On this 50th Anniversary of the moon landing, another alien has landed - this time in our telephones, and the musical group The Carpenters predicted it. Have a listen to: "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft". (And think about our interplanetary privacy issues and spy craft.)
I was an 11 year-old, living at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children in Cleveland (that what happened to kids with ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome In 1969). I had built models of every space vehicle in NASA’s March to the moon: from a glue-smeared Project Mercury model to the delight of the Gemini capsule with its two hatch doors that really swung open — or would have, if I hadn’t painted them shut.
And of course, the Apollo command module complete with Lunar Excursion Module!
At some point around 10:30, the night staff woke the ten kids in our building, “Cottage 13,” and like the other 120 teens at this institution we were glued to the screen for the next couple of hours.
I think it was the only time our group had behaved so well for so long.
3
I had the exact opposite experience. I spent that week in Vermont with my girlfriend's parents, who did not approve of the space program's expense. They believed the money would be better spent on America's social ills. We played bridge that night men walked on the moon. It wasn't until 3 days later as I took the bus home that I was able to read a newspaper headline telling me all was well with the mission.
I've often thought I was the last person in America to learn about the original moonwalk.
1
Same! We rented a tv for the weekend to watch the lunar landing with our kids. I think it was one week later when we decided to buy one; it was too much fun having it in the house. However, our boys had to earn tv time by reading- 1/2 hour reading bought 1/2 hr of tv. Our youngest son refused to read until the earned tv time rule. He now works as an editor and has been an avid reader since high school.
1
I remember Sputnik too, and I remember this fanciful exercise of the Cold War. I remember hoping everyone made it home safely. I remember that picture of a blue living Earth and hoping that maybe we would learn to take better care of it. Now in my old age, I'm just sad. We have not taken better care of this earth, or ourselves.
4
In July 1965, when I was five years old, my father was sent to Athens for four year for his job, and he brought my mother and us 8 kids with him. We had an amazing time there, exploring ruins and visiting Mediterranean beaches when not in our English catholic school. One thing we didn’t really have was television. Our little black & white set was limited to all things Greek (a language we never learned), and some old Felix the Cat cartoons. I remember watching the news and not understanding a word of it.
So when we returned to America in July of 1969, and briefly stayed at my grandparents’, who now had a large color TV, we were astonished at what we had been missing: Star Trek, Batman, Gilligan’s Island, Saturday morning cartoons— we were suddenly immersed in the colorful world of the American television experience. And on the night of the 20th of that month, we watched the moon landing; the grainy, black & white images that were like those from our old Greek set that we had already almost forgotten.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I only vaguely recall the landing, but I sure was impressed by The Jetsons the next morning.
2
I was 10, the child of parents who had escaped to the US from totalitarian regime in the mid 1950s. We didn't have much but we had a color TV then. It was the thrill of my childhood seeing Armstrong and Aldrin jumping around the moon, thinking when I'm an adult I'll get to fly there too!
The only disappointment was the moon landing footage was in black and white and grainy. It didn't matter if you had a color or b&w tv!
At the end of the corridor of a tiny school building in a tiny town two hundred miles from the nearest big city, we sat on gym mats and watched, live, as Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon.
The technical achievement involved in enabling this live broadcast to remote communities such as ours- and the efforts of those tens of thousands of engineers involved around the world - deserve to be recognised at some point. This was a pivotal moment in history that we were able to all share, everywhere, because of the efforts of these men and women. Let me start with a big "thank you".
4
My family traveled in the summer in an RV (back then just called a “trailer”, before that term was relegated to refer to not-really-mobile homes of the rural working class.). Anyway, it had no tv, and normally we were too busy sightseeing, cooking over a campfire, playing outdoors with sticks, stones and the occasional captured frog to miss it.
However: a family friend was a nun, and we spent the night of the lunar landing at a home (equipped with tv) run by the sisters, in the company of a young nun who was as excited as we were even though she feared being locked out of her convent for the night while the wait dragged on. Finally the great moment arrived. I remember it. I will have to ask my younger sisters if they do. 6 and 4 at the time, and awakened to watch, I doubt that they do.
You can’t make this stuff up.
1
What a shame you could not experience some of the great as well as terrible things on TV in the fifties and sixties. My father and step-fathers were news junkies, from radio, TV, and the newspapers. But TV fired our imaginations as much as Shakespeare and Shaw. In an age we all worried about and practiced responses to nuclear war, we saw dreams of a future mankind united. Yes, it was an escape but one absolutely necessary to cleanse us of the horrors of everyday existence under the threat of annihilation. I was at sea that day on an aircraft carrier, Lexington. Flight ops were canceled for the day so that the crew could listen to the news coverage of the landing over the 1MC, the ship's announcing system (there were no intra-ship TV systems in those days). I stood alone for a while on one of the plane elevators off the hangar deck and watched the sky as the reports came in. I knew I couldn't see the moon and the landing but I could imagine. Soon the elevator was crowded and we started sitting down, eyes still glued to the sky. Those final tense moments, followed by those words Armstrong spoke brought tears to my eyes. I looked around and saw there were few dry eyes among my shipmates. We all shared the same awe and hopes for a better future. Today, I still hope humanity will pull out of our devisive ways and move ahead into the universe. One can always dream.
4
What a delightful story recalling a moment in history. YOUR personal recollection of this moment is hilarious, sweet and loving. I admire your parents - sounds like all 3 kids turned out more than alright.
Thanks for making me laugh aloud several times. Please write more.
5
Haven't even read this specific article, but I did just scroll all the way through the companion piece that shows the radio transcripts accompanied with the lunar photos. All I have to say is very well done NYT. That was an incredible presentation. You really feel like you're there on the moon with these men. Very well done.
What a delightful article!!
Sidebar. My parents rented a TV for the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. A what, 18” b&w ( well, it was all b&w back then)?
The images from the moon were fuzzy. We had a TV by that time. Ironically the image quality on the television sort of matched the moon clips. Fantastic memory. Thanks NYT for this sweet piece.
A welcome respite.
This is a beautiful tribute to the lunar landing and, might I say, the author’s own family.
1
Beautiful article. And, even rarer, so many beautiful comments.
2
We watched at my Grandmother's house before driving 3 hours back to our house in the wee hours. Some neighbors were there, one of whom was 98 years old. Today as then I wonder what can someone who was born and grown before cars, tv, radio, etc., etc. be thinking? Did she think it was for real? What will we see if we live to be 98 and technology and the urge to explore further worlds continues? Let us hope such efforts are financed and go forward.
30
I was at sleep away camp when they landed on the moon and it was the only time in my 6 years at camp that we watched tv. There is a conversation happening on my camp Facebook page right now and it is remarkable how we all have the same memory of time, place and experience.
In my house, we had TV, but we (the kids) were not allowed to watch except for one hour a week.
As to color tv, my dad bought and carried one home on the day of the final moon walk because he wanted to see it in color.
Funny what we remember....
26
We rented a tv too! It came with a funny wire cart on wheels. I was 14, growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Our parents wanted us to read so they didn’t buy a tv until the late 70’s. My father was a nuclear physicist so he had to concede tv programming was not all junk this one time. I remember watching golf when the moon launch was not on the air just so I could watch tv, any tv.
