Matthew Naftzger (of Works of Man ) and I pulled up to a toll booth in the midwest. I handed the guy inside my ticket. He was a white haired gentleman, definitely past retirement age. I asked for a receipt and as he took my ticket he kept glancing down at the drivers side door which reads, "Official Use Only, National Aeronautics and Space Administration." For a minute I thought, "Oh crap, what if I get dinged with some higher commercial or government rate because of these stickers." As he handed me back my receipt though he immediately lept into a conversation, thanking US the NASA employees for what we do, wishing we received more funding and so on. He went on about how his father would get him up early so he never missed an Apollo launch which sometimes also made him late for school. He was glad he did though and still remembers watching Armstrong take his first steps on the moon. It all happened so fast that we didn't really have time to break it to him that I was just a NASA nerd myself and the van was a sort of art project of mine. Driving away I felt kind of guilty as if I tricked the guy.
Reaching our final destination we talked about the experience with Randy Regier, another artist that works with similar themes of fictional reality. The more we thought about it the more I realized we did the right thing. Making him feel dumb for getting sucked into my make believe art project wouldn't have been right. He was excited to meet some NASA employees to tell his story to and we also equally loved hearing about it.
