Now, thirty years later, the original tape of the event has been unearthed by Ed Roseman, a composer and musician now living in Massachusetts.  Edly has cleaned up the recording (slightly) and posted it up on his web site.

It’s not to be mistaken for a high-grade anything.

But the concert, for me, is full of humor and sentiment.  Interestingly, it’s the quiet, melancholy tunes, with the audience momentarily hushed, that touch me the most now.   Still, “Mr. Rogers Does the Puppets Voices” and “New Jersey” and “Just a Bunch of Assholes from Outer Space” are a really nice portrait of where I was, at that time, then.

You can download the concert here.  This will put a folder on your laptop that contains all the tunes, which you can then play right on your iTunes player, or whatever other application you use.  The download will take about five minutes, plus or minus, depending on  your connection speed.  Hope you enjoy.

2. Got in the car and drove to my alma mater, Wesleyan University, in Middletown, CT, where I had breakfast at O’Rourkes Diner.  Owner Brian O’Rourke comes right up to me and says,  ”I remember you. Class of 1980?” I said yup.  He asked after my friends, as if it had been last week, instead of years and years ago, when last I had pie and coffee in the middle of the night at his diner.  I had eggs over easy, bacon, home fries, Irish soda bread, and truly fine coffee.

3. Then walked in a wide circle around the campus.  Down the old brownstone buildings of college row, over to my freshman dorm, back through the Science Center, where I paused for just a moment in the big lecture hall, where Psych 101 was in progress.  I stood at the back and remembered being a student in that room, remembered hearing people such as my own innocent, young self discussed during the class on “Abnormal Psychology.”

4.  Walked into a cafe and got a latte, where the woman behind the counter also claimed to remember me from 1979.  She said the school was richer now, but it had lost its “esprit d’corps.”

5. Walked up Foss Hill and sat down just by the observatory and watched the brown leaves of autumn swirl around me. And thought:  A)  Oh how happy I was here and young;  B) Oh how sad i was here, and young; C) Oh how I wish I were 20 again; D) Oh thank god I am not twenty again;  E) How lucky I was, to go here, then, when I did, and to know the people I did; and F) How lucky I am now, to be where I am now instead, here, in this life, at this moment.

6.  Walked through the Arts Center, into the old music building, downstairs to the practice rooms, where a dozen different people played a dozen different pianos. I pulled into one of them and played an F chord, and then a B flat.  Noodled.  And remembered noodles of long ago, same piano, same room.

7.  Got back in the car, got outta there, drove up to the big cemetery and looked all around at the blustery autumn, and remembered how beloved that graveyard was by dear, departed John Moynihan, my friend who used to appear out of nowhere, wearing a pirate costume, hand you a treasure map, and just as quickly disappear.

8. And then headed north, to Maine, and my family, and the days to come.

And the space program, of course, which I was a huge fan of; Cronkite spoke of the way that, in spite of how much of the 60s made us downcast, that the mercury and gemini and apollo programs made us “upcast:” that each of us cast our eyes upward to the moon, and how that gave us hope.

But there’s also the memories of listening to Walter when nothin’ special was going on. That’s what I miss, and have missed, over the years– having, as they say on LOST, “a constant.” You’d think I’d be the last person in the world to lament the way so many things change, but it’s hard losing our constants, as if the stars themselves began to wander unpredictably across the sky.

By 1979 I was a senior at Wesleyan, and the hostage crisis in Iran dominated the news. I was the editor of the college newspaper, and lived in a co-ed frat, a huge old brick building with giant white columns. After dinner each night, i’d go into a small study, and there watch the CBS news. Walter was getting old by then, but even there, far from home, struggling with gender, afraid each day i was going to mess up at college, mess up with my life, I’d sit and watch.

And more often than not, i’d fall asleep in front of the TV, just as my father used to do during the endless reports of casualties and loss in Vietnam.

That frat was occupied by the first wave of punk rockers, some of whom were my friends, and they always wanted to watch Wheel of Fortune–or something– instead of the news. Since i was so self-important, I always prevailed. Until i fell asleep. Then, at the end of the news, I’d wake up, and look around.

Surrounding me on all sides were punkers in leather, with studs and mohawks. Watching Wheel of Fortune. Each night, they waited for me to fall asleep, and then they’d change the channel.

This has got to be one of the oddest Cronkite memories (my German mother always liked to remind us that ‘cronkheit’ means ‘sickness.’) But it’s the one I have that feels closest to my heart.

When Armstrong first stepped onto the moon, the amazing thing is that Cronkheit, after all those years, lost the ability to speak. He just sat there shaking his head, amazed. I’ve had that feeling, now and again, during my life, when miracles have occured– and sometimes when nothing was happening at all, except life rolling along. A lot of those times, Cronkheit was there.

Thanks, Grampa. I’ll miss you.