Every time I look at Charles Kuralt, I feel like crying.
It's the first time a television reporter has had that effect on me. Then again, Kuralt isn't exactly your average pretty-boy anchor. He is, in fact, a national treasure. A one and only. A man's man.And after last night, an officially retired man.
Which brings me back to why I tear up every time I lay eyes on Kuralt. As pointed out in Wednesday night's wonderful CBS News hour special, "One for the Road With Charles Kuralt and Morley Safer," we have lost one of journalism's true - and precious few - heroes.
In a passionate conversation conducted in the appropriate ambience of the New York Public Library, "60 Minutes" correspondent Safer chatted with "CBS News Sunday Morning" and "On the Road" host Kuralt about who he is, the remarkable people he has met and the revealing little places he has been.
The ever-eloquent Kuralt reflected on his sojourns through America, reintroducing us to the dirt-poor Mississippi family whose nine children all graduated from college; the man who maintains a bicycle-lending library so no kid in his town will ever have to be without one; and the Iowa farmer who, in his 60s, built a yacht and sailed the world.
But Safer also quizzed Kuralt about Kuralt, and we learned about who the man is and what sticks in his craw.
"Incivility . . . makes me angry," Kuralt said. "Graffiti makes me angry." Intolerance and racial jokes and "the guy who stole my paper from my front porch this morning" also get under Kuralt's skin.
"What also irritates me are all those people who came along and know how you and I should live our lives . . . the health police. I know I'm too fat, but please don't prescribe jogging, not for me. I mean, the notion that you can't any longer sit on the top deck at Yankee Stadium and have a cigar appalls me."
Ironically, the one thing that Safer didn't ask Kuralt last night was: Why now? Why retire at age 59 when your passion is your work and you feel like the luckiest man in the world to have traveled the country and have someone else pay the bills your whole life?
The answer was in the metaphor of a flock of snow geese flying north at the conclusion of the hour.
"My heart knows where the wild goose goes," said a melancholy Kuralt before heading out into the urban jungle of New York City, the camera capturing him strolling out of sight to his new life.
Why is Kuralt retiring now? Because he can. And because he has, television has lost a measure of its warmth forever.