The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 5

5 A Wednesday, July 16, 1969 A Morning In Lives Of Four Early Risers rlaniw Srnttnrl Clamhatf OA Mill reorders forms, makes certain post office vehicles are in running condition. "All kinds of people get angry if the trucks don't work." 1:32 A.M.: Engines running. 7.6 million pounds of push to the moon. The day for astronauts begins. 1:32 A.M.: "I've got to handle these little problems that come up the public calls, I explain things, I keep them happy, I hope," says Hollis.

On one morning a postal clerk and astronauts wake up early. The civil servant says something about loneliness and space. "Riding the bicycle to work at 5 a.m. it's so quiet it must be the same way in space. I think about afl the world and the universe.

"I won't go to the moon. But these men will. Maybe they'll feel there's something better than this world of ours. 1 "For once a man will be standing in a place where there is no war, no i By DON MEIT1N Wednesday. Moon launch.

4 A.M.: Ben Hollis, 45, hears his 1 alarm clock. 4 A.M.: Technicians at Pad A at jthe Kennedy Space Center finish loading the Saturn rocket with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The job is almost finished. Senior technicians look at gauges. 4:15 A.M.: Hollis Is out of bed.

Makes coffee and the smell drifts through the house as his wife sleeps. There is no noise in house. It is 'quiet outside. "Coffee and a cigarette. That's it," says Hollis.

4:40 A.M.: Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center look up at the Saturn and Apollo mooncraft. Launch control center talks to them and says the loading is fine. "Good "job," a voice rumbles over the public address system. 4:43 A.M.: Ben Hollis dresses swiftly. No problem.

He always carefully lays out his clothes the night before. 4:45 A.M.: The men in white coveralls pull the space suits out of special lockers. Each suit has a name Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin. 4:50 A.M.: Hollis walks out or his house in the still morning at 321 Woodland Cocoa Beach. Swings onto a bicycle and pumps three blocks to the post office.

4:55 A.M.: The doctors look at the clock. "Time for wake up," somebody says. Some more time flashes and then the astronauts have to get up to go to the moon. 5 A.M.: At the post office Ben Hollis has finished his first duties as a civil servant. The rear door, the loading ramp, is unlocked.

"It's pretty dark where you come up to the building," says Hollis. "The isolation at that hour, you wonder, you could get clobbered." 5:15 Doctors knock on three doors. Astronauts wake up, get up. "You've got something to do this morning." Little jokes. 5:25 A.M.: Ben Hollis has something going.

He is just about finished now. He has picked up the mail from the outside box, the inside mail chute and the airmail chute. Now he has to make coffee. "The carriers will kill him if he ffoesn't," says another man. 5:45 A.M.: Armstrong, "Collins, Aldrin meet the doctors.

A last physical examination. The doctors know. "Good shape," says someone. 5:45 A.M.: Hollis maybe thinks about st opping smoking. His cigarette sometimes tastes lousy as he starts sorting Incoming mail.

Letters from North Dakota. Europe. Military post office numbers, which only mean Vietnam. He's got to put them in the right dispatch bag or the right box. I A.M.: Steak and eggs.

Ail-American breakfast. A radio is on. Three astronauts hear a weather report from a local station that doesn't jive with the Kennedy Space Center report. There is another joke. 6:13 A.M.: No food for Ben Hollis yet.

He still sorts mail. "There's problems every day. The right number, but the wrong name. Or the right name but the wrong box number." 8 A.M.: The astronauts are in the command module. The 'escape system is armed.

Hundreds around the right pigeon holes the post office boxes. "There's a right way to do it, you learn," Hollis explains. The first batch of incoming airmail arrives. "Only about 200 pieces, but it's important. That's why it's early airmail," HoHis explains.

8:50 A.M.: Alone now, the astronauts. Their ride, the Saturn rocket, is primed. All the iron and supporting steel has been pulled away. As the sun backlights it, there's small chatter between the launch control center and three men facing the sky. 8:55 A.M.: Coffee break.

Three minutes for Ben Hollis and the carriers ready to deliver the mail. A.M.: Checks and double checks are over. The time is now for the astronauts. Neil Armstrong has a finger over one switch. If something goes wrong he flicks the tiny piece of polished steel and his spacecraft blasts away from the rocket.

If it goes the way it is supposed to, hovering aircraft will assist in plucking them from the ocean. 0:15 A.M.: "Now the problems really start," says Ben Hollis. A supply clerk in the post office BEN HOLLIS Post Office worker the world push certain buttons, say precise things, to prove communications are working. Hundreds of people in the humid morning go mentally through a safety check to make certain they would know what to do if something goes wrong. 8:10 A.M.: Squinting at some squiggly writing, Ben Hollis continues to put incoming mail into J- i' I Ik If t5 -ill HWi AVS 1 'CI i 520JWAJ Ul A1A WAITING FOR APOLLO LAUNCH Mr.

and Mrs. Stanley Estes, Chenoa, camp in stationwagon at Titusvllle Mac's Moon Shots Go Doivn Hatch Orlando Supplies Water For Use By Astronauts hate, no prejudices. "You know that's really something." It was one civil servant talking about other civil servants about a Wednesday morning. (Stnlinil Photof by Richinl willlm) ings from Kennedy Space Center. "You hear the rumble, open the door, go out and watch it and come back in to your drink." TV is there for viewing, too, if one can't be lured away from the bar.

"Our drink prices will remain the same," he said, pointing out that they won't be rocketed out of realm to take advantage of the increased business from visitors to the area. "A MARTINI will still be 90 cents, a beer, 50 cents." He went on to say that steady customers at the Surf "are sensible drinkers. They're busy people. It's just routine drinking with them, nothing wild about it." When McCormack, a family man and the grandfather of five, isn't setting them up a la Joe, he's at home at Satellite Beach. 1 (SantiiMf Phola by Richard Willlami) JOE McCORMACK 1 Setting them up at Surf vr ill I'V riii ill i till i a A I A a i IV tr TRAFFIC CONGESTION BUILDS Clogged intersection SR 520 and SR for the lunar module and 50 for the command module.

