Space race flashback

While tooling around the 'net I came across this site that sells Space Food Sticks. Space Sticks! I used to eat them as after-school snacks at my friend Julie's house, right before we'd tune into the five p.m. rerun of Star Trek.* My brother John was a nut for the space program in the early 70s and my mom may have bought the occasional package of Space Sticks as a treat for him; I seem to recall dimly their rare presence in our house. One thing we always had in the cupboard, however, was Tang. If you've never drunk this stuff... well, it's hard to describe how nasty it tastes. It looks kind of like orange juice when it's mixed with water, and I can't tell you how many times I tipped a glassful of the stuff down my throat thinking it was OJ only to be severely disappointed. John professed to love Tang, but I think he just liked the fact that astronauts drank it.

*I always found ST to be a wee bit dull; we'd watch it because that was what Julie wanted to watch and it was her house and what was I gonna do about it? We'd often sit down in front of the TV a few minutes before ST began, and we'd catch the last few minutes of the Dark Shadows rerun Julie's older sister Amy was watching. Dark Shadows always seemed far more exciting to me than Star Trek. Exciting and sort of forbidden! I developed quite a fondness for the supernatural during my teens, becoming a completely different sort of dork than the Star Trek dorks.