A good cover story
I was not yet in the double digits when I experienced my first full solar eclipse. It was a Saturday in March 1970. I was at my girlfriend’s house in central Pennsylvania, waiting and watching with her and her mother, Gloria. Gloria was the worrying kind, anxious about everything — toilet seat germs, lecherous old men and of course, on that day, that we might be blinded by the sun. As I recall, we were equipped with some sort of homemade pinhole viewing device, but even with that, Gloria urged us to stay inside. Less a cause for celebration, it felt more like the potential ending of the world. I wasn’t so sure I liked this idea of night when it was supposed to be day.
