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.
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