This is the memory palace.

I'm Nate Demayow.

The postcard from Brevard County, Florida, dated July 16, 1969.

The traffic was backed up for miles for days.

After midnight the morning of, T-minus 10 hours, people just started giving up, abandoning

their cars, setting out on foot, lit by headlights, scored by car radios, Pontiacs idling,

bumper to bumper to bumper to bumper.

On the narrow road beside the ocean, the road itself had come a long way.

In the 10 years in change since the United States had come to Brevard County to launch the rockets.

Back then, 58-59, sand would sweep over the two-lane road.

Marsh grass would push up through the cracks, ripple in the slipstream created by

juttering trucks, laden with rocket parts, and rocket fuel.

By cars with government plates, carrying rocket scientists and astronauts and engineers,

riding with the windows down.

Maybe letting their flattened palms ride the salt breeze, knowing exactly which forces where it play as they move them up and down.

There were four lanes now.

Far fewer than needed on this day, with a million people here, or nearly here, or turning around and driving away from here.

Disappointed that they weren't going to see Apollo 11 take off in person.

The 3500 hotel rooms in Coco Beach and the other beach towns were full, had been for months.

As were the campgrounds, and the beaches themselves, in the parking lots,

clearings in the woods off the road, packed with tents and trailers, station wagons with their tailgate stand,

for her botches, for the feet of taller children and sleeping bags in the back,

...