27
Of all the many events that occurred in 1969, I cannot recall what , if any,my husband told me about his memories of the moon landing. My twin sister and I were 14, staying at our older sisters house on Long Island. We watched on the tv in her finished basement. My future husband, 7 years older, was in Walter Reed hospital. He had been wounded that April in Vietnam, transported from Saigon to Japan to Walter Reed. During one of those moves it was determined that he wouldn’t recover unless his right leg was removed above the knee. He remembered all the events he missed during his time in Vietnam and when he was recovering at hospital back home. But not so much the moon landing. 1969 was an innocent year for me, a Star Trek fan; I was sure Mars would be explored in the near future: for my husband, just surviving the trauma of war was his most vivid memory., as I’m sure it was for so many of the young men, barely out of boyhood, that he shared a hospital ward with. We could go to the moon and back, and at the same time sacrifice men for that useless war. The dissonance of those two events has always stayed with me.
53
@Mary Nagle, Thank you for sharing ...
4
I also took my first steps on that day, as a nine month old spending my first year of life in Los Angeles. Lots going on that summer.
But growing up without a television as well, it would take the 76 Olympics for my parents to allow one in the house. My father helped write software for the Lunar Excursion Model prototype, so maybe we got the inside scoop.
3
I'll tell you one thing, as a baby I too took my first steps on that very day. As a nine month spending my first year of life in the LA desert there certainly was a lot going on.
I was a 10 years old kid in Israel, when I heard about the pending moon landing. My uncle bought a TV for my grandmother so that we can all watch the moon landing. At the time, there were no Israeli TV broadcasts, so I believe we viewed the moon landing from the Jourdinain TV. First some reason, throughout the landing viewing, we saw black and white lines across the TV monitor, and my uncle had to play with the antenna to try and make the viewing better. In any event, I was very proud to be the only kid in my class that watched the moon landing live, and I remember it to this day. What an exciting and exhilarating event!
39
@ymcebs
This brings back memories of how much time one spent, in those days, "playing with the antenna" to try to make a station come in - moving it a hair this way, then a hair that way - how we would argue about how much blurriness was tolerable if we REALLY wanted to watch something ….
26
My family rented one for the 1960 Presidential debates. Three years later got one that failed to sell at the 'flea market' the church of which my father was minister ran every year. I was in Uganda at the time of the moon landing and didn't see it, but everyone congratulated me as the local American!
34
Apart from my personal life, there has been three memorable days in my sixty three years on earth. The first one I was too small to remember much other than several adults crying in front of the TV when President Kennedy was assassinated.
The last one affected my everyday life, specially at work, and remember being outraged watching the twin towers collapse in New York during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The middle one was 50 years ago, a summer day I remember to the last little detail, what movie I saw earlier with my dad and brother, My little sister's 4th birthday party, the wind blowing hard in the sunny afternoon and finally the sit-down in front of our black and white TV to see Armstrong take that first step on the moon.
39
Great article. It brings me back to that night when my brothers and I watched the landing on a black and white TV while sitting on the floor of my parents living room.
1969 was a very turbulent year, but the moon landing seemed to bring most of America together even if it was only for that evening.
36
Your parents were Luddites, but that's OK.
What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
My dad was a TV repairman, in California, in the late 1940s after he got out of the army in WWII.
TVs were very new technology then! he fixed TV sets for movie stars and celebrities who could afford this new-fangled TV thing. The only one I remember was Loretta Young!
He also fixed old TVs in the 50s, as the tech was changing rapidly. As a result, when I was a little girl....we had SEVEN TVs, one in literally every room. Old ones, huge cabinets with tiny little blurry screens.
I watched the moon landing, in B&W of course. Dad thought color TV was a fad, and the technology not perfected.
38
Beautifully, beautifully written. And beautiful memories of a planet united in peace, joy, and grandeur for a brief moment. Thank you, Mr. Purdy.
What else can we take on, and accomplish, that would unite us? I can think of an ailing, warming planet that needs our united help. We remember the moment the Eagle landed, and we rejoiced together. Let us remember the moment we turn off the last machine based on fossil fuels, and rejoice together.
51
I was pregnant with my first child and worried about the world that child was inheriting. The moon landing was an amazing, glorious feat in a time of war, turmoil and heartbreak. Just like millions of others, I’m sure, I watched it on a 17” black and white Zenith TV, then ran outside to look at the moon, filled with awe and wonder, knowing that humans were walking on it as I watched. Thank you for this marvelous, heartwarming essay. I would love to know your mother.
46
“Literarily delinquent” may be my favorite expression of the year - and this comes from someone who works in a library.
I wasn’t yet born when this happened, but I am a “Challenger child,” and the daughter of an aerospace engineer. We watched Apollo 13 last night with the kids (only because Apollo 11 wasn’t streaming for free), and this article captures the excitement, joy and absolute awe of watching something truly exceptional happen live on TV. Thanks for publishing it and letting us live, even just for a few moments, in the eyes of a fascinated child.
35
It's hard for me to believe, but 50 years ago, several months before turning eight, I sat in the cool living room of our landlord, a little old lady, and she and I watched together, rapt, the lunar landing. She knew we didn't have a TV so invited us to watch with her, in her house. My parents weren't interested but I was so she and I sat together in straight-backed chairs in front of the television as my parents sweltered in their 3rd floor apartment in the Pullman, WA summer. We didn't say much but we were both caught up in the awe and majesty of it all and it seemed to me that we had shared something very special. The moon that night was large and visible over Reaney Park, which our apartment looked out on, and I remember thinking how incredible it was to see the moon and know that people were there.
56
We had a tiny little black and white TV that 7 children crowded around to watch the Twilight Zone (it wasn’t until I had kids of my own that I discovered that the “Wizard of Oz changed to color when Dorothy landed in Oz)
On July 20th 1969 we crowded around my parents small TV to watch the moonwalk. A thunderstorm came up (typical for Washington DC in the summer) and we lost our power. We drove around trying to find someplace that did have power but by that time the walk was over. We did hear it on the radio- pretty unsatisfying like taking a shower with a raincoat on!
5
These are really great stories and I love reading about this achievement. However, I don't understand why these stories are not front and center in the New York Times. I understand politics is an important topic, but at least today, the moon landing should have been the main subject of the day.
5
A nicely told story.
I don’t have anything specifically relevant except for watching. I had just graduated from high school (Class of ’69!) and my parents were moving from New York to Hawaii, according to plan after all the children were in college. It had been a couple tumultuous years in the country and my Dad and I, well, we had our political and cultural differences. But we sat together in the living room, mostly bare except for the RCA TV, and watched in silent sharing as a human being set foot on the moon. For a moment, it seemed all troubles could be solved.
Fifty years later and the times are tumultuous again. But for the past couple nights, I’ve been streaming the PBS series “Chasing the Moon,” and at the end, tears were in my eyes — at the beauty of the achievement, at all we are capable of doing if only we decide. Time has tempered my expectations, but in some part of my aging brain the world of possibilities still beats, and for that, I am thankful.
My Dad died five years later, at 54, of cancer. We never really saw eye-to-eye, but he is with me today, as he has been for so many days.
13
I simply love this story!!!
5
I also grew up in NJ with no television with my parents renting a small black and white TV for special occasions.
