<p>As per usual, I am the geezer on these nostalgia threads. Unless dadofsam shows up, or maybe geezermom. </p>
<p>Aanyway, I was in a Cambridge apt. with a slew of roommates between jr and sr year in college. We rented a TV for the purpose. B&W, of course. It seemed huge at the time, but was probably about 17" or 19". </p>
<p>Hard to put my mindset back to how <em>earth-shattering</em> an accomplishment that was. Walter Cronkite … those were the days.</p>
<p>It was quite an earth shattering event, wasn’t it? Considering it was like traveling around in outer space in a tin can. All those space flights were (and really still are, but we tend to take them for granted until something bad happens) very risky.</p>
<p>doubleplay…oy, I got that wrong…I thought you said you are now 38 (which seemed like the youngest mom of college kids amongst us here!). But OK, it was 38 years ago! Ah hah! Let me see…it was '69 you say? I was…12. Older than you and so even if you aren’t 38 years old, you’re younger than me! :D</p>
<p>JMMom…you can be our resident…“big sis.” 
I always wanted an older sister. You ain’t no “geezer.”</p>
<p>I was at summer camp as well, back before they let boys into what was then the Camp Fire Girls. Everyone was buzzing about it but there wasn’t an organized event - perhaps not even a TV on site. I remember sprinting from the dining hall to get to our teepee in time to hear it over a tiny transistor radio that someone had smuggled in. I’m sure the forbidden aspect made it even more exciting. Reception was dreadful but we took turns holding it to our ears and relaying what was being said to the other girls. Very heady stuff to a young teen. I went home and told my family that I wanted to be an astronaut. My brother pointed out that girls couldn’t do that and I’d have to settle for being an a$$. Got his bottom paddled but that didn’t make me feel much better!</p>
<p>The night of the moon landing I was supposed to be going out on a date much earlier that evening. I made him wait…and wait…and wait. I remember standing up in the den of my parents house watching the b&w TV while he waited…and waited…and…</p>
<p>Hey Soozie! I was 12 also…big year for us this year…joining the cops from the old TV show about a state in the Pacific! Wohoo…</p>
<p>I rememeber being in our den…the whole family watched! What an evening!</p>
<p>And Curmudgeon…Camille did a sideswipe of us in New Orleans as well…too bad her little sister Katrina decided to hang around…</p>
<p>DP, the Gorsky story is purely apocryphal but, being of partly Irish descent, I see no reason to let that keep me from telling it.</p>
<p>I remember being asleep, and my mom waking me up to watch the steps on the moon. The TV was small, the picture grainy. The parental divorce would come the same summer…</p>
<p>“One small step…”
It was big, I knew, because I was allowed to stay up late after that.</p>
<p>But the stuff going on down here that year and in 1968 left a mark. Even the very young could see a world changing very fast.
“The Sounds of Silence.” Black Panther riots in nearby Newark, N.J. Lennon and Yoko. SDS takes over Harvard. Hamburger Hill. “Tommy.” Mary Jo Kopechne. Manson. Woodstock. “The Brady Bunch.” Burning bras. </p>
<p>ARPANET is created, but who knew then what we would know now?</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.lyricsdepot.com/simon-and-garfunkel/sounds-of-silence.html[/url]”>http://www.lyricsdepot.com/simon-and-garfunkel/sounds-of-silence.html</a></p>
<p>SSD. Sorry so dark. I was a serious child. I’m younger than that now.</p>
<p>That moon landing was an amazing thing, wasn’t it? – and brave and risky
in a way that is becoming foreign to us. I was 10 and my best friend’s
dad worked for Grumman and had a part in designing something on that
flight, so we were really into it. </p>
<p>The other thing that I remember from that year is the Mets winning the
World Series. They let us listen to the games on the radio at school.</p>
<p>Oh, the memories! I remember sitting in front of the B&W console television in the living room, waiting for the big event (anyone remember the delays???), and finally falling asleep on the floor. Just before the landing, my parents woke me me up. My poor little brother was so sound asleep that he never saw it, although he might not have remembered anyway.</p>
<p>Thanks for starting this thread & happy B-day! I was in high school and driving cross country with my family for a summer vacation. My father was an engineer on the Apollo program. We stopped in Tulsa and spent the night of the moon landing at the home of another Apollo engineer. As the moon landing began, the two drunk engineers began to debate whether mechanical or hydraulic systems were better standing in front of the t.v. in voices so loud I couldn’t hear the t.v. commentary. I remember begging them to get out of the way and shut up. I can’t even imagine why they were debating…my father was involved in ordanance. I’ve always felt like I missed the moon landing! I have much better memories of the first Apollo to go around the moon.</p>
<p>I came home from the teen tour and my neighbor asked if I wanted a spot in his car to go upstate (live in NY) for Woodstock.My parents wouldn’t allow it even though they had just sent me galavanting across Europe with no supervision to speak of where I got drunk for the first time off a giant bottle of wine we bought for 50cents and fell asleep in a bathtub,and had hitchhiking boys taking rides on our tourbus and crashing in our hotel rooms.
