Thursday, November 25, 1999
Mooning Coleman
Lunar rock waltzes its way across Texas
By Bill Whitaker
Area restaurants are sometimes given to touting the celebrities
that dine in their establishments.
That being the case, I wonder if the Cold Water Cattle Company
down in Coleman will begin advertising that the Man in the Moon
stopped by their place. Of course, some of the regular clientele
and hired help may not yet be aware of it.
Just the same, a piece of the lunar surface was reportedly
in the steak house this month, the result of Grace Museum curator
Jana Hallmark Smith and husband Jay stopping at the popular eating
place while transporting a moon rock from NASA’s Johnson
Space Center to the museum in Abilene.
The 3.9 billion-year-old rock is being exhibited at the Grace
on occasion of the much-touted exhibit of space art by Robert
McCall. While the wondrous McCall exhibit is regarded by many
as an artful coup, museum officials had to clear far more hurdles
to obtain the lunar sample, including months of paperwork, coupled
with assurances about security.
Among those assurances: Besides locking the moon rock in its
own NASA container and then in the museum’s own vault at
the end of each day during the four-month exhibition, museum officials
had to swear on a stack of Bibles they would not tarry while driving
the rock to Abilene. That ruled out stopping off in, say, Austin
for a wild night on Sixth Street.
“There’s a finite number of lunar samples,”
Grace Museum executive director Judith Godfrey explained of all
the precautions surrounding NASA’s loan of the moon rock.
“NASA doesn’t have any plans to go back, so whatever
rocks they have are pretty much it.”
Which meant Jana had to guard the rock with her life while
transporting it to Abilene for the show.
“It basically had to go from NASA’s hands into our
vault,” Judith said. “They did everything but handcuff
it to her wrist.”
Not green cheese
Although Jana, 43, was required to keep the container with
the moon rock in her lap for the long drive back, she at least
had human company for the trip. Husband Jay eagerly volunteered
to motor her and the moon rock back to Abilene.
“He was so excited,” Jana said. “He considered
it an awesome honor. That’s what he said. To get to go to
NASA, where security is so tight anyway, and to be a courier of
a moon rock was too much. He’s into the space stuff more
than me. I was excited, of course, because it’s part of a
cool exhibit.
“But he was excited because he’d been entrusted with
a piece of the moon, and that’s pretty awesome.”
Granted, the couple didn’t make it to Abilene without
a couple of stops. However, the rock, residing in its formidable,
silver-hued, NASA-tough case, had to remain in Jana’s presence
the whole time, including during a stop at a Black-Eyed Pea Restaurant
in Houston and then, closer to home, during a stop at the Cold
Water Cattle Company in Coleman.
“The Black-Eyed Pea is right by NASA, so they didn’t
really pay any attention to us,” Jana said. “I think
they’d seen people with moon cases like that before in their
restaurant. But in Coleman, it was a pretty strange sight when
we walked in with this silver case. Nobody asked about it —
they were too polite — but they were watching us pretty closely.”
What goes there?
Among those eyeing Jana and Jay was a local lawman.
“I guess he was the sheriff and, well, he looked at us
real weird when we walked in carrying that moon case,” Jana
recalled. “I was just hoping he’d stop us and insist
on searching us so I could open it up and take the moon rock out
right there at this Coleman steak house!”
Days later, when proprietor Carolyn Jackson learned a piece
of the moon had been inside her restaurant, she expressed a little
of the same sentiment Jay showed earlier.
“How neat,” Carolyn said. “No one told us. We
would’ve all had a fit if we’d known there was a moon
rock around here. We would’ve all wanted to see it!”
Other than those stops, Jana and Jay’s trip back to Abilene
was largely uneventful. Jana even took care not to ask her husband
to make the usual number of bathroom stops for her.
“Let’s just say I didn’t drink as many Cokes
on the way back. I kind of spaced them out.”
Jana’s efforts have been rewarded. In the days leading
up to Thanksgiving weekend, the museum has been busy with student
tours, many youngsters pausing to gawk at the lunar sample, encased
in a solid, pyramid-shaped block of see-through acrylic.
Of course, museum docents still have their work cut out for
them, as I realized Tuesday.
That’s when one student, eyeballing the encased moon rock
and considering the relative weightlessness astronauts experienced
on the lunar surface, asked: “Does it float?”
Bill Whitaker, who understands Rocket Oldsmobile Cadillac
Nissan is sponsoring the moon rock’s visit, can be reached
at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com.
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Copyright ©1999, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews
/ E.W. Scripps. Publications
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