I was fine without a TV until high school when my father came home one night with a Sony Trinitron. It wasn't received well by my mother to say the least. We were then only allowed to watch one hour on Friday and one hour on Saturday. It lead to a lot of sneaking!
8
Beautiful, compelling presentation, bravo to the NYT for recreating this experience. Looking at the photos and reading the text, I am simply amazed at the bravery of these three men. I am almost 60 and have never had the courage to go on a roller coaster. Imagining these astronauts on the moon is nearly incomprehensible.
46
@Frank J Haydn
"I am simply amazed at the bravery of these three men"
Yes! Sometimes I still think the most amazing part of the moon landing is that none of the astronauts said - a few minutes before takeoff - "No, wait! I can't do this. Let me off …"
14
@DW
The astronauts were former test pilots; they were prepared intellectually and psychologically for their jobs. Yes, they were brave; however, they were also very educated and knew the odds. There were a group of scientists who had their backs; the actual work of the mission was on them.
8
20 July 1969 We landed on the moon.
20 July 2019 it is another day in America.
I expect a litlle bit more than this. I am an immigrant and my childhood passed with reading and dreaming of Apollo landings. how many books and encyclopedia I read, how many times I read it, I do not remember. But one thing it carved in my mind. This was a great historical achievement in our civilization.
I wish American will pay a little more attention to this moment in history.
43
@su
I am very disappointed in the coverage--especially from NASA! There is a fabulous reconstruction of Apollo 11 events on the website:
https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/
This website presents the entire mission in real-time using only NASA materials (video, audio, transcripts, etc.)
Since they're using NASA materials I don't understand why a group of volunteers was able to do this but NASA is just rebroadcasting CBS coverage.
A wonderful article.
Thanks.
I was born in Mumbai of parents with very limited means.
And I did not watch this landing because neither did we have a TV nor any folks I knew then.
My first landing was when I landed in NYC to travel to California to attend Caltech.
Staying a a family friends apartment was my first exposure to TV and the Apollo landing - it must be Apollo 15 or something.
Ever since then I have been privileged to witness space shuttle lift offs, landings in Florida. And have been to Baiknour for Soyuz lift off and been on the steppes of Kazakhstan to see landing of a Soyuz - on a date we all remember 9/11.
In my toast that day at lunch, I said "a few years ago on 9/11 - Americans feared airplanes in the skies. Today,we anxiously waited and hoped that a spacecraft would bring back home - it's most precious cargo - one American and two Russians."
I would not miss another space spectacle for nothing.
49
I was working in broadcasting at the time of the Gemini and Apollo programs. It was a fascinating time of exploration and most of the nation was enthralled with the advancements made almost in leaps and bounds once the Mercury program got off the ground.
In the middle of Apollo 11’s voyage to the moon and while we were on the air,I received a phone call from a viewer. “Where are my soaps.”
50
@David J
"Where are my soaps"
That was my feeling during the interminable Watergate hearings on daytime TV.
2
Oh, I love this story!! Matthew Purdy, you are a very good writer!!
I recall watching the moon landing, in our living room, with family and neighbors. One of our neighbors was turning 50 that same day. Big party with many reasons to celebrate. She would have turned 100 today!! I think of that often.
50
It was my birthday, the television was on the front porch. We celebrated with Neil Armstrong. He was on the moon, we were on the front porch.
54
I was 18 and working for the summer behind the lunch counter of the Whelan's Drug Store opposite the Time-Life Building on 6th ave. Across the street a giant screen had been set up (giant for that time anyway). Outside the drug store the streets were clogged with people watching as the astronauts touched down on the moon. The image was B&W and very fuzzy. Inside the store, we ran out of every kind of food we had and could only serve water and soda. It felt like New Years Eve in Times Square.
53
We didn’t live in the US and due to time zone the moon landing was late at night, or so I think. I was 8 years old and I recall my parents waking me up to watch it on a small black and white TV. We lived in an apartment building. I recall the moon walk. I recall the lights on every apartment in the building being on. I also recall the roar of applause that echo through the building when Armstrong touched the moon with his feet.
It is one of those things that you always remember where you were and what you were doing when Armstrong walked on the moon. Fortunately, it was for a great moment for humanity. I feel fortunate to have witnessed it.
Thank you Neil Armstrong. Thank you Buzz Aldrin. Thanks to all NASA employees. Thanks to all engineers and mathematicians that made this happen. Thank you President Kennedy for the vision and goal. Lastly, I want to thank my parents for waking me up and allowing me to experience this unforgettable moment.
80
I was in my twenties sleeping in a pension on the Costa Brava. I awoke to hear a fellow traveler say, “There are people on the moon.”
And I thought Oh My God they landed on the moon and found people up there.
111
@Susan Orlins
Too funny :)
13
Hmm. That oven TV might be the best one for watching all of today’s politics.
3
I was 19 during Apollo 11. From my diary: TRANSLATION, "Sunday 20.7. [home from the cottage] at 5.10 p.m [Finnish time]... watched TV till midnight, LEM landed appr. 10.14 p.m. It was quite exciting. From 1 a.m. till. 3 a.m. I slept... opened the TV at 3.15 p.m. because they had announced that the moon walk might be earlier, at 4.56 it happened. Dad got up too." ORIGINAL, "Su 20.7. [mökiltä] 17.10 kotiin... Katsoin TV:tä n. klo 24 saakka, klo 22.14 maissa LEM laskeutui. Se oli aika jännittävää. Klo 1-3 nukuin & torkuin, klo 3.15 auk. TV:n koska oli ilmoitettu, että kuukävely saattoi alkaa suunniteltua aik., klo 4.56 se oli tosiasia TV:n välityksellä. Isäkin oli noussut."
3
Great story! Thank you.
1
Very well written.
In 1969 my dad was an aeronautical engineer at Grumman Aircraft. At the time, he was working on the F-14 Tomcat project, but like all Grumman employees he was incredibly proud of the work they did on the lunar module. I remember my entire family huddled in the “TV Room” together watching the Moon landing. To this day, it still gives me chills. My father died suddenly of a heart attack in February 1970, less than a year later when I was only nine, but at least he got to see Apollo 11 come off without a hitch. The other thing I remember is that a couple days after my dad died, the FBI (or some other type of government agents) knocked on our front door. They needed to go through my father’s papers and rummage through his workshop down in the basement, since he had a top-secret government clearance. They carted off a couple boxes of materials. What they didn’t know was that my dad had given his youngest son (me) a large color photograph of a full-scale mockup of the F-14 Tomcat, which was safely hidden somewhere in my bedroom. I’m guessing they would have taken that too if they’d seen it, since the plane wouldn’t have its first test flight until December of that year. Funny how you remember things like that...
22
I just emailed my son to let him know that he witnessed the moon landing. He had been born two years before the event but he watched it, he may not remember watching it, but I was darned if I was going to let him miss those first steps ever taken by man on a heavenly body out beyond the sphere of this planet of ours.
3
My sister and I were at Girl Scout camp in upstate New York, and July 20th happened to be Visiting Day, when parents were invited to show up, visit, and maybe take their daughter away from camp for lunch. My parents arrived, got us in the car, and told the camp director that they would return us to camp in the morning. The director was miffed; this was not allowed. But there was nothing she could do to stop them, and off we went, somewhat unwillingly.
