Moon Landing or Laundry?

CA readers sent in their memories of the first ever moon landing 40 years ago, and I thought this was cute:

Sam Wolfe was a 20-year-old intern assigned to the metro desk at The Commercial Appeal to take obituary phone calls on that night. He said one call was from a low-level manager at Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, who said five water pumping stations were cut off during the moon landing because of low consumption.

"Apparently no one was washing dishes, flushing toilets, bathing, washing cars or watering the lawn," said Wolfe, who now lives in Asheville, N.C. "Everyone was glued to the TV, fascinated by this marvel of science and technology.

"The next day, the front page of the paper featured a photograph of the moon that covered three-quarters of the page. A banner headline shouted 'WE MADE IT.'

"The bottom quarter of the page was the feature story and a little boxed sidebar about MLGW having to turn off pumping stations because water pressure got too high during the landing. My story went without a byline, but I can rightly claim to have a few rare column inches on the front page of that paper."