Moon over the racetrack

In 1965 while still in college, I took an entry-level position as a floor director at WLW-C TV in Columbus, Ohio. A program director is in the control room and directs everything, the audio, cameras, slides, etc. A floor director stands in the studio, off-camera, wears a headphone to listen to the director and relays his commands to the talent on the air. Commands such: stand-by, ten seconds, you're on the air, switching to that camera,

going to film, faster, slower, we are going to change to another camera, now change to this camera,thirty seconds to go, and variations of these signals depending on the program, the talent and the director.

Regularly I worked eight until noon, but Mike Leonard, the head of our group asked me to cover his work in the evening, this Thursday. A remote broadcast from Scioto Downs Racetrack. I had no objection. I could cover that for him. I'd never been to the race track, it sounded like fun. He said it was. Horse racing. I'd get paid over-time for the night so I said I'd do it.

He looked at his watch. "Listen, the TV crew has to be at the track before the crowd starts coming in, before nine we we can set up for the broadcast."
"What do I? ..."
He tapped my shoulder, "We don't have to do any thing, you don't, it's the engineers; they have to bring the camera and set everything up."
He told me there was nothing, we wait around to do the sports report with Dave Collins as a live segment from the racetrack during the eleven o’clock news.
"I've never been to the track, Whow do I get there?"
"Don't worry about it, you'll be going with the guys, just be here by seven."
I'd ride out with the crew. I just need to show up at the station by seven. The track was somewhere south of the city, less than an hour away.
I'd never seen a race track, I felt excited doing something different. Thursday I got to the station before seven, rode with Dave Collins, and Bob the director, the two engineers were in the back getting the equipment, they go in a van in a van. We left before seven and had an easy ride out to the track.
Either I didn't plan ahead or didn't have anything to plan with. My cash to play the horses amounted to six dollars that I had in my pocket. A cameraman told me the minimum bet was three dollars.
Okay. I'd work with that. I wasn't long on gambling, I came along for the experience, and because it worked out that way ... and my job. The job is how I got there.
Sulky racing is what they did at this track. That's when a horse pulls a cart with the jockey on the cart. No fat guys need apply. We got there with plenty of time to spare to set up and get ready for the broadcast. There were five of us: two engineers with the camera and wires, then the director, the talent and me, the floor director. The talent was Dave Collins, the sports director. All I was going to have to do was point when he to start, Dave had done this track broadcast many times. Now, all f us just hung around until later. Everybody else on our crew had worked the remote from the track before. If I needed to know something they'd tell me. I knew all these guys.
We were ready. After set up we'd wait until eleven-twenty to do the sports report and one race live from the track.

Races began a few minutes after nine. Everybody on the crew made bets on the horses. At three bucks a race, I had two shots and lost my money on both races. boom boom.
Then I had nothing to do but wait and look around. It was fine to look around. I'm not a big gambler, so I didn't mind. That's why I deliberately brought only six dollars to lose. Everyone else was staying involved in the races. Talking it up. They were having a good time with it. We had two hours to kill. We had free coffee.

For sure, a very pleasant summer evening. Good temperature, clear, no wind. We were on top in the track, the back row with a good view overlooking everything, good position for the camera. A large full moon hung over the opposite side of the track. Glossy without details. Something caught my attention. I didn't know ... The right size, color and apparent distance, but with no details visible on the surface. I retold this story for twenty five years before I realized I have never seen another glossy moon with absolutely no features on it. Everything else appeared normal.

I thought we were on the south side of the stands facing north. I asked compass directions, where we parked our vehicles, where the lot was from where we were standing, and re-figured it until I was sure I had my directions correct. We had our backs to the south and were facing the full moon in the northern sky.
Now as a small town boy and former boy scout I had enough knowledge about the sky to know the moon over Ohio travels east, South, then West, in an arc. It was after nine P.m. I started looking around, as we were positioned high in the grand stands with a good view to position the camera. I kept looking out, low in the West ... then. I spotted the setting crescent moon. Something was wrong and it didn't take long to figure it out.

I started telling my co-workers quietly, one at a time, but not forcefully. They could figure it out. I went up to the first cameraman, always friendly to me, a man I'd known for a while and pointed to the full moon over the northern part of the sky and casually asked “Hey, what’s that?”
The fellow looked and replied, “What? You mean the moon?”
“Yeah?" I had his attention now, and I would turn West, point to out the familiar crescent moon, partially in clouds, then I’d say “Well, then what’s that?”
The strange thing, he and the nest guy, everyone I showed it to would look back and forth, see the two moons, be fascinated about fifteen or twenty seconds, then half smile, shrug and return to their racing forms. They all forget about the two moons.
I told everyone in the crew, quietly, one at time with the same result. The director of our crew was the last I told and he was awake enough to see something was strange. He decided to video tape the moons. Of course the actual recording was done back in Columbus at the station.
Hugh Demoss was the anchorman that night for the eleven o’clock news. We were still at the track, we watched because Dave Collins just did the sports live from the track a few minutes before. I remember at the end of the thirty minute newscast Hugh Demoss had a final story. The story was brief, and as I recall he said nearly these words, “And for those of you who were at Scioto Downs Racetrack this evening there was a special event. Two moons.” Then the camera showed the northern moon for a few seconds, and panned to the crescent moon in the west. The camera then went back to Hugh and he just looked perplexed and shrugged as he tapped his news report papers together on his desk and said good night or whatever words he said to wrap the news. The whole moons report lasted about twenty seconds.

When we wrapped up our gear and left the track I had it in my mind to watch the full moon all the way back to the station in Columbus as we drove. By the time we had finished getting our stuff together a cloud cover coming in blocked the moon, and somehow I forgot to keep looking for the moon. When we got back to the station it was still cloudy and I couldn’t see the moon.

The next morning I came in early for my regular morning shift and went directly to the news room to see the video again.
"It's not here. The Air Force came and got it." That's what the engineer told me. Some time during the night the Air Force had driven over from Dayton's Wright Patterson Air Force Base took the tape and it was our only copy. There was nothing for me to view.

I know in 1965 no one had the technology to create an apparent full moon. Again, I told this story for twenty-five years saying it was “one of those glossy moons with no details”, meaning no craters or marks what-so-ever. Then I finally realized, although it was the right color and size, I had never again seen another moon on a clear night that was glossy with no details.