My father worked for NBC, and we had several TVs in the house and had no restrictions on what we could watch. I had friends who lived in homes with no TV or with lots of limits on viewing, and it seemed to me that they were a bit snobby about it. TV was junk food for the masses, while books were for superior people. I liked both.
There was also nothing like live TV when something of national importance was happening, whether the Moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, or the terrorist attacks of September eleventh.
12
That day 50 years ago was astounding for my 7-year-old self. First, my strict father took me to the 7/11 to rent a tiny B&W TV for the evening. Then, even though I was sent to bed before the moon landing, I snuck down and watched the event from the stairs, “hiding” behind the bannisters. He must have known I was there, but never said anything. Everything about that day seemed magical.
23
I tell people that the moon landing gave me television. We borrowed one to watch it. My Dad started watching Bonanza on the borrowed set and bought our first set afterwards.
4
This is my favorite of all the reminiscences on the moon landing. I also didn’t see it. That was camp visitation weekend. My job was to drive my dad up to see my sister at camp in Hunter, NY. It was a gray chilly day. On the way home it poured for the entire drive. We listened o the car radio.
1
My Grandpa was born in 1877 and we watched the 1st Moon landing together. For philosophical reasons we didn’t have a TV at our summer cabin in Northern Wisconsin. But even my Mom had to admit that we should probably witness a man landing on the moon! My 92 year-old Grandfather was visiting. He was rather ambivalent about the whole thing.
I guess he had already seen a lot. He was born in March 1877, 9 months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He was on his 20th President and had witnessed a dazzling history or invention, triumph and strife.
We had neighbors right up the road who had a TV and invited us to join them. After dinner we walked over. My Granddad was given the seat of honor of course, in a big easy chair, directly in front of the old fashioned black and white TV. We all watched and commented on everything Walter Cronkite said as the moment got closer.
Then everyone went quiet, as Neil Armstrong uttered his immortal phrase and stepped onto the Moon. We all cheered and clapped. My grandfather, a man of few words, offered none.
Even then at 12, I remember thinking that it was a special moment that I wouldn’t forget. As we all walked home, under an amazing wilderness night sky my Grandfather finally weighed in. “Well, I have to admit, that was something I thought I would never see. “
17
You didn't need to be rich to own a
color television by mid-1969. My parents bought a color set sometime before the moon landing, on a modest income. Department stores had a lot of sales. All TVs from the 1960s were kind of glitchy, though. I remember watching the landing around 11 p.m. in Washington DC.
@anonymous, they were not unattainable on a middle-class income. But it was still common to rent a TV at that time if you needed an extra for guests or something. We had just one TV in the house for my entire childhood. It was in my parents’ bedroom, so they could monitor what was being watched (and enjoy late-night TV in the comfort of their bed). My grandfather came to stay with us for a month every year, and they would rent a downstairs TV for him to watch with the family. So color TVs were expensive enough that people didn’t buy multiples.
2
We had several televisions when I was a child, and I loved watching TV! One of my friends didn't have one in his home, so he ended up at my place after school as often as he could to watch TV. He came over with his parents to watch the moon landing with my family. We both grew up and had academic success, and I don't see the fact that he didn't have a television growing up as being an academic advantage or disadvantage. I have always felt that the vilification of television is just another example of people not wanting to accept change as they age. I have to remind myself of that fact when I start to rant about social media modifying public discourse from insightful, detailed articles to 280 character tweets, however. On some level, maybe I am becoming the old person who is resistant to change that I used to laugh at!
8
I was at work when the “Eagle landed” - when the announcement was made “the Eagle has landed”, we ALL applauded - even though we were at our workstations.
1
I raised my children in the years 1993-2013 with no television. The only time it was a problem was September 11, 2001. We spent that day watching the neighbor’s television with them. I would have done the same for a moon landing! Global events like that are better when shared.
11
I lived in an old Vermont resort hotel. It was hard to find a TV, but one of the staff had a little black and white one in his room and all of us filled it from desk clerks, dishwashers, bellmen (all men then) to bus boys and waitresses (me), all colors with all different accents from across the states, and pretty much standing room only.
I will never forget the hushed anticipatory tension in the room, and then the smiles and whoops of happiness when Armstrong said his line.
We so needed heroics in those divisive days of constant war and assassinations. Everyone could get behind the man on the moon!
5
As a kid, I sat on the couch on the afternoon of July 20, 1969 and watched the grainy black-and-white TV images as the Eagle, the Apollo 11 lunar module, landed on the surface of the moon, but I missed the “giant leap for mankind” that evening. My dad drove stock cars, and it was a summer Saturday, which meant going racing. Between races at the Boone Speedway in Iowa, the announcer said, “If you look over your shoulder, you’ll see the earth’s natural satellite, the moon. And I’m here to tell you that an American astronaut just walked on it.” The audience applauded for a few moments, until that applause was drowned out by the engines’ roar.
5
Every time I read about this stunning achievement I can scarcely believe that the average age of the NASA team that put men on moon was just 26. In fact, the oldest were probably the astronauts. A 23 year old had within in his power to abort the launch if needed.
There were truly remarkable people - Each and every one of them.
We still have it within ourselves to do even greater things.
10
Oh that brought back memories. We had just moved to Baton Rouge, me with a fresh PhD, to take a postdoctoral at LSU. We rented a B&W TV just like in this essay, and watched Cronkite and Schirra during the landing. (And, as long as we had the TV temporarily, watched the unfolding Chappaquiddick story too.)
1
I was on summer break from college and at a club in Miami Beach playing bridge that afternoon; but there was a TV in the room, and we all stopped and watched.
3
My family was similar ... No TV except when renting on for special events... Moon shot + political conventions!
3
I love this stuff! NASA rounded up some unused Kubrick footage from 2001:S.O. and created these brilliant sequences!
(huge laugh emoji here!)
You had smart parents. If I wanted to raise kids with no television, or internet, today I would have to move to North Korea.
There is a difference between the television then and today, besides the obvious. Today there is a list of names and addresses of every program that an individual watched. The cable TV company knows what programs your family watched and when. The streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc all know what movies you saw, to the second. Even short videos on YouTube are tied to your identity, even news reports. Twitter knows every tweet you saw, or commented about. The news"papers" know every single article you read and how many seconds or minutes it took you to read them.
Back then no one really knew what you read or watched. Today they know everything.
2
Wonderful. I wish I had the discipline and patience of your parents with my own children. Hopefully I can keep my grandchildren away from the internet.
1
Thanks for the beautifully written article.
1
I ruefully admit to being a bit annoyed when my father made us stay inside and watch history unfold on TV. (Mr. Purdy needn't apologize for not having had a color television, since it was all in black and white anyway.) It was a beautiful summer afternoon, and I wanted to be outside playing in it. After all, the child's imagination had been on the moon for centuries, and what we found up there was more interesting than the reality. So what was the big deal?
However, twenty years later, A&E reran the footage for the 20th anniversary, and finally I realized how thrilled I would have been by those grainy images if I'd been an adult in 1969.
1969! What a year! It just makes this one seem so dumb.
6
Before Tv came to phones and laptops, many aspirational parents in my community crowed about not having TVs in their homes. Because their kids should be studying advanced calculus and particle physics all the time. And working on their debut novels. Or something. The kids, of course, just found friends with televisions. And spent less time at home.
