Fifth grader, 1969-1970, Los Angeles.

Above: Miles (in sunglasses) and Evon climbing ladder to cliff dwellings.

I had some kind of fascination with sun glasses in the year before this, during our trip to California, and in the first weeks of our time in California. It was probably a way of defending myself against all the changes that were taking place.

In the summer of 1969 we moved to California.

In the middle of Arizona or New Mexico, in the summer, while migrating to California, we watched the moon landing.

I struggled to understand the image on the hotel's cheap TV set.

I stared until my eyes hurt, but the static and the unfamiliar shapes, were incomprehensible.

My parents told me that a man was walking on the moon.

We were staying the night in a cheap motor hotel somewhere in the desert, in our own private moonscape.

For most of the year following our move to California, I said that my real home was in North Carolina, and that I missed it.

Then, a year or so later, I was a Californian.

Above: Cliff dwellings in the southwest (Mesa Verde, if I recall correctly, and according to one correspondent who identified them for me). We visited in the summer of 1969 when migrating to California.