I watched news coverage of the 3 days of peace love and harmony on TV and it took a long time to forgive my folks.</p>
<p>I remember as well. Grew up 60 miles away, saw the launch, and watched the moon landing on a B&W TV also!!! I also remember someone’s grandparent thinking it was all a hoax. I was in high school, and remember that I was a little “put out” that my folks were waking me up to see it. We grew up with NASA, and did I really need to watch? I did. </p>
<p>And doubleplay, it was iodine we put in the baby oil??? Eee gads. (Off subject, We finally made it to Hawaii last year, and a local line of sunscreen and tanning products were popular–Maui Babe. They had a rapid tanning product that was “an amazing tanning accelerant” with local and other secret ingredients. My two teenage D’s bought it, and I can promise you it was mostly emulsified oil and…you guessed it, iodine! My guess is the profit margin on it was 99%.)</p>
<p>I watched the moonwalk on a TV in the lobby of a hotel in Mexico City, on the one-and-only foreign trip my family ever took together. </p>
<p>Funny that there are so many children of Apollo project people posting here. My wife is one, too. She was living in Ormond Beach then. Remembers watching all the launches.</p>
<p>I got birthday greetings from CC for my b-day of the 18th. I remember the landing date because it was 2 days after my b-day, back then it seemed to be a men only thing, years later they sent a woman my age into space. Sigh, there went my excuse for not being in the space program; it wasn’t gender, but ability…</p>
<p>I was 17, about to begin my senior year of high school. I watched the moon landing at the house of my friend’s grandmother, an Italian immigrant who spoke little English and was very confused about what she was seeing on TV. I hope someone took the time to explain it to her later.</p>
<p>All of my junior and senior high schools years had been dominated by news of civil rights strife and the Vietnam War. I have always felt that the space program did not get the attention it deserved from many of us teens because of those two issues. Nonetheless, people walking on the moon was a big deal and got us talking about something else, something optimistic, during my senior year in high school. </p>
<p>Then, later in the school year, just as I was finally about to escape the high school experience (which I loathed), the shootings at Kent State happened. Our senior trip to Washington DC got canceled because of it. Some people got to go to the moon, but I couldn’t get out of Missouri.</p>
<p>I didn’t know we were doing family connections, too. I’m looking at a 2-inch core sample of an Apollo command module (in a mason jar) right now. My father did telemetry work on Mercury and WashMom’s dad went from being a Navy test pilot to working on Apollo and the Shuttle for Rockwell. WashMom has worked in aerospace since the early 80s. Except for me, space and aviation is a family tradition.</p>
<p>I was visiting the World Boy Scout jamboree at Farragut State Park near Coeur d’Alene ID. Midmo, I know what you mean about everyone else getting out. At that stage of my life, I have to say that 100s of cute teenage boys from all over the world and a man on the moon made me feel very sorry I lived in Spokane. Left there 3 years later and never returned except for short visits. </p>
<p>And I remember my little brother in an astronaut jumpsuit at about age 3 in about 1963.</p>
<p>Sorry I missed the b’day greetings for doubleplay and "just"aMom - belated congratulations!</p>
<p>I have no family connections to the space program other than loving it. I remember standing on our front porch with my dad for Apollo 8 in my winter coat, and looking up at the moon together. I think I was watching his face more than I was looking at the moon though. It was really through his fascination and admiration of the men in the capsule that I understood what a real feat it was. </p>
<p>By the night we landed on the moon, I was enthralled myself. I watched the landing holding my breath, and I don’t remember even blinking. Wow, now THAT was a reality show!</p>
<p>hayden, what a great post. A great feat for the men in the capsule as well as the men and women who built the vehicle. An unbelievable against all odds feat.</p>
<p>And thanks for the greetings!</p>