Walter Kronkite, R.I.P.

The passing of Walter Kronkite invariably reminds me of my father. Childhood memories of my dad in the 70's has him planted in front of the TV eating dinner watching the news, or not being home and driving his yellow cab around the mean streets of New York City. The City felt so dangerous back then. I remember always being relieved when my parents came home from work. My mom went out into the dark night for her shift at the hospital. My parents couldn't afford a babysitter for me so they watched me in shifts. She worked nights. He worked days. My fears were confirmed when once dad came home robbed and mildly knifed after a shift. Our 7-channel (if we were that lucky...channel reception depended on our jagged wire-hanger-bunny-eared antenna) black and white tv set, blared all the crimes of our graffiti-covered city. I used to sleep under blankets for fear of break-ins. We lived within a block of a busy elevated train track with the frequent train chuggs as our ambient soundtrack.

Life was so different back then. Despite having to sit in front of the tv set to hold the antenna in a certain spot or to turn the heavy channel dial, even tv was much simpler. I remember the ticking of CBS's "60 Minutes". I remember Walter Kronkite's mustache. He was a celebrity in our humble apartment--I think I was 4 or 5 years old. Years later, I remember when my father told me he had picked Mr. Kronkite up in his cab to take him to work one day. I asked him, did you say anything to him? I can't remember what my dad said. I think he said nothing, which would've been in character. Or maybe he couldn't resist and told Mr. Kronkite that he was once a journalist. What I do remember was that it was a memorable enough event for my dad, who doesn't communicate much, to have shared with me. Mr. Kronkite was a common fixture in our one-bedroom apartment in Queens, as common as those subway cars outside floating to and fro the city skyline, as common as my dad's yellow cab pulling up on our block at sunset, as common as that sunset spilling through Manhattan's skyline into our apartment with sherbert colors, past the smelly fish hanging in our kitchen window, that my dad put up to dry (amidst my mom's protestations), as common as the Twin Towers book-ending one side of the skyline, as common as the dreams my parents had of "making it" as struggling young immigrants to this country. With each celebrity passing, we also remember the lives we had that were intricately entwined with them.