Indeed he did. It's a shame that moat young people today won't know or care about it.
When I was a kid, space missions were televised live. If there was one during the school year, classes were suspended and all of us gathered in assembly to watch on tv. At home, we watched on an old console black and white set Dad bought at Sears. We didn't have a color tv set till I was in my teens.
When I was a kid, I owned a tiny transistor radio, as small as a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. I'd keep an earphone attached to it on space mission days, one ear cocked on the mission coverage and the other listening to whatever transpired in class. The only more important reason to do that was, of course, the World Series.
The first moon landing was on July 20, 1969 in the wee hours of the morning. My maternal grandmother, terminally ill with cancer, was living with us. Her pain medication would knock her out, but that evening she refused her medication and suffered in pain just so she would be awake to see the moon landing. I'm so glad Grandma was able to witness such an historic event.
God bless Grandma for that!
I was away at summer camp when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. Our camp director was attuned so acutely to the significance that he allowed the entire camp to stay awake to watch on whatever television sets could be rounded up. (I've never forgotten hearing Walter Cronkite holler out, the split second Armstrong hit the surface, "Man on the moon. Man finally on the moon. My golly!")
A couple of weeks later, our camp was transported to Tanglewood, Massachussetts, where I got to hear the man who changed my musical life for the first time ever, opening a Woodstock warmup concert for the Who and Jefferson Airplane. Had I not gotten to see and hear B.B. King that night, I never would have tried to play a guitar seriously.
Come fall, my little transistor radio was in my pocket again, earphone attached accordingly, for days on which I had to be in school during the World Series. Said one member of the Series-winning team that fall, Mets relief pitcher Tug McGraw, "When those astronauts landed on the moon, I knew we had a chance. I figured right there that anything could happen."
Anything did.
The moon landing. B.B. King. The '69 Mets. What a wonderful year 1969 was.
Today's youth regard these space missions as "ho-hum -- no big deal." That just makes me so sad.
In one way, it's our own fault. We had so bloody many of them after the earliest moon landings, it became as routine as coffee at the breakfast table.
