The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 74

E2 THE MORNING CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 10, 1994 Dave Barry Miss Manners Forget the shower for mother Springsteen hits Rock Bottom By JUDITH MARTIN DEAR MISS MANNERS Would it be appropriate for me to have a "personal shower" for my mom (who is 75) in connection with the 50th wedding anniversary party sounded fine to me. Was I rude? I hate to discourage people who address you politely and cheerfully, even if it's a formula that their bosses tell them to use. GENTLE READER Then stop doing so. Miss Manners would sup-" port you if these people were being really cheeky, but they're not even though she does admit that their delivery sounds a trifle overdone. But why should one quibble over this? Too much cheerfulness on the part of service people is not a major problem in modern daily life.

Miss Manners is afraid that the confusion is yours; and it comes from mistaking a convention for a conversation opener. Conventions whether dictated by bosses or just by bossy old etiquette require acknowledgment but not ex-' planations. "How are you?" from just about anyone but your mother or your doctor, is more of a greeting than a question. (By comparison, "How do you do?" isn't a question at all, and requires the response, "How do you do?" and not any form of "Fine, thank A pleasant nod, and the word "Hello," followed by "I'd like to would serve to acknowledge a courtesy courteously without either slowing you down, or giving away the true state of your health or happiness. Address your etiquette questions to Miss Manners, in care of The Morning Call, Box 1260, Allentown, Pa.

18105. muttering his lines over and over to himself. So when we get to the end of the first verse, we stop, and everybody turns expectantly to Roy, waiting for him to say "I LOVE you," and Roy, frowning with deep concentration, inevitably says: "You MOVE me." Our other big musical weapon on "Wild Thing" is Joel Selvin, a writer and rock critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, who plays a flute solo, using a plastic flute that looks like the kind you get from gum ball machines, only cheaper. Joel, like most of your top international flute players, learned this solo by watching an instructional videotape at home. The problem is, when he gets on stage with the band, he tends to get nervous and blow REALLY HARD, so that instead of notes, the flute emits a series of extremely high-pitched squeaks, like a gerbil that fell into a ffench-fry machine.

Sometimes Joel's entire solo is above the range of human hearing. He'll be wailing away, his face red, his fingers moving in the manner prescribed by the videotape, and it LOOKS really dramatic, but nobody can hear anything. Meanwhile, for hundreds of miles around, dogs are jerking their heads up and thinking: "Hey! Somebody's playing 'Wild I play lead guitar in this band. My sole musical qualification is that I am slightly more experienced than the guy who plays rhythm guitar, Stephen King, well-known author of children's books Little Engine That Could Sneak Into Your Room At Night And Eat Your In May the Rock Bottom Remainders performed at a party in Los Angeles at the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association. It went very well.

The audience members were receptive, by which I mean they had been drinking. Some people got so receptive that they demanded an encore, expertise to know how to diplomatically tell the women in my life namely my wife, my step-daughters, my favorite aunt and my granddaughters that I love them all. GENTLE READER Miss Manners doesn't know how you define social graces, but she finds you charming. Anyway, telling people you love them does not require diplomacy. You just blurt it out.

It's telling them just about anything else that requires DEAR MISS MANNERS There seems to be a new trend in stores and restaurants, where the person who waits on me begins by saying, "HI! How are YOU today?" and waits for me to reply. This happened to me four times last weekend, in small stores and informal restaurants, each time the greeter was very young. I can't explain why, but I don't like this, and I reacted not by saying, "FINE! And how are YOU?" or even "Hi," or "Hello," but by placing my order or saying, "I'd like to take this, please." I spoke politely, but I could tell by these kids' faces that they were taken aback and perhaps thought I was rude. So does a friend of mine. When I happened to complain about the service in our favorite department store, particularly about the way the salesclerks didn't make eye contact or greet us, this friend asked me why I had ignored our waiter's greeting how are WE I tried to explain that I didn't like having to reply, and felt that the waiter should get right to the business of taking my order, but I wasn't able to express this without sounding snobbish, or like someone always in a hurry.

