The peculiar looking building is the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio (Wapakoneta is Neil’s home town). I took this photo on the night of July 20, 1981, the 12th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. While the building is very interesting, the museum inside is incredibly depressing. The greatest triumph of human civilization has been turned into something dead and ancient with which to bore school children. The future has been turned into something that happened to somebody else a long time ago.

It is located right alongside Interstate 75, making it a handy location for a sacrificial stop to placate the gods of the Wapakoneta Triangle. When I lived in the midwest I drove down I-75 rather often. My friends and I found it impossible to drive through Wapakoneta without stopping. If we didn’t stop on purpose, somewhere in the vicinity of Wapakoneta the fates would force an engine breakdown, flat tire, empty gas tank, sick passenger, speed trap, or some similar disaster. It became common knowledge in our crowd that it was far easier just to exit and look at the museum for a while.

This is oldest photograph of mine that exists in digital form. Taken with a Minolta XG-M and the 50mm f1.7 lens on Ektachrome 400, scanned on a Polaroid SprintScan 35+, then cleaned up, very slightly color corrected, and cropped in Photoshop 7.