He also got a peek at the NASA engine shop, shuttle landing facility and control tower, vehicle assembly building, and mobile launch platforms, as well as several other difficult-to-remember locales.
In one, he captures the experience of being from a "jerkwater" town: a village so small that steam-train crews had to "jerk" water up from streams or from people holding buckets along the tracks because there was no water tower from which to refill the engine.