I'm neither. I just remember when people who waited on you said, "Hello, may I help you?" (or "May I take your which so we decided to play "Gloria," which we like because it's even simpler to play than "Louie Louie." So we went back on stage, and I picked up one of the two guitars I'd been using, and just as we were about to start, Stephen King tapped me on the shoulder and said, "We have a special guest." I turned around, and there was Bruce Springsteen. I still don't know how he came to be at this convention; I don't believe he's a bookseller. All I know is, he was picking up the other guitar. My guitar.

"Bruce," I said to him. "Do you know the guitar part to This is like asking James Mich-ener if he knows how to write his name. "I think so," he said. So we played "Gloria," and I say in all modesty that it was the best version of that song ever played in the history of the world, going back thousands of years. I would shout, and the band, including Bruce Springsteen, would respond and the crowd would scream as only truly receptive booksellers can scream.

I could have died happy right then. Anyway, now I'm back in my of-" fice, tapping at my computer, being a columnist again. But from time to time my mind drifts back to that night, remembering how it sounded. I haven't polled the other members of the Remainders, but I think we would definitely let Bruce join the band, if he wrote a book. I would even let him play lead guitar.

Dave Barry is a humor columnist for The Miami Herald. Bruce Springsteen played my guitar. I am not making this up. It was the high point of my musical life. It was even better than the time when, for a few minutes, I was in the same airport as Ray Charles.

I am never going to wash my guitar again. (Not that I ever did before.) I should explain that I belong to a band called the Rock Bottom Remainders. It consists mostly of writers. The original concept was that people who spend all their time writing would enjoy a chance to express their musical talent. The flaw here is that most of us don't have any musical talent.

So we compensate by playing amplified instruments loud enough to affect the weather. Also we stick to songs that are so well known that even when WE play them, people sometimes recognize them. For example, we play "Louie Louie," an extremely well-known song. You know how scientists have been trying fruitlessly for years to contact alien beings by broadcasting radio signals to outer space? Well, I think they should broadcast "Louie Louie." For a change of pace, the Rock Bottom Remainders also play "Wild Thing," a song performed in a style known to classical musicians as "molto accelerando con carne," which means "basically the same as 'Louie We employ two powerful musical weapons when we perform this song. One is Roy Blount a great humor writer who has the raw natural musical talent of a soldering iron.

We give Roy two vocal solos in "Wild Thing." At the end of the first verse, the band pauses dramatically, and Roy is supposed to say, "I LOVE at the end' of the second verse, he's supposed to say, "You MOVE me." These two lines are Roy's sole musical responsibility for the entire night, and he takes it seriously, pacing around before the performance, I planning for my parents? I would invite her sisters, nieces and lady friends. However, I don't want to get laughed at, or have someone tell me this idea was socially unacceptable. I thought it would be a touching gesture, and fun as well. GENTLE READER Miss Manners regrets to tell you that a bridal shower for a lady who has been married for 50 years is not touching. Just about any other generous thought a daughter has on behalf of her mother is, but this isn't.

Now, now, please don't take this unkindly. Miss Manners believes that you meant it to be touching. Unfortunately, the form you suggest amounts to putting the touch on others. Showers were intended to outfit those starting on a new venture in life, and, because they involve presents, they should never be given by relatives of the guest of honor. What you are suggesting that you provide a trousseau for a lady who would have been through many wardrobes by now is a satire of a shower.

Now there's an idea you might be able to use. Far from avoiding being laughed at, you could give it for that very purpose, if you were sure enough of everyone your mother, and each of the guests to know that they would find it funny. DEAR MISS MANNERS I freely admit that I am a knuckle-dragging motorcycle rider who is lacking in social graces. I lack the Auxiliary correction In a story on Women's Auxiliary to the Lehigh County Medical Society that appeared in Accent last Sunday, Dr. Emma Bausch was misidentified as the daughter of Dr.