Some of my most vivid childhood memories revolve around TV. Of course I remember the moon landing, and how on subsequent evenings I looked up at the moon with a sense of fear that something had changed, irrevocably. I wondered whether it harmed the moon, to stab it with a flagpole.
News was my thing. I was a night-owl kid with parents who had long since stopped enforcing the bedtime rules (several children previous), so I stayed up to watch the 11:00 news with them most nights (followed by Johnny Carson’s opening monologue). I remember the news anchor giving the death and casualty count for the “conflict” in Vietnam. The investigation into Mi Lai. The assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The Kent State shooting. The Manson murders. So many awful but newsworthy things that parents now might say a child shouldn’t hear, but it was the world I lived in. Later, I sat through much of the Watergate hearings with my grandfather (a lifelong Democrat who greatly enjoyed the outrage). I remember Sen. Sam Ervin’s eyebrows and the dry, tense tone of John Dean.
What would anyone deprive a child of that eye on the world?
9
Ohio University summer theater — we had a show that evening. Somehow we found an open classroom near the stage that had a TV on a big rolling cart. We were watching the black and white images in the dark and trying not to make too much noise. We kept hustling out of the room to do scene changes and then running right back. At the big moment, someone in the dark said “Go, Little Green Men!”
8
Credible analysis of today's times in the US doesn't compare to the stark age of growing up along the border. My grandma's cinderblock tiny home had no insulation or AC unit. So looking at today's exhaustive heatwave, my mom and aunt were adept to these temperatures. Times were different depending on where you grew up. My mother-in-law once told me a story of her growing in the 1950s in town. Her house had a dirt floor. I am sure they made changes to the house, but it gives a perspective of the homes and life from then and now. Today's academic, K-12, demand asks for students to have access to the internet to be able to complete assignments. While technology advances into an affordable domain, there is always a population that can't or won't make the investment for devices or access to the internet. Many parents expect local districts to fit the bill to cover such expenses in providing the students the best, but even school districts have limits to such costs. The sparse difference in today's city scope of socioeconomics still creates a divide of equal access to such devices and services. This renders a question of when we can pull forward to innovate in the realm of technology when limiting factors stem from the user and the interface they will have based on the device.
@Art T. What does this have to do with mankind walking on the moon?
Son of a national park service ranger, I watched with my mother when we were stationed in Acadia where we got regular TV for the first time. From Bangor, the big city!
When we lived in Yellowstone before Acadia, we got one channel, barely, so we never hooked it up.
I looked up at the moon right before going to bed and remember thinking "we did it!" Kept looking out the window all night. It was a great feeling. I was 14.
7
I was in college and had no TV. As the time approached, I began running for the laundromat, which had one. A crowd joined me, all of us running for the laundromat. The transmission as he landed was thrilling. "Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed." We had feared they might crash and be so damaged as not to get back.
5
My three children were ages 12, 10 and just turning 2 in the summer of 1969... and the two older boys were squished into our car's back seat on either side of the TV we packed with us on our long planned vacation to New Hampshire. It was an approximately 5 hour drive between our home near Hartford, CT and our summer place on Lake Winnipesaukee, but the kids never complained. They didn't want to miss the mood landing any more than their parents.
Ordinarily, we'd never have considered including television as part of a family vacation....but we made an exception that time, and none of us ever regretted it.
I recall that afternoon as if it were yesterday. Everyone was glued to their radios while sitting on the lakefront, and suddenly, as the landing time drew near, the well populated beach became virtually deserted while the vacationers rushed back to their cabins The baby, who'd had his 2nd birthday two days before, had fallen asleep; but we woke him so he'd always know he saw the historic moment, even though he'd never remember it. And there, in a rustic, pine surrounded cabin with a TV set incongruously sitting next to the fireplace, all five of us laughed, cried, and whooped with joy as the miracle unfolded before our eyes.
7
We got a TV finally the year before, or rather rented a house that came with one, but we did not watch the moonshot. In school they brought out TVs so one could not miss it, but our family believed that the money should be spent on fixing problems on earth.
3
Ah! so nice to know we weren't the only family without a TV in the 60s and 70s. We saw the moon landing at a friend's house.
I vividly recall an interview with an old gentleman, who was having none of the moon nonsense. "Ain't nobody ever been on the moon." And that was final. I remember his steadfast belief.
3
I too grew up in a no-TV household, until around 1960 when I was in high school, when my parents finally bought one, B&W of course. My brother and I were thrilled!
It turned out that our part of the Bronx had terrible TV reception, it was a snowy blur on the screen. Watching TV was a lot like listening to the radio, but one felt compelled to keep squinting at it in hopes that the picture would become clear. Despite the terrible visuals my brother became hooked on TV. I went back to reading books for the most part.
In July 1969 my husband and I had a B&W TV (we thought color TVs were for the 1%) and we more listened to than clearly saw the moon landing, but that was REALLY thrilling! I attended at least one ticker tape parade related to the space program -- was it for John Glenn or was it for the Apollo 11 guys, my memory will not say.
4
I vaguely remember watching the moon landing in Lake Tahoe on vacation when I was 6. I think it’s the earliest thing I remember.
3
Ditto. At my grandparents who had a black and white TV. I was 6.
Still recall the warm July air in the slightly stuffy TV room upstairs and the flickering images coming to life. Just magic!
1
Dad sold and repaired TVs. His store displayed the earliest color TV in its window, and a crowd gathered on the sidewalk every evening when the network switched its broadcast over from black and white to color. Of course we were going to land on the moon!
I watched the moon landing at my parents' house as a newlywed. They didn't watch with us because we couldn't be in a room together. My husband had just finished college and we were scrambling to find a way to keep him safe from Viet Nam. We had no TV of our own and could not bear to watch the news. But the moon...the moon!
He still has the New York Times from that day. Also from the day the draft lottery numbers came out--even though we lived in Indiana by then, he wouldn't believe his mercifully high number until he could see it in the Times.
7
My father worked for the Ford Foundation, which had supported studies that showed that television would lead to a decline in literacy. He was very much opposed to television. Finally, in 1968 when my brother and I were 10 and 11, we acquired a television so that we could watch the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Did I mention that we kids also threatened to run away if our parents didn't buy a television?
7
I grew up with two artists for parents who both refused to have a television in our house as well. They rented a television when I was sick as a child once, but not for the Moon landing... I went to my neighbors home to watchit with my Mother and sister where my neighbor, the writer Robert Ludlum, begged my Mother to “PLEASE buy him a TV”! I would regularly go over early Saturday mornings, usually waking them up, to hope to get to watch Saturday morning cartoons... They were exasperated with my early arrivals each Saturday! As quickly as I could after moving out of my house at 19, I purchased my first television...Now, I rarely watch it....
5
Thanks for sharing this. At the time, my parents had just obtained a "camp" in the Adirondacks. While it eventually got electricity and its own well and even a phone, it never got a television. My dad, a lifelong radio buff would listen to ballgames and such.
But come Apollo 11, my mom insisted that a small set from home be brought up to "the lake" where we sat glued to the unfolding history. Afterwards the TV was returned to our regular house never to travel northward again.
