ultimate craphound score gemini space

The Ultimate Craphound Score: Gemini Space Suit

I've spent a good-sized chunk of my life rooting around in thrift

stores, antique malls, crusty used bookstores, old record stores, and

anywhere else where the discarded orphans of American consumer culture

shuffle off to die. Although I've had my moments of glory, I am but a

piker in comparison to some.

My good pal Mr. Jalopy, now this is a craphound. The man has

dedication, perseverance, and most importantly, The Eye. Many times I

have been standing right next to the man, quietly surveying the very

same three-legged card tables full of trash, only to see him reach out

and pick up some gem that my feeble unknowing orbs had just passed

over moments before. The man has The Eye, like I said.

The Eye just knows. I have tried over the years to fill my head with

all sorts of useless information about comic books, old LPs, horsehide

motorcycle jackets, pinball machines, hot rods, antique tools, you

name it. When Mr. J finds something good, I can usually tell him where

it came from and a brief history of the town in which it was first

manufactured. But he is the guy who gets to take it home, all because

of that damned EYE.

This story isn't about Mr. Jalopy, though. It's about another fella,

the man who just rode into town, rode in to steal the Craphound Crown.

(It's a thing of true seedy glamour, the Crown, encrusted with aggies

and "Dewey For President" buttons, lined with Pendelton shirt plaid,

with a Roy Rogers tin star on top.)

See, this guy did something most of us could only dream of doing. He

walked into a dingy antique mall in Kansas one day, and walked out

with a real honest-to-gosh piece of American history.

This is a space suit from the Gemini program, the second stage of

NASA's mission to conquer space. How it ended up in a Kansas junk

store is another story, one that our hero pieced together afterwards.

It is most definitely the real deal, a suit that never went into

space, but was used for high-altitude pressure tests during the Gemini

program. There were around thirty of these suits made, and this is the

only one that wasn't destroyed or put in a museum somewhere.

To be in the presence of this artifact is thrilling. It's like seeing

Lincoln's stovepipe hat, except Lincoln's hat was never worn by a

freakin' ASTRONAUT.

One thing that struck me was the total insanity that this artifact

represents. When they decided to go into space, there were no

guidebooks, no instructions, no Google. All they had were a handful of

captured German scientists, good old American bullheaded optimism, and

a tiny Sputnik circling above us, laughing. You couldn't go down to

the spacesuit store and order up a 44 Large. You had to make it from

scratch, just like the rockets and capsules and computers and

EVERYTHING ELSE. Everything.

Our hero the craphound explained that NASA contracted a corset company

to construct these suits. Look at those hose connectors. Some

machinist with a security clearance whittled those things out of solid

blocks of aluminum. He couldn't screw up, either, or some former test