Frederick Bausch and his wife Mabel. She is their daughter-in-law and wife of Dr. Richard Bausch. A look at Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins Apollo 11 crew still shuns fame As for the fab three, they left NASA within two years of their flight. By 1971, Armstrong was at the University of Cincinnati, teaching and trying desperately to keep a low profile.

Aldrin was back in active Air Force duty, struggling with mental depression and alcoholism. Collins was at the State Department and then the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, ready to punch out the next guy who asked, "What was it really like up there?" "I have HAD IT with the same question over and over again," Collins wrote in his 1974 autobiography "Carrying the Fire." "It is the curse of flying in space, this business of answering the same question 1 million times. There should be a statute of limitations on it." ficult, in fact, for Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, who were only in their 30s when they blasted into frenzied fame 25 years ago. None ever flew in space again. As the moon men saw it, they were just guys doing their jobs.

As everyone else saw it, they were heroes and celebrities. Only three of the 12 ultimate moonwalkers returned to space. "Gee-whiz, we get to be explorers and isn't that wonderful, and 1 then you have to come back and pick up the garbage. Yeah, it has some re-entry problems there," says Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell, who went from moon travel to the study of psychic phenomena. "There is a big letdown afterward and I think some folks have lived with it longer than others," says Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, whose business investments made him a millionaire "It's tough to do something so unique and in a sense out of this world and then come back to normal." Most of the moonwalkers ended up in business or space consulting.

A few showed up in TV commercials. One became a painter, another a U.S. senator. Two turned to God. One stayed at NASA.

One died. By MARCIA DUNN Of The Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. "And now it begins." None of the three Apollo 11 astronauts can remember who said it first inside the quarantine trailer aboard the USS Hornet after splashdown. But how true it was. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were complete-' ly unprepared for what awaited them on Earth after the first moon-landing mission in July 1969.

Reporters camped in their yards, chasing them through town. Crowds surged toward them on tours. Kings, queens and movie stars expected a visit and witty words. Speeches demanded. Opinions wanted.

Autographs sought. "It's certainly the part that we're least prepared to handle," Armstrong acknowledged a few weeks after returning to Earth, back in the days when he gave news conferences, albeit not by choice. And so it went, and so it goes. "I wouldn't trade that Apollo 11 for anything. That doesn't mean it's been easy," Aldrin says today.

Afterlife has been downright dif The Associated Press Here's look at the three men who flew on Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong was the first man to the walk on the moon but the least inclined to talk about it. A quarter-century hasn't changed that. Such reticence merely reinforces the mystery surrounding this 63-year-old engineer and former test pilot who by skill, hard work and chance became the first human to set foot on another world! Armstrong was superbly qualified for the job: fighter pilot in Korea, test pilot, one of only two civilians selected for the second astronaut group in 1962, Gemini 8 command pilot, backup commander of Apollo 8 and, finally, commander of Apollo 11. What's more, he'd proven his mettle again and again. He had to gain control of his tumbling Gemini 8 spacecraft in 1966 and bring it down early, and he ejected from a lunar-lander training device in 1968 just before it crashed in flames in Houston.

Armstrong left NASA two years after Apollo 11 and taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He's been in business in Lebanon, Ohio quietly, of course ever since. er and author, Aldrin, 64, lives with his third wife, Lois, in Laguna Beach, Calif. Michael Collins was "The Forgotten Man" during the Apollo 11 lunar landing: While two others were walking on the moon's dusty surface, he was the one circling overhead. He'd just as soon be forgotten now, too.

Like Neil Armstrong, the 63-year-old Collins is turning down interview requests and anniversary-celebration invitations. What he wants to say, he says in his space books. He's working on No. 5. The Air Force officer and former test pilot flew on Gemini 10 in 1966, three years after being accepted into the third astronaut group.

He was supposed to be command module pilot of Apollo 8, the first manned flight to circle the moon, but was bumped because of a bone spur in his neck. Surgery corrected the problem. Collins left NASA six months after the flight. He briefly served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and was the creative force behind the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum and its first director. He worked in business before retiring with his wife of 37 years, Pat, to homes in Cape Hatteras, N.C., and Marco Island, Fla.