Often we'd go outside at night and gaze at all the stars, the occasional eclipse and other sky-bound events, but my 89-year old Mom and I have been talking a lot this week about how she wasn't going to miss that moment of landing on the moon. I'm grateful she made it so.
5
My two girls, just barely aged 4 and 5, and I were visiting my parents in Denver. The girls were rampaging around in some kind of loud play just before the crucial moments of landing. I scooped them up and put them out on the front porch and closed the door! I’d studied in the paper about how best to photograph the Small Step, off that black and white tv, and I did, weeping tears of awe. I still have the blurry images of that giant leap. Yes, yes indeed, we must save our beautiful blue planet from ourselves—but part of what we are, brave and foolhardy species—part of what we are is glorious and magnificent. To imagine and DO such an audacious thing. I hope it is not too late to save our precious home, home to all we have ever known.
9
When men landed on the moon in 1969 my 76 year old Nana said "no....no....no....it is made of cheese", and she was serious.
She was born before the invention of cars, airplanes, radio, and television...and I guess she had just had enough of adjusting to new realities.
Our parents allowed unlimited watching of television which back then was comprised of cheerful variety shows, The Wonderful World of Disney, and morality-based sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best - which in 2019 we are watching again on channel 8.2, and getting it from an antenna on the roof....not everything has changed :-)
4
My parents were not big fans of tv either. No television on school nights which was strictly enforced. Fifty years ago we were in the midst of a seven week trip to Europe, on the Peloponnesus of Greece. The locals in a seaside town had their ears glued to the radio congratulating me and my family for our achievement. It was as much theirs as it was ours. Still the USA was viewed with awe and admiration. How things have changed in the past fifty years.
13
As a young woman with a husband, one little two-year-old girl, and expecting our second child in two more months, the moon landing of Apollo 11 was a real experience of reality being as far out as the Counter Cultural life style we embraced in 1969.
We were living in a one-room adobe apartment in an older neighborhood in Santa Fe, New Mexico, living on food stamps to supplement the meager wages my husband brought home from making adobe bricks in a huge vacant field across town.
Like many of the folks we hung out with, we didn't have television in our lives for various philosophical and economic reasons. For one thing, t.v. was thought to corrupt the mind; it was viewed as too commercial and "plastic";much better that we remained pure and outside the realms of the "straight" society.
Happily our neighbor of similar tastes did have a small (pink, no less!) portable television that she brought over to our little apartment where we sat on any chair that could be found to view the momentous event. The television sat on an old '50s-style table in the kitchen where we were all gathered--a couple of other folks dropped by learning through the always-busy grapevine that we had a t.v. and were watching the moon-landing.
The event was absolutely amazing and shared by watching a rare television set with those of us who were together that evening in New Mexico to enjoy the historic times we lived--the next month was Woodstock.
14
Thank you for sharing this well written piece.
I was in sleep-away camp in the Berkshires in 1969, and my camp sent us all to the barn where they hooked up a TV so everyone could watch it.
Happy memories to everyone who was alive for this event.
24
I can relate to the "alien" television arriving for the moon landing. I watched the moon landing on a coin-operated TV in a cheap residential hotel. It was the first and last time I fed quarters into that beast.
Abstaining from electronic distractions has advantages and allows time for both reading and for doing real things in the real world. I have not watched television for decades, and I do not do facebook, instagram, or twitter either.
8
I love your story!! Thanks for sharing this.
My parents had a television but we were limited to 2 hours a week.
11
To everyone who says space exploration is a waste of money take a look at our defense spending for the past 50 years and all the other government waste.
Space exploration is core to our species existence. The ability to gain new insight to our very being.
19
@Hal
Also key to our species’s existence are environmental protections. But we are destroying this beautiful planet with our reckless behaviors, not to mention Dolt 45’s reversal of environmental regulations. Let us explore not just space but also how to protect our waters, land, and air.
1
What a wonderful piece of writing and remembrance! Thanks for bringing a smile to my face today.
21
What a nice story. I opened this article and laughed out loud several times . "Before there even was a grid, we were living off it."
Thank you
31
@John H. Clark, except that way we’re not living off the grid. Not even close to that.
I watched the landing and subsequent first steps, on a large (for the time) television in the main lecture theatre of the Geology School at Melbourne University. The entire faculty and interested students spent much of the day glued to that television.
Extra interest was generated by the fact that a recently appointed senior lecturer was going to get samples from the moon to analyse. Quite possibly the only geologist outside the US to do this. I remember one geologist saying, as the second rock was collected; "that one is ours".
The pity of the moment is that we have only taken that one step, and gone no further. I suppose that it is too hard to "pork-barrel" space.
13
I remember the amazing miracle of that day. I was a science fact and fiction fan.
I am disappointed and shocked that manned spaceflight never returned to the Moon nor visited Mars for the 1st time.
The end of the Cold War removed one of the key motivations for the race to the Moon. While the American war in Vietnam and color aka racial strife along with urban violence and poverty created competing financial priorities.
The American Space Shuttle program didn't live up to it's cheap, frequent and safe operations promise. While the International Space Station has been the only effort of its kind neither China nor India are part of this effort.
Changing the focus from public government space programs to private space efforts offers an uncertain future in space. Chemical rockets are too slow and too expensive. Humans needing gravity, liquid water, oxygen and protection from radiation in order to survive is a challenge.
Unmanned satellites and spacecraft have expanded our knowledge of the galaxies, stars, moons, planets, comets, asteroids, our solar system, our Milky Way galaxy and our universe.
9
Television, in black and white landed in our house maybe a year or two before the Moon landing. Didn't get color until I got married.Had the local cable service for awhile after we moved here, but when they made some availability changes, we got Dish. Then we got to the point if asking the question, "why are we paying them $60 a month for something we're hardly watching?" Cancelled the service, though the antenna still is perched on the roof.
Now with all the availability of streaming media over the Internet, I have much more control over what to watch and when I watch it. Not to mention that the 42" TV set also doubles as my computer monitor.
8
Are you my long-lost twin? This was our family, too. Although we did not rent a TV for the moon landing, we were fortunately visiting my grandmother and our entire extended family watched the moon landing on her television. Needless to say the whole thing is an indelible memory, even though I, like your brother, was regrettably asleep when Neil Armstrong actually set his foot on the lunar surface.
We didn't get a TV until 1973. However, unlike your story, after we got one, we all watched it addictively, in fact we all got TVs in our own bedrooms then! One extreme to the other.
12
I graduated from college in 1986. I could never afford a television the first 5 years. I just got out of the habit. I never got one. You name the show, friends, Seinfeld, game of thrones, I have never seen it. People come into my home and they say after 30 minutes, "you don't have a tv".
I'm not a snob, I just got out of the habit and can't seem to get in it. I am not sure what I have missed, besides some cultural references.
I know what it has given me. I have read thousands of books and I have 20 hours in the week that most people don't have. My kids stream on their laptops and tell me about some shows that I have missed.
14
@Michael B.
Good for you. It is nice sometimes to watch something really good, but TV is such an easy waste of time it keeps us from doing a lot more things that are much more interesting. I don't turn it on until the news at 6:30pm. Too much mindless drivel on -daytime TV is the worst and now you can't escape that in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists.
