Member-only story
We Didn’t Need a Meade
A Personal Essay about a Telescope
First of all, let me make it quite clear that I knew nothing about telescopes thirty years ago. I still don’t today. Purchasing a telescope was something I never would have done.
But…
One day as we were walking through the mall, three young kids in tow, we ventured into a camera store “just to look.” The kids were all wound up that day and would not settle down. (I must have fed them too much sugar.) The store was Ritz Camera at Glenbrook Mall in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We knew we couldn’t afford to buy anything but wanted to look around. The next thing I heard was a loud “crash!” When you are in a semi-expensive store with three wound up kids, the last thing you want to hear is a “crash.”
Sure enough, they had knocked over a telescope. But not just any telescope, it was an expensive telescope. My stomach almost threw up, my blood pressure shot sky high and I think I felt faint. I had visions of hundreds of dollars floating in my head. The store attendant did not even touch the telescope or look at it, she just immediately got on the telephone and called the manager. Without even checking it out, the manager said we had to purchase it. We could see that there was one tiny plastic piece broken, but hey, that could be superglued right? The manager said the lenses inside were…
