Overcoming limitations of depression-era circumstances, a boy from rural Alabama moves from newspaper reporting to take a ringside role in the staging of the finest hour of American technology--the race to beat the Soviets to the moon. While telling the evolving U. S. space story, Jones also tells the adventures of an uncommon moonlighting role, the upbringing of three sons in an unaccustomed realm of horticulture, of demanding church leadership functions, of pursuing the art of fading Sacred Harp folk music, of allegiance to generations-old family traditions of hunting and camping...in all, an improbable mixture of the spatial and earthly in a notable memoir.