1
I was 19 at the time and just that month had my draft status changed to 1A. By December I would be in the Navy. I clearly remember Sputnik and standing outside with the neighbors believing that we saw it pass overhead. Earlier that decade my Mother, bless her, had let me stay home from school to watch both Gus Grissom and Alan Shepherd’s launch. She was good that way and also let me stay home to watch Sandy Koufax strikeout 15 Yankees in ‘63. She had formed me as a Dodger fan throughout the 50s, my Dad was a Giants fan. Needless to say they split up.
I was at work in Roselle Park, NJ at a place called Okay Foods in the early morning hours. I’d brought a portable TV to work and watched while stirring a steam kettle full of rice pudding. This was one time when you knew history was being made and did not want to miss it. I suspect most of my generation remembers “tranquility base here the Eagle has landed” and “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, or at least that’s how I remember it.
So many things happened in the ‘60s most of them were bad. Some of them changed the country forever and for better. I can’t say landing on the moon did that but like both Kennedy assassinations and that of Martin Luther King these standout never to be forgotten short of senility.
16
You say that your mother formed you as a Dodger fan. I like your mother.
@James Rogers
Thank you for reminding me of those two indelible statements. "The Eagle has landed" said much about who we are, and why we remain a proud people despite our failings. The D-Day landings were also monumental historical events; Western democracies were saved from a new Dark Ages of oppression. A friend had a housemother who was a child in The Netherlands under Nazi occupation; she remembered the news that Americans were coming; she knew the Americans would drive out the Germans, because she knew the Americans were good. For the most part, we are good. I refuse to fall into the trap of denigrating my fellow citizens who are no worse than any other people who belong to an Empire. Not all Romans were bloodthirsty for Christian blood; not all Romans had or abused slaves. Not all Germans were Nazis.
My parents refused to allow TV into our home until around 1972. The first thing I remember seeing on TV was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. I don’t recall seeing any of the moon landings. Their decision certainly demonstrates the pitfalls of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water.
9
The summer before my senior year in college, the middle of the night. I will never forget it.
9
Sunday, 20 July 1969 - Saturday, 20 July 2019, ... fifty years. Granted, this essay is about getting a TV for watching the moon landing - I just can't get past all the things that happened in my life since then. Odd thoughts returning ... wanting to go to Woodstock, wanting a Nehru jacket but ended up with a corduroy jacket when leather was the trend. The Beatles, Janis Joplin, San Francisco, LA, the Vietnam War, Kent State ...Nixon. Let's remember Astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee (1967), the Challenger (1986), and the Columbia (2003). Yes, I believe America has paid a hard price to be where we are at now. I don't feel any celebration, I just feel it needed to be done for humanity.
15
Lovely essay. Thanks.
15
To relive this entire Apollo 11 experience brings back the joy we all had as children for an event that President Kennedy couldn't share with us.
Yes, we have had ongoing issues fifty years ago but for this special moment we were all one in pride and joy . We went to the moon because as President Kennedy stated it was "hard to do"
This weekend reminds Americans not that they need reminding that great leaders like FDR, Johnson Kennedy, Obama are deeply devoted to democracy and this country.
Bigots come and go but Presidents who are great their imprint last forever on the American people.
We all reflect and be remember once again how special this trip was.
44
@Tony
Social Security to protect the old, the Voting Rights Act to give power to all citizens, the Space Program to extend knowledge of our universe, the Affordable Care Act to begin the process of access to basic health care to all, regardless of citizenship status. These are benchmarks for us to be proud of; Trump will be a dark footnote in future history books; we will continue to progress with each new generation.
7
Thank you, Tony. I needed to read that. Of course you are right. We Americans will survive this terrible administration.
Predictions of a man on the moon were around for ever, predictions the rest of us would watch on TV, no where to be found.
6
I was 10 at the time. Fascinated by anything NASA related. My family was camping in the Texas Hill Country and gathered around the radio to listen to the landing.
11
It's not TV I regret that invaded our lives. I never thought it was particularly addictive. I regret Video Games, which has absolutely ruined societal interaction. Video Games, starting with Pong I guess, ruined people I know. Their eyes have become little dots in a head full of distraction unable to concentrate on anything meaningful and communicate on an adult level with other people. Ugh.
9
This is a wonderful piece and the memories of that night in the comments section that it inspired, more so! Amid all this excitement over the moon landing, who else remembers that it is also the anniversary of the Chappaquiddick scandal? From a Vanity Fair article about the scandal: “Looking back 50 years on, Chappaquiddick says much about its era, a time when a privileged, powerful man could manipulate a system to avoid prosecution...” Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
20
More than a dozen of us that day, Purdue Navy ROTC students, had ended another rigorous day with the US Marines at Little Creek, Virginia. It was part of our introduction to the various options we had to serve with surface, sub-surface, and aviation forces upon college graduation. So we crowded into the Officer’s Club on the base to watch the moon landing along with all the other enthusiastic folks.
I had been attracted to Purdue University in 1967 as a high school senior because of two primary if adolescent reasons. Quarterback Bob Griese and the Boilermakers had won the Rose Bowl, when there were far fewer bowl games. Even more impressively, Purdue was the cradle of the astronaut program and everyone knew their names as they made incremental advances into space.
So it was there I watched a Purdue alum and former Navy pilot being the first to step on the surface of the moon. I’m not sure that “high fives” had even been invented, but our pride and excitement were vented appropriately.
I did go on to become a Naval Aviator and have a long career with an airline where Neil Armstrong served on the Board of Directors. That path was highly selective enough but the educational requirements to merely apply for the program were daunting, far beyond my own skills set and devotion. But the emotions of that day are still fresh in my mind.
12
I was already interested in the US Space program at 8yo. Space was to me what dinosaurs were to other kids. So my parents didn't have to tell me to watch. It was the right and proper thing to do! The moon! Men were landing on the MOON!
I have a vague memory of the Apollo 11 broadcasts. Reinforced by all the ones to follow. Didn't miss any of them unless they got little coverage like towards the end of the Apollo program.
We might not need another moon landing, but this nation needs a huge leap forward in its support for these sorts of Scientific endeavors, and technological breakthroughs. Not dopey devices to distract and track us, but real science and tech, that elevates and advances our World.
I'd like it to include Environmental fixes, out from under the shadow of all the politics of Climate Change. Where we go after many ways to lessen our pollution impacts - past and future - and clean the place up so to pass it all down in a slightly better shape.
Lets just clean the place up, and make not adding more human refuse a priority. Seems like a win-win for everyone if we just focus on cleaning the planet up, figuring ways not to keep adding more to the piles.
11
@Boregard
Yes - environmental fixes should really be our next moon shot. Or perhaps, even more difficult, fixing people's attitudes and awareness around environmental fixes.
12
What comes around goes around. We have readopted life without TV, going on 10 years for me and 20 years for my wife. But I did read this excellent article on my computer!
13
What is is with physicist fathers? We, too lived in a 19th century household... but my parents had purchased a small black and white TV the previous fall after my mother reported that my younger brothers were unable to converse with the other kids at their bus stop, who apparently were constantly chattering about whatever shows they had watched the night before. We were only allowed Saturday cartoons and one show a night during the week. Many years later, after I left for college, they bought a color TV because my mother had broken her leg and was pretty immobile for a long time! I do think it's interesting that none of us are TV watchers to this day, although in my house we do stream.
