Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of AMERICAN (AMERI)ca's Fall from Grace

Rating:
Summary: I could be out on the street on Monday Morning
Review: Hal Beers and I had very similar careers. Navy Jet Fighter Pilot to Lockheed Space Systems Division; David's observations of a latter day "Life With Father" struck a lot of familiar and abused nerves. I joined LMSC about a year earlier than Hal. We were in the same organization at the advent of space systems. The thrill (like Startrek) to go where no man has been before was a real rush. Yet it grew old. We aged. (Always the commute to the west Santa Clara Valley was a bitch. This added tension to a terribly tense job.) The thrill of being the first started to erode when we saw the third and fourth generations of young engineers making the same stupid mistakes we made (with five inch slide rules not IBM PCs with Bill Gates software. Dave missed a few of the high points such as the Nixon post-Viet Nam stagflation and decline in the space-biz where LMSC Sunnyvale's employment dropped from almost 40,000 to about 12,500. We used to track it with our paycheck numbers. In our house "I could be out on the street on Monday Morning" was a classic oft-repeated gag line by my kids - I gagged because it was so close to reality. The book helped me relive some of my greatest and worse hours. Although Hal and I separated about five years after he joined the Company, David's story applies to all of us. The almost hopeless state we drove ourselves and our families. Yet we survived. My kids grew up - graduating from Saratoga High in 1969 and were thrown right into a new life I never dreamed of - Viet Nam riots, Haight-Ashbury, free love, rock and roll and recreational pharmaceuticals. Yet they too survived. David got a little too maudlin. His retrospective on the changes sort of caused the book to drag towards the end. Yet it is an accurate slice of life with the bright stars and Blue Skies of the Cold War - winning ulcers or coronary by-passes in lieu of medals. Its over. I'm sure Pericles grandchildren would agree that life goes on - and humans are by nature survivors. Darwin avered that we adapt. We did and are still adapting. /s/ Bill Eaton, LMSC 1959-1983

Rating:
Summary: Blue Sky or Rust Belt, it happened to us all....
Review: I bought this book because I heard that it was about the decline of the aerospace industry in California and how it affected the family of one engineer. This attracted me first of all because my lifetime dream had always been to work in aerospace, preferably in California. The second reason was that I had never achieved this dream and I wanted some indication that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be- sour grapes on my part. I came away with conflicted opinions. Deep down I didn't want that "Blue Sky Dream" to be over, to be less than my dream. I recognized my own early upbringing in the tale- the worship of Von Braun, the Chesley Bonestell art, the model planes, Tom Swift books, the electronic kits and erector sets, Lost in Space- all of it. Yet, the overall experience was not exactly nostalgia, or if it was, it was a bitter nostalgia.

The author does an extremely good job of capturing the feelings of the time. I knew exactly what he was talking about. The experiences with the wide open, empty world of the new subdivision was mine (though ours was in a former cornfield and not an orchard.) Also, when things began to turn sour and he realized that paradise wasn't all it was cracked up to be I knew exactly what he was describing. However, perhaps because I'm a little older I also identified with his engineer father. While I never made it into aerospace I did make it into less glamorous engineering projects in equally less glamorous surroundings. You see, the rust belt experience is in many ways similar to that of the blue sky belt- but it hit us earlier and harder. My parents lost that suburban ranch. There were no huge government interventions to buy us time; in fact the government siphoned resources out of the rust belt to build the blue sky belt- continously. To be fair, the author does point this out.

I found the book on the whole to be satisfying- if not optimistic. I recognized the ring of truth here. I also recognized the problems that he was describing, especially the sell-out of engineers and workers by a management with no drive or imagination. He is correct in why there was no peace dividend and no retooling of industry into useful peacetime production. It never happened. Moreover, we are now all freelancers with no security, no benefits, no guidance, and no inspiration.

The book is not totally without hope however. The deep, almost mystic, faith of the author's mother speaks to that. That's the remarkable thing about my experience reading this book, for I saw myself in the experiences and attitudes of the father, the son, and the mother at different stages of my own life. Unlike the author I do not see the inherent incompatibility of science on the one hand and mystic faith on the other. You just have to decide what represents a higher reality, and what represents a lower, you just have to get your priorities straight. Maybe one day the whole country will get its priorities straight too.

Rating:
Summary: A similar life
Review: While my dad worked in a steel mill in western Pa. this is my story too. It is the story of growing up, Catholic, in the 60's & 70's in a small town. The Lost in Space chapter is fun, since I collect LIS toys now.The author was shooting higher than this, but it hit me emotionally at a lower level. I enjoyed the book, and have re-read it many times.

Rating:
Summary: A similar life
Review: While my dad worked in a steel mill in western Pa. this is my story too. It is the story of growing up, Catholic, in the 60's & 70's in a small town. The Lost in Space chapter is fun, since I collect LIS toys now.The author was shooting higher than this, but it hit me emotionally at a lower level. I enjoyed the book, and have re-read it many times.