And they also prepare every other drop of water the crewmen will require, from their backpacks to their suits' cooling systems. "It's been the same as it always has been," Buck said Tuesday. "Except for one thing. The astronauts." THE ASTRONAUTS Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins have been "more evasive this time," he said. "In all of the other flights I've worked on (Apollo 7, 8, 9 and 10) we were able to talk with them before the flight.

"But this time they've been under such strict medical guidance we haven't been able to get near them." Moon Landing Depicted On Bronze Coin Numismatists, prepare to flip! Commemorative coins of the historic ApoUo 11 moon mission are being offered for sale for $1.50 each. The solid bronze medallion the size of a silver dollar, shows a scene of the first manned lunar landing with figures of the astronauts on the surface of the moon. The mother ship and the earth are in the background with the names Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin hovering in space between the two. WWT ENTERPRISES of City of Cape Canaveral has a supply of 30,000 souvenir coins which will be sold up and down the beaches today, prior to and during Apollo liftoff. J.

M. Price of WWT Enterprises says coins will also be available in Cocoa at Provost Equipment Company and Beasley Men's Store. Persons wishing to order medallions of ''mankind's greatest achievement" may do so through WWT Enterprises, P.O. Box 461, City of Cape Canaveral. By JEAN YOTHERS Stntintl staff i COCOA BEACH While the Apollo 11 astronauts shoo for the moon, bartenders in this swinging area expect to be kept busy pouring the shots fothe terrestrial bound merrymakers.

One of these is mixologist Joe "Mac" McCormack who has been setting them up from behind bar for 33 years. YOU MAY find McCormack behind the mahogany of the popular Surf Dining Room and Cocktail Lounge anytime from 10 a.m. when a customer might need a little eye opener to 2 a.m. when it's time for one for the road. McCormack has been mixing them at the Surf for the past four years.

Prior to that he was barkeep in Orlando at the Vintage Room of the San Juan Hotel for six years. He poured with a heavy hand at the Cactus Room for four years and at Phil Berger's for seven years. "SURE, THE management here has stocked up for this (moon shot)," he said, anticipating the avalanche of visitors who will want' to do a little elbow bending following the Apollo 11 blastoff, this morning. "We've stocked up on food and whisky to take care of the crowds. I imagine we'll have a real workout here." He's even serving special Apollolike cocktails for the occasion.

One, named the Apollo, consists of the Italian liqueur Galliano, vodka and lime juice on the rocks. It sells for $1.75. "More than three or four of them and you'll be on cloud nine," he laughed, "but they've been selling pretty good." Another liftoff drink, Lem, is a mixture of sabra vodka and menthe on the rocks. It goes down the hatch for $1.85. DESPITE THESE concoctions, the martini reigns supreme as the most popular cocktail at the Surf.

"Martinis are still the most popular here. We serve them with an in and outer," he said, explaining that he pours the vermouth into a jigger and then out again, replacing it with gin or vodka. "Yes, I've seen 'em all," he said matter-of-factly of the many launch- i By SKIP JOHNSON SintiMl StaH Water on the moon? Absolutely. 160 gallons of it. And every drop will come from Orlando, via Cocoa, via the Kennedy Space Center, via Apollo 11.

1 And the only difference in it and the water Orange and Brevard County housewives get when they turn on their kitchen faucets is that the water aboard Apollo 11 will be filtered and debacterialized. man in charge of preparing water for the moonbound crew is Al Buck of Titusville, who carries the tile of "Project Engineer, Environmental Health for Apollo Water." BUCK and his crew start with plain tap water, which originates in Orlando deep wells and is piped to. Brevard County and the spaceport. First, they particulate it that is, they count the number and determine the size of any solid particle in the water. These, they remove.

Then they remove any bacteria in the water before loading it aboard the spacecraft. "WE MAKE it superpure," Buck said. But, he added, the water tastes the same as the housewife's tap water. It's not even flat. Actually, Buck and his spaceage Waterboys will prepare 210 gallons of drinking water for the flight 160 (StntiMl Plw by Rklurd Williams) PASSING THE TIME Larry Little (with paper) and Charles Walker, Bedford, Ind.

Bihe Ride Ennio Ponte, 39-year-old Italian bike rider stopped off in Ocala this week en route from Houston, to Cape Kennedy. Members of Houston Fire Department sponsored Ponte, who covers about 160 miles a day with light weight bike. Ponte, who last year rode bike 1,300 miles to Mexico City with torch for Olympics, arrived in Cape Kennedy Tuesday and was made an honorary citizen of Florida by governor's proclamation. Bike ride from Houston to NASA headquarters at Cape Kennedy was done because of NASA ties between two places. (Sentinel Photo by Art Allen) Kirk Asks Moment Of Prayer He also issued a plea for safe driving in the Cape Kennedy area.

"Florida," he said, "is proud to be the jumping off spot for the moon. We do not want to mar this historic date with numerous accidents and fatalities. Traffic conditions for many miles around the launch area will be extremely heavy and, I urge our visitors and residents alike to drive By D. G. LAWRENCE Stntintl TaNahassM Buraag TALLAHASSEE Gov.

Claude Kirk asked all Floridians Tuesday to pause for a moment of prayer for the success of the moon mission, Kirk opened the cabinet meeting with a minute of silence for the astronauts. "I want us all to ask God that if it fails, or there is a mishap, that we will all remember that the mission is worth it.".