8
@Smith
does the device matter all that much?
1
“No one who was alive then can forget the sights and sounds of that weekend in 1969.”
A gross exaggeration even if not meant literally. Some of us believed there were other matters that needed urgent attention, e.g., the human and environmental carnage against the Vietnamese fight for independence, acid rain, rebellions and riots and racism...
In some ways, it resembled today. I don’t mean there’s anything wrong from taking a break now and then to celebrate significant moments in history, but sentence above is misleading.
5
I was at my parent's first lake house in upstate New York. My eyes were transfixed on the ghostly images flickering accross the screen of the 12" black and white TV stting on a table next to the stairs going up the bedrooms. I watched 'til I dropped in a living room illuminated by that screen. My bored sister and her 2 girls children went to bed, something I've never understood.
You remember details of life's momentous occassions. That was mine.
10
I turned 12 in the summer of '69, a memorable year filled with historic events and my first year in Junior High. I can't remember exactly where I was when “The Eagle has landed,” but I remember a thrill up and down my spine as it happened.
We had a color tv for years before the landing, one of the few luxuries my father insisted on.
7
I also grew up in a family that shunned television - we finally got one when I was in high school. I saw the moon landing at a neighbor's house. I am still a fanatical reader and can take or leave TV - mostly I watch it while working out.
10
I was 14, staying with my aunt and uncle at their weekend house in Sag Harbor, which had no TV. We went to a party at another house to watch. The no-TV was because they felt Sag didn’t need one. There were sunsets, and projects and board games and books and music and cards and conversations. TV was for weeknights. Lesson learned.
14
I have never joined the collective enchantment with the Moon Landing. Fifty years ago it struck me as a huge waste of money, a distorted intention, focus and appropriate concern to the mess we had made on EARTH. Why go to the moon? Was it going to make life better for the untold masses starving to death, living in squalor, the issues of pollution in waterways, air pollution, lack of health care, and on and on. Was it that we intended to move to the moon enmass as soon as EARTH was no longer livable?
This seemed to me to be a great big diversion, a fairytale having absolutely no practical goal or justification, other than taking attention from the really painful issues we were becoming aware of; issues affecting mankind and planet Earth. So, spare me a replay 50 years later. This is one piece of nostalgia I have no interest in, because, NOTHING HAS CHANGED for the better. The lovely moon is still there. Gazillions of dollars were spent when they should have been funneled to what was needed on EARTH, and not into a meaningless, frivolous competiton with Russia . What a huge waste of resources needed by earthly human beings.
Planet EARTH is deteriorating and 50 years worse off. Spare me all the celebration. For me, there is no reason or cause for it.
12
@susan paul
A few things have changed for the better...life expectancy has increased and the standards of living have gotten better for many people. Violent crime has decreased in the US and many other places. Pollution has actually decreased compared with the 60s and 70s. And of course, the internet has made information available at the touch of a mouse.
However, all the problems that are occurring today would still have occurred without going to the moon. The moon landing was an extreme accomplishment in engineering and science inspiring generation to seek STEM knowledge...and that made it worth it.
18
@susan paul Semiconductors, Teflon, calculators and hundreds of other technologies that make our lives better every day came from what we learned in the race for space. There is still tragedy in the world and there likely always will be. But everyone's life has been made better by the science that happened to make the moon landing possible. Maybe society at large did not benefit from the moon landing but it surely has benefitted by the science that made it possible.
6
@susan paul And what do you think would have been different if we did not go to the moon? I find it more interesting that we do not feel a compelling need to go back!
3
How many people do you think had a television in 1969? True, most of America did, but certainly not most of Planet Earth, not by a long shot. My family didn't have one, though we could afford one. My father didn't like commercial culture, which I didn't find strange then and don't now.
8
Where is the equivalent to this project to find nowadays? Clean water for every human fellow on earth no plastic in the oceans solar power and a green planet instead a green house with global warming destroying the planet for generations to come. America once inspired the world please do it again no need to fly to the moon do the job at home first.
16
We had the same upbringing, and had to watch tv at friends homes.....The astronauts were heroes and I remember devouring all the photos and stories, and building models of the rockets!
50 years later and I'm still television free, I find it odd when people talk about certain commercials or The housewives of wherever.
As Frank Lloyd Wright once said; "Television is chewing gum for the eyes."
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Fifty years ago our dalmatian, Lady, ate the roast. As I remember, the actual landing took place right around dinnertime. We had laid the table, then ran back to the television in my parents's room to watch that small step turn into a giant leap. I don't remember much of the landing; it has become a conflation of the iconic images from that mission more than a memory of the event itself.
I do remember returning to the table to see the platter on the table and what remained of the roast on the floor.
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@ClayB
But wasn't it the wee hours when Armstrong actually took that step down to the surface? That's the way I remember it, but I could be wrong.
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@DW
I had to check myself. The module landed around 4 pm EDT and stepped onto the moon at about 10:45 pm. While my family ate late, we didn't eat THAT late. It may be that we were in between the landing and the walking on the moon when we discovered what our Lady had done.
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@DW
Yeah, it was the wee hours on the East Coast USA, including Philly and Brooklyn
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Before the addictive qualities of television, there were similar qualities of radio. And at the age of ten, I was a radio junkie. So much so, that after getting a poor grade in fourth grade arithmetic, my mother rationed my radio listening time. My grades improved after a six-week hiatus, and for some unknown reason I never returned to my former radio listening habits.
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Thank you, Mr. Purdy. My dad bought the family's first TV, secondhand of course, for the moon landing, and then took a picture of all of us -- seated, scrunched and asleep on the couch -- just as Neil Armstrong planted the flag. As I recall, you can just make out the TV and its grainy picture of Armstrong in the corner of the photo -- but that could be memory, not actual fact.
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love this! (“you have peculiar parents”). What a perfect funny and unique snapshot of that moment — the exquisitely rendered personal story inside the house against the public spectacle of the lunar landing and chappaquidick (i forgot or was oblivious to that!) outside. thanks for this Matt Purdy! i remember always looking forward to reading your column. this is a special treat!
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The bottom line TV is like any other advancement in technology.
The extremes will hurt you.
What I mean by that is if you become a couch potato, your mind turns to mush but if you don't let your family own one, in its own way, minds will turn to mush since it is a legit way of learning and entertainment.
I am a senior and have a basic no frills computer. I know other seniors especially super seniors who are in the middle Ages because they don't have a basic computer.
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I was too young to watch the moon landing, but I too had peculiar parents who eschewed television. I also have vivid memories of the few times my parents borrowed a television, and binge watching everything I could. And of my embarrassment at having to explain to a teacher that I couldn’t do an assignment which required watching the evening news because we didn’t have a television. This in the early 80s when most students already had cable.
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I absolutely love this story. I'll be laughing about that "Oven-TV" for weeks.
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My parents also eschewed the television, and for the same reason a did the author’s. We went over to Grandma’s house for the moon landing. My husband and I are children of the space-race era. Our house is named Tranquility Base.
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This was a wonderful and welcome read.
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What a great story. I was at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho and they brought out a large screen for us to watch the landing. While memorable, your story is better than mine. Wonderful that your parents rented the TV for your family to have a lifetime memory.
The irony and humor in your story is fabulous.
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