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon. But, hey, he was the first to go to the bath-. room there. He also was the first to change his name after returning home and the first to fly in space with Homer Simpson. Aldrin told about the call of nature in his 1973 autobiography.

As for the second first, Aldrin legally changed his first name to Buzz in the 1970s after his father died. He'd been born Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. As for the most recent first, Aldrin jumped at the chance to portray himself in an episode of the TV program "The Simpsons" earlier this year. Aldrin had a long list of accomplishments by the time NASA chose him for the third astronaut group in 1963: third in his class at West Point, fighter pilot in Korea, Air Force officer, Ph.D.

in astronautics. He flew on Gemini .12 in 1966 and was on the backup crew for Apollo 8. Then came Apollo 11. Aldrin spent years struggling with mental depression and alcoholism after Apollo 11. He left NASA in 1971 and became commandant of the test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California, but soon retired from that.

Now a space consultant, promot Fast-forward to 1994, with no statute in sight. Armstrong, no longer a professor, still is hiding out in Ohio; his office refuses to say what he does. Aldrin hasn't had a drink in more than 15 years, and is pushing space and Aldrin. Collins is writing, fishing and avoiding all questions just in case somebody asks what it was like up there. MOON Continued From Page E1 celebrate the past and neglect the future?" Armstrong and Michael Collins, who watched over the command ship Columbia in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon, would love a moratorium.

They are avoiding reporters and ceremonies, leaving Aldrin the lone participant in the grand adventure to speak for Apollo 1 1 in this silver anniversary year. Armstrong, Apollo 11 's commander, is 63 and a businessman in Lebanon, Ohio, 80 miles from the farm where he was bora His involvement in space matters has been minimal since Apollo. His most visible role was as vice chairman of the presidential commission that investigated the Chal- lenger accident. Collins, 63, is writing his fifth space book. An avid fisherman, he splits his time between Cape Hatteras, 5.C., and Marco Island, Fla.

Aldrin understands his crewmates' reticence. "We were not chosen in that profession for our abilities to satisfy the emotional queries of the public," says Aldrin, 64, a space promoter-consultant-author living in Laguna Beach, Calif. Just about everybody Aldrin meets thirtysomethings and up, that is feels compelled to tell him where they were at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on the Sunday the Eagle landed. "Do I really care where they were?" asks Aldrin.

"Of course I do because I realize they're telling me something that is extremely important to them that happened in their life. Not in my life, in their life, and it's so widespread that I've begun to appreciate that what happened on July 20, 1969, was not at the moon, but it was back here." What happened was incredible, both here and there. For eight precious days from the Saturn 5 rocket launch on July 16 to Armstrong's "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on July 20 to splashdown back on Earth on July 24 people just about everywhere cheered and hoped and prayed as one. Then-President Richard Nixon exulted that it was "the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation." Nixon later wrote that it was the most exciting event of the first year of his presidency. Chappaquiddick, Vietnam, the Middle East, campus and racial unrest, all that briefly was forgotten as a record 500 million television viewers watched Armstrong lift his left foot off the last ladder rung and lower it onto the lunar soil.

The time was 10:56 p.m. EDT. Aldrin emerged minutes later. Earthlings were mesmerized by the two ghostly images bouncing around in one-sixth gravity, gathering rocks and erecting and saluting a U.S. flag.

The astronauts accented America's space victory by unveiling on the moon a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind." Even those in Mission Control were spellbound during those two hours or so that Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. "I almost thought it was animation, it seemed so unreal," recalls Apollo 12's Alan Bean, who was up there prancing four months later. For the Apollo 11 astronauts, what happened in their absence was just as amazing.

