"Tranquility Base, here..."

Charles

On this day in 1969, astronauts first walked on the moon. 

I was a little kid when it happened. (No age jokes — I'll hit you with my cane!) My parents roused my brothers and sisters and me from our sleep and plopped us in front of the TV. It was a Sunday night during summer vacation, so we'd be able to sleep in the next day. (So would Mom. Dad was not so lucky.)

Bleary-eyed, we watched the event, and I remember my Mom and sister wept softly.

I was too dumb to be overwhelmed with emotion. As a kid, the event was like a TV show to me, and the picture was lousy.

Also, news bulletins about the mission were interrupting everything on TV and radio that whole week. To a kid, that's simply unfair.

On the other hand, I was fully stocked with G.I. Joe  and Major Matt Mason  stuff, so I had all the tools to play out the events as they happened.

I remember two things about my consciousness of that moment: my inability to fully wake up, and the sense that the images on our Zenith of men on the moon were a whole lot bigger than the Tigers' World Series win  the previous fall.

We watched the events that whole week on CBS. We were a Cronkite household. (My wife grew up in a NBC, Huntley-Brinkley  household. Neither of us can even imagine anything different.)

Last week, Walter Cronkite passed away  and the tributes to him include his round-the-clock coverage of Apollo 11.

It was a labor of love: Cronkite really dug space exploration work. They keep showing that clip of Cronkite rubbing his hands with happiness , beaming unashamedly, as the mission landed on the surface. It's fitting that he and Apollo 11 dominated weekend TV.

Just as they did 40 years ago.