Sheep Meadow, Central Park

Hours earlier, as the rain came down steadily and a premature darkness fell over the city, hundreds of people streamed through Central Park and converged on the center of the Sheep Meadow to join the Moon-In crowd that was already standing in a huge circle around three nine-by-twelve-foot television screens set up in a triangular formation and tuned to three different channels. The Meadow was filled with puddles and mud holes, and many of the younger spectators had shucked their shoes and were negotiating the slippery terrain in bare feet. Some people carried umbrellas, others pulled coats or jackets over their heads, and a good many seemed happy simply to give themselves up to the rain and the prospect of a soaking. In front of the C.B.S. screen, five young men in beards shared a large green-red-and-yellow striped beach umbrella; next to them stood a couple huddled beneath a bed quilt; and nearby three girls who had contrived a makeshift tent out of an Army-surplus blanket and a pair of sanitation trash baskets were playing Scrabble. Overhead, three searchlight beams met, forming a soft halo of haze, through which the rain fell in silver sheets. Shortly before nine o’clock, Walter Cronkite announced that the hatch of the LM would be opened in half an hour, and the word was immediately carried over the Meadow on hundred of lips. “The hatch,” people whispered. “The hatch is going to be opened. The hatch. . .” A few minutes later, the rain stopped and umbrellas were furled. The crowd around the television screens was so dense that movement was nearly impossible, and here and there, in a vast assemblage that filled the Meadow almost as far as the eye could see, small children, their eyes blinking with sleep and wonderment, were hoisted upon their fathers’ shoulders. The rain started to come down again, and hundreds of umbrellas were unfurled, only to be furled again as people in the rear protested that they couldn’t see the screens.

As the scheduled moment for the hatch opening approached, the crowd grew still and every gaze appeared to be fixed on a television screen. Then came an announcement that the moon walk would be delayed for half an hour, and there was a sustained groan of disappointment. At a quarter to ten, Houston could be heard through a crackle of static calling to the command module, and a few minutes later the crowd, which had grown hushed again, burst into applause when the astronauts were informed by the voice of Mission Control, “You are go for cabin depressurization.” The rain stopped and started several times during the next half hour, and dozens of spectators, weary from standing and long since soaked, began to sit down in the wet grass and mud. When the hatch opened, and Armstrong’s booted foot could be seen groping for the rungs of the landing vehicle’s ladder, and the totally unreal words “ LIVE FROM THE SURFACE OF THE MOON ” appeared upon the screens, there was a gasp, as if everyone had taken a quick breath. There was a smattering of applause, and then dozens of flashbulbs began popping as cameramen took pictures of a vast sea of faces held perfectly still at the same upturned angle and frozen into identical expressions of rapture and awe.

For the next twenty minutes, the crowd feasted silently upon the spectacle unfolding before it, and when Aldrin came down the ladder to join Armstrong, there was a loud burst of applause, laughter, and cheering. After a short while, there was a surge away from the screens as people started moving about and stretching their cramped legs. Some of the spectators headed for a large refreshment tent that held been set up on the east side of the Meadow. Many of these people moved on to a nearby bandstand, where an orchestra had swung into a nineteen-thirties version of “Blue Moon.” When, at twelve minutes before midnight, President Nixon came on the television screens to talk with the astronauts, many people turned back toward the center of the Meadow to rejoin the hundreds who had stayed to watch Armstrong and Aldrin in their historic walk. After the President had finished, it was announced that Armstrong held been on the surface of the moon for fifty-nine minutes, and suddenly Aldrin could be seen floating gracefully over the lunar surface as he performed mobility exercises. The jazz band that had been blaring away in the background was replaced by a rock-and-roll ensemble, whose performance raised the decibel count in the Meadow even higher, and the spectators crowded closer to the television screens in order to hear the astronauts describe the lunar landscape and to watch them walk around scooping up samples of its rock.

At one o’clock, the voice of Mission Control told Aldrin to “head on up the ladder,” and announced that Armstrong had been on the surface of the moon slightly more than two hours. The rain was beating down steadily now, but only when the hatch of the landing vehicle was closed, eleven minutes later, did the last, diehard spectators turn away. Some hippies rushed by chanting “Free the moon!” Then people by the hundred began streaming toward Fifth Avenue. Behind them, like an unblinking eye, the N.B.C. screen still showed a picture of the LM sitting at Tranquillity Base. The astronauts were safe inside and the moon walk was over, but almost everyone kept looking back over his shoulder through the downpour, as if to reassure himself that what he had seen with his eyes in the Sheep Meadow had really taken place upon the moon. ♦