After seeing videos of the celebrations, Aldrin told Armstrong, "Hey, Neil, we missed the whole thing." "We missed it," Aldrin says. "We did not share in the enthusiasm, the happiness, the glory that was shared back here and, I mean, that's heavy. That's important. That's meaningful, and I'm not sure I really understand that nor does anybody all that much." President John F. Kennedy started America on its moon journey on May 25, 1961, when he issued this challenge: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." It was an audacious move, considering that the United States had only 15 minutes total human space flight experience at that point.

But Kennedy was smarting from a long series of second-place finishes to the Soviets. They were the first to launch a satellite, the first to put a human into orbit. The nation was awed. The space agency was incredulous. Send men to the moon? After being beaten into space by the Soviets? The United States so far had only managed to send Alan Shepard on a 15minute flight into space.

It took 420,000 workers, $24 billion and 21 manned space flights to get those first footsteps on the moon six Mercury, 10 Gemini, five Apollo. It took seven astronauts' lives, three snuffed out in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire and four in plane crashes. It took eight years. "Eight years and we started from scratch," boasts Apollo 10 commander Thomas Stafford, who flew one of the rehearsal missions for the moon landing, coming within 50,000 feet of the moon's surface. Armstrong and Aldrin were only the first to leave their imprints on the moon's dusty surface.

Ten others followed; Apollo 12's Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean, out there in the future we can all get our arms around." To the men who flew to the moon, the future is there and on Mars. The space agency figures it would cost more than $400 billion to return to the moon and to go to Mars. NASA newcomer Goldin champion of "faster, better, cheaper" says those expeditions could and should be done for $25 billion to $50 billion maximum. In eight years. Tops.

The few at NASA who are working on such matters, on a shoestring budget or none, contend billions of dollars could be saved by making rocket fuel on Mars, out of Martian resources, rather than lugging it there for the return trip. What worries them are the non-presence of the more elusive elements needed for outer-space travel, the kinds of things that prodded Apollo like a forceful, visionary president, a Cold War, a threatening race to space. "Clearly, an expensive and necessarily risky human space program would have to be driven by something more than science, especially because robots could do so well," says astronomer Carl Sagan. Apollo 15 commander David Scott admits that much of what he did on the moon could have been done by a robot, allowing him to do that much more. He's pushing for robotic exploration of the planets, so that when humans finally do get there in 25 years, 50 years, whenever they'll be more productive.

"The technology will improve, the cost will get less, the reasons for going will become clearer," Sagan says. "The only question is when will it happen and which nation or nations will go. "Unless we destroy ourselves, of course we're going to the planets. In that sense, July 20, 1969. was a watershed for the human species." In tomorrow 's A M.

Magazine: America 's first astrpnaut in space, Alan Shepard, on his new book. "Moon Shot Apollo 14's Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 15's David Scott and James Irwin, Apollo 16's John Young and Charles Duke, Apollo 17's Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt. Apollo 13's James Lovell and Fred Haise missed out because of a ruptured oxygen tank. Stafford compares all this to 10 years, $10 billion and counting for a space station that's still on the drawing board. No longer space rivals, the United States hopes Russian involvement will speed things up and drive U.S.

costs down. And instead of the pulse-pounding launches of the powerful moon shots, there are the relatively tame space shuttles that have flown 60-plus times at up to $1 billion a pop. Only three have attracted as much attention as the moon shots did: the first shuttle flight in 1981, the Challenger explosion in 1986 that killed all seven astronauts aboard, and the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission last December. "We don't know beans," says Apollo 16 commander John Young, the only moon man still working for NASA "We're letting ourselves down and we're letting future generations down, that's what we're doing." The other moon men are similarly disenchanted. "The moon looks farther away now," Bean says sadly.

"Then we could look at the moon and all this stuff was going on. When! look at the moon now, we're not doing any of those things." "I am unhappy and I haven't been happy for 25 years," says Apollo 17 moonwalk-er Schmitt. a former U.S. senator. "It's just that I continue to see no coherent policy from this administration or any other administration relative to our long-term future in space it's bipartisan." "We don't have a space program today.

We've got a series of space events." frets Apollo ITs Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, on Dec. 14, 1972. "We need a goal.