(One small leap for ma…no, wait)
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Think back, old school. Way, way back. Back when we had only three TV channels, two genders, and one nation under God.

Back when kids went outside to play, boys went to Boy Scouts, and the king of Siam went barefoot. Back when “Piggly Wiggly” described a grocery, not Britney’s latest twerk rave.

This week, fifty-two years ago, using technology with less computer processing power than your average cell phone, mankind first launched a rocket and landed in the Arizona desert. Then the astronauts (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) pulled over to ask for directions … which then, as now, is a hard thing for guys to do … and ultimately they landed on the Moon.

Patriotic Buzz-Killing Sidebar: Actually, the first country to touch the Moon  was the Soviet Union (now known as “Hunter Biden’s Other Retirement Fund”). On 13 September 1959, while Keith Richards was having his fifth hip replacement, the USSR’s Luna 2 module touched the lunar surface (a suburb of Phoenix, AZ). Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev then held a press conference, pointed to a map of Arizona, and frowned for the camera. And then he annexed the Moon so it couldn’t join NATO.

And for some reason, it’s now been almost fifty years since we’ve been back. Sure, we quickly revisited the moon a few times to drive around some more (remember, these are guys), and so we’d have a few more “million horsepower” analogies to fire off at poker games.

But then in 1972, America mothballed the whole Moon adventure. It’s as though NASA were the Cleveland Indians, who last won the World Series in 1948, on Keith Richards’ 150th birthday.

Patriotic Buzz-Killing Sidebar: In January 2019, China became the first nation to land of the dark side of the Moon, where they immediately started printing takeout menus and opened an Apple Store.

Why did America give up on the Moon? Well, like many things, it depends on who you ask. Sure, in 1972, an Isley Brothers tune called “Pop That Thang” was in the Billboard Top 100, but that’s not a strong case for staying home … that’s an argument for evacuating Earth.

Let’s think back on America in 1972:

• NASA launched the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, bound for Jupiter, Arizona.
• For the first time in history, the Dow Jones closed over 1000. Actor William Devane immediately started appearing in “buy gold” commercials for Rosland Capital.
• Atari released PONG, the first video game to not include laser gunfights with Nazi zombies.
• None of my personal friends were in prison
• Yet.
• The Equal Rights Amendment was passed, given women the long-overdue right to wear open-toed shoes before 6 pm.
• NASA launched Landsat 1, developed to orbit and observe the Earth. Over the next six years, the satellite transmitted over 300,000 pictures of girls sunbathing on rooftops.
• The #1 TV show was All in the Family, a sitcom about a bigot. The #2 show was Sanford and Son, a sitcom about a bigot. Maybe this whole “woke” nonsense was inevitable.
• The top-grossing movie of 1972 was The Poseidon Adventure, the story of the Greek god who invented the water slide.
• By the way, 1972’s top five movies included one called Deep Throat, which … mark my words … is absolutely not about guys with low voices.
• A “we never went to the moon” conspiracist offered, as proof of the lie, the picture of Neil Armstrong standing next to the stiff US flag. The doubter’s argument was that there’s no wind on the moon. That person is now the Secretary of Education.
• Neil Armstrong’s son had just learned the words “step” and “leap” and couldn’t wait to use them in a sentence.
• The average monthly rent was $165. A loaf of bread cost a quarter. A Kodak “Pocket” would set you back $28, but the full Kodak jacket cost more than your rent.
• In 1972, a gallon of gas cost 36¢. Today, fossil fuels are illegal, except for world leaders flying their private jets to private islands for “Save the Planet” conferences.
• Richard Nixon was President. (see “Pop That Thang” planet evacuation plan)
• The world was rocked by the Watergate scandal, an ultimately damning investigation into Poseidon’s finances.
• Jeans cost twelve bucks. These days, you need a co-signer.
• Also, nobody thought to buy jeans with holes in them. Jeans with holes in them were known as “seconds.” If you actually wanted jeans with homes in them, you had to take them home and damage them yourself.
• For initially unexplainable reasons, “Candy Man” by Sammy Davis Jr. was also in the Billboard Top 100. But then somebody remembered what “candy” meant in the 70s. Game on.
• The average income of an average American was $11,800 per year, except for members of Congress, who spend more than that auditioning  IKEA avocado peelers.
• You could buy a pound of ground beef for 98 cents.
• Members of Congress cost even less than ground beef, but were more rancid.
• Mark Spitz won seven Olympic gold medals, but they were recalled when he saluted the US flag.
• Michael Jackson had a hit song about a rat. After retaining legal services, the rat now owns Neverland. Children are welcome, as long as they’re extremely small children.
• Willem Kolff claimed to have created the artificial heart. Members of Richard Nixon’s staff said, “No, he didn’t.”
• The Easy Bake Oven celebrated its tenth anniversary by inventing gluten. Sales skyrocketed;  census numbers plummeted.
• A plane crashed in the Andes, and some passengers survived by resorting to cannibalism, although the American passengers complained about the small portions.
• Alleged actor Ben Affleck was born. (see “planet evacuation plan”)