The Mars Effect (Johannesburg, South Africa) When I was eleven, in the hot Alabama summers, I would wake up before dawn – around 5 or 6 am – and take my telescope to the driveway. I was always driven by the latest article in my child astronomy magazine, Odyssey, to point to a certain section of the sky I was searching for Mars. I would stare at the Viking I and Viking II photographs in my World Book Encyclopedia magazine for hours. I would re-draw them in my sketch pad. I redrew them so much my Crayola Crayon Box would run out of blue and orange crayons before all the others – because I was always coloring the blue sky of the Martian atmosphere and the desolation of the Martian surface. I read books about Mars and had the Tallapoosa county book mobile stop by my house every week to bring me the latest Mars or space exploration book. From the nearby Pick-A-Flick, I rented OJ Simpson in the movie “Capricorn One” at least a dozen times about a faked landing on Mars. One time I watched it so much – that my VCR ate the tape. I just knew that it would be me. I knew I would be the first person from Earth to land on Mars. I practiced Mars landings outside in my yard – climbing down from my spacecraft (a big oak tree) just beside Sunny Level Cut-Off Road in Alexander City, Alabama. Sometimes cars passing would honk their horn at me to encourage me. I constantly worked on the words I would say to be televised to the world as Neil Armstrong did when he made his infamous speech upon touching the surface of the moon, “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I remember one of my iterations: “Men dreamed of flying, they did. Men dreamed of space, they explored. Men dreamed of touching the surface of another home, and today this man has.” The planet regardless of the magnification I placed into the socket of my telescope – it constantly looked like a red dot. Sometimes, depending on how hot and humid those
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