O
ur new home on Hudspeth Avenue was less than five miles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory as the crow flies. Viewed from the valley floor, the facility blended into the background, and gave little clue that the daily operations there played a key role in President Kennedy’s goal of placing an American astronaut on the Moon before the end of the decade. Hidden here in the Simi foothills, the components of the J‑2 rocket engine were already being field tested, bolted to solid bedrock so their thrust could be accurately measured. When completed, these engines would become one of the basic propulsion components of the Saturn V rocket that NASA would use in its Apollo program. When the rocket test stands roared to life, manmade thunder rumbled across the valley floor.

My first brush with this had come the very night we moved to Simi. My stepfather had already been working the night shift on the hill for several months, which left my mother and me to make the drive alone. Darkness had already fallen by the time my mother pulled into the driveway of our new home, a house I had never even seen before. As she opened her car door, the cat I had been trying to keep quiet in the back seat lunged from his box, and disappeared into the night. I was worried that he might never come back, but my mother just said to wait and see. The cat would have to explore the new neighborhood on his own sooner or later, she said, and it might as well be sooner.

I walked up the street calling my cat. I made my way past six or seven homes until I reached the north end of the block, then turned back. I saw a few streetlights at intervals, but they did little to dispel the autumn darkness. These Simi Park South homes had been built only two years earlier, so there were no large trees. One house was much like another, all single story homes with three or four bedrooms. As I walked, I could see fleeting glimpses of people in lighted windows. It was about as tranquil an urban setting as I had ever seen.

I listened to the sound of my footsteps on the cement sidewalk. I heard a car as it rounded the corner behind me. In the beam of its headlights as it passed, I saw a cat dart across the wide street and run into the low bushes along the front of a neighboring house. I couldn’t tell if it was my cat or not.

As I neared our front yard, I saw my mother walking toward me along the sidewalk. She was just about to say something when we were startled by a sound like rolling thunder in the distance. At that moment the southeast horizon lit up in a brilliant glow that quivered and reflected off the front of every house along the street. Turning my head in the direction of the flickering light, I could see a tall plume of fire dancing on the crest of the foothills. Huge clouds of smoke rose into the night sky, illuminated by the pulsating flame. The unearthly rumble continued for about two or three minutes. My heart began to race.

“What is that, Momma?” I asked with a genuine sense of fear in my voice.

She paused for a moment, watching. “It must be Rocketdyne,” she said. “That’s where your daddy works now. He’s been talking about the rocket tests up there on the hill. This must be one of them.”

“Rocket tests?” I asked.

“They test rocket engines up there. It’s part of the space program. Your daddy says they—” But at just that instant, the flame winked out, and the thundering sound abruptly stopped. The comparative silence of the autumn night seemed unearthly after the prolonged roar.

“Your daddy says they run tests like that several times a week,” she continued. “I had no idea they would be so loud.”

We stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the night sky. It was a crisp and cloudless night, and I was surprised at the number of stars visible above us. I didn’t find it very reassuring to know that my stepfather had talked with my mother about these test blasts on the hill. I didn’t care if it was all part of the U.S. space program. All that noise and light in the sky was frightening, and to be surprised like that on my first night in our new home left me feeling strange and a bit disoriented.