At the end of it, I can't decide if I ended up feeling way old or way young...
It started, of course, with the death of Walter Cronkite Friday night. Walter might have been the first media person – short of a cartoon character or kids' show host – who''s name I knew when I was still a tyke.
A child of the 1960s, I was enamored with news accounts of the space program. After one of the Gemini launches, probably in 1966, I piled up some of the lawn chairs in my attempt to build a rocket.
It seems, at least in my memory, like every time there was a launch, Walter was there to explain what was going on to me. I am sure he had some influence in my eventual career.
By the time of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, I was deeply immersed into the moon program. The family had to drink Tang at breakfast because of the many moon mission tie-ins. The legions of Army men were eschewed for mini spacemen. A large moon mission poster replaced Batman on the bedroom wall. I kept busy building models of Saturn V rockets and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM),
And I will never forget watching Walter and Wally Schirra anchor that first moon walk. I sat wide-eyed with the family in the basement of our Kankakee, Ill. home taking it all in on that wonderful, old, black-and-white Zenith TV.
The broadcast looked a lot like this:
That we live in an age now when I can just call that up and plunk it into something that I am writing is truly a marvel. I have spent a considerable part of the weekend reviewing old images and video from that era.
Everything seemed possible back then.
Suddenly, 40 years flies by... Walter passes on, man has done little else to capture a 9-year-old's imagination and I am dangerously close to becoming 50 years old.
Who the hell wants to be 50 years old? Yeah, I know: Someone in their 80's. Yikes.
Now, there was something else that captured our imagination back in the 1960s: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Our desire was mostly fueled by this TV ad:
Now, Santa, for whatever reason, never blessed us with one of these holy grail presents. But other kids in the neighborhood had it and it was pretty fun. Violence is often the best pastime.
Sunday night, we hit Jillian's for dinner and after playing a bit in the arcade – doing my damnedest to stave off old age – I was turning in some tickets at the counter when I saw it: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots! Only 3,000 points! Heck, we had more than 15,000 points saved up.
ROCK 'EM SOCK 'EM ROBOTS TODAY
Walter might be gone, Apollo and meaningful space exploration might be over, but damned if Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots hasn't somehow lived on – even if Mattel had to take over Marx to get the robots to the 21st century.
We only clear the pub table in the family room of day-to-day paraphernalia for special events, like when company visits. But Sunday night we cleared the table and my partner in silliness, Mary, and I proceeded to take part in hilarious Rock 'Em Sock 'Em battles. I knocked her block off. She knocked mine off. We laughed hysterically.
I'm not sure it made me feel younger. I guess I felt better. If robots can be taught to survive for decades and make people feel good, maybe there's hope for us all.
More later,
Mark
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