainy video of John Glenn and his fellow astronauts. The Mercury program started things for US manned space flight. Gemini followed, and it would lead into the Apollo program. It seemed as thought I watched every launch.

The television anchormen and reporters who covered the launches were filled with the sense of excitement that this was a really special, truly American, accomplishment. Back in the 1960’s, no other country, save for the Soviet Union, was even coming close to achieving what the United States was accomplishing with the space program.

The enthusiasm endured even as the nation continued to get mired down in the tragedy of Vietnam. But a setback in 1967 would but the brakes on the program at least for a little while.

I was away with my dad and brother at a winter camp the night we heard on the radio that Apollo 1 had experienced a fire that killed three astronauts during a systems test. I was nine years old and like many Americans, I felt that our race to the moon might be stalled for the rest of the decade.

But the Apollo program returned, and soon our focus was back on the moon and doing that in a safer manner. I remember the Life magazine cover of Apollo 8 going around the moon and sending back a picture of the big blue and white marble that was Earth at Christmas time in 1968.

I started a scrapbook as the nation, and the world, anxiously awaited the launch of Apollo 11. Two more missions would push the envelope even further as the world waited for the big one.

The astronaut team of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Ed Collins were our heroes as that “small step for man… giant leap for mankind” took place in July 1969. Their mission was a success. They brought back the incredible story of an unimaginable adventure.

And they brought back moon rocks.

Over the next few years, five more missions (Apollo 13 did not land on the moon) to the lunar surface would create more fascinating stories, and more rocks. There's a scene in the movie Apollo 13 where the stranded astronauts momentarily question why their spacecraft calculations seem to be off by a few hundred pounds.

Two astronauts look at each other with one saying, "Rocks." The calculations were based on a returning spacecraft that would have included lunar samples.

I guess that's why the moon rock on display at the Challenger Learning Center really hit home for me. Here was a piece of the moon, encased in lucite, but a specimen from our great adventure into space.

I could hold it, and smile with it as the picture was taken. It completes the scrapbook I started as a kid.

Over the years, I met several astronauts in my travels as a space reporter in Huntsville, Alabama in the early 1980’s. In the 1990’s, I met Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, the two surviving members of the famous Apollo 13 mission that had to return from space after an explosion nearly lost the spacecraft.

The pair was reunited at a conference I attended in upstate New York. Meeting these modern day explorers was nothing short of a dream come true for this boy who loved the space program.

But seeing the moon rock, something that actually came back from America's journey into the unknown, was a very special moment in my life.

Ever since Apollo ended, there has been debate over why the United States ended manned lunar exploration. When the space shuttle program ends later this year, the discussion will continue over why our nation is backing away from manned space flight.

For this one special night in Atwater, California, there was no debate. There was no discussion over our space budget priorities. For this one night, this little boy who grew up never losing faith in American ingenuity, the moon rock brought it all home.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced

Steve Jobs, Broker of Change

I don’t think I’ll be able to forget the black turtleneck sweater, blue jeans, wire-rimmed glasses, and stubble beard.

I’m probably least qualified to weigh in on the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who passed away in early October.  I don’t own an iPhone or an iPad.  I still buy compact disks for my music.  And this column is being written on a PC.

But I do agree with many who are beginning to assess Jobs’ legacy by putting him in the same league as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. 

I could add to that list of Americans who have contributed to the fabric of our commercial existence the likes of Kodak founder George Eastman, and the inventor of the television Philo T. Farnsworth.

For the sake of argument, I concede that none of these inventors brought their ideas forth as pure individual achievements.  All worked with people, took ideas established by others, and with the possible exception of Farnsworth, moved their thoughts forward with the help of many individuals.  None acted alone.

Edison gave us the light bulb and the phonograph.  Ford gave us the assembly line production of the automobile.  Eastman put photography into the hands of ordinary people. 

Farnsworth gave us the television, but fought bitterly with corporate moguls who tried to marginalize his contributions.

That takes me back to Jobs.  He didn’t invent the computer, but he and others at Apple Computer did help develop the idea that a computer could be in every home. 

The company revolutionized the music distribution business with the notion that the consumer could buy just the one song they wanted from an album of ten to twenty cuts. 

Apple dropped the word computer from its’ name and gave us the iPhone which in turn spun several established inventions in a new direction. 

Even the personal computer, the original idea that launched Jobs and Apple over thirty years ago, was transformed into the light-weight, but heavily technologically driven iPad.

I remember NBC’s David Brinkley speaking about the legacy of Elvis Presley at the time of the King of rock and roll’s death in the 1970’s.  “Whether you liked him or not, he changed things.  He changed the way, then (1950’s) teenage Americans thought about music, clothes, and life.”

This thought can be applied to some extent on the legacy of Steve Jobs.  He did a lot thinking for us as he brokered ideas and added a few of his own to give the world products they never really knew they wanted or needed. 

He may not have been the most compassionate boss.  Some have questioned his commitment to corporate responsibility and community service.  Several quotes attributed to him are now being discovered as not having been original, but rather quotes he may have borrowed from others without attribution. 

But no one will question that he was a brilliant man with a commitment to helping his customers discover they needed something they previously never realized they needed.

He changed things.    From the scrapping of traditional business attire at product announcements, to the way all of us think about technology, Steve Jobs changed a lot of things.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.