Model rockets

“I pressed the launch button on the launch system box – and nothing happened. Dad called the launch box a Mickey Mouse contraption. I agreed with him. We came up with an alternative that I relied on for the rest of my model rocket career. We used the car battery in dad’s Volkswagen. The rocket launched and flew for maybe 2,000 feet. [...] Attached together by the rubber band, the rocket body, nosecone and parachute floated groundward to land softly in Grandmother Nan’s backyard.”

“We went out to my extended in-laws’ farm, with lots of open fields. Even still, our first launch, with, admittedly, the biggest engine our rocket could take, it flew across the street into what seemed to be an empty cow pasture, until my husband climbed the fence to retrieve the rocket, and a whole herd of cows poured over the hill, mooing threateningly. One of them stared him down until he left.”