Russians, Nuclear Bombs, The New Ice Age, China, Pollution
Cold War Kids Like Me Grew Up in Fear
Let Our Children and Grandchildren grow up in Peace
Whenever I was outside in our yard as a jet flew over, I stopped whatever I was doing and watched. Is this it? Is The Bomb about to drop? Kids across America who grew up during the cold war did this a lot. One minute you’re zooming down a hill on your bike or raking the garden, and then you hear the engines, and everything stops.
You gaze up, shielding your eyes, wondering if everyone you love is about to die. After the jet becomes a dot high in the distance and you know you’ve once again escaped death by nuclear annihilation, you pick up life where you left it.
In the evening we watched newscasts showing the current happenings in Vietnam or Cambodia. Walter Cronkite showed us Gritty black and white footage of young men tramping through hot jungles to battle for freedom and democracy.
There were no fortunate sons in our neck of the woods, and I worried about all the boys I knew and whether they would go to war when they turned eighteen. Until 1971, you could be drafted in the US before you were old enough to vote.
This was life growing up during the Cold War. It was a wonderful era in so many ways, and we had great times even living with the notion that If the Chinese army didn’t come marching across the Heartland, then the Russians were going to blow it up with The Bomb.
Our teachers in school seldom discussed the war in Vietnam or the spectral Bomb that haunted our world. I suppose they were waiting for the books to be written. We learned about past wars of course, and how the USA and its allies always led the charge to victory.
They found other topics to disturb impressionable kids: air pollution, water pollution, and the New Ice Age. Our middle school science teacher Mrs. Hartman taught our class that by the time we were thirty years old the air would be so poisonous we would need to wear a gas mask every time we went outdoors. I remember the dress she was wearing that day, deep blue and sleeveless.
She said all of this with complete authority. These were the facts. It had been decided.
The water supply would likely be so polluted by the year 2000, teachers told us, that daily water filtering in homes would be routine. Acid rain would intensify, becoming common in cities and would sting when it touched your skin.
They showed filmstrips to prove it.
It isn’t what you’re told or taught in life that impacts you, it’s whether you believe. I believed.
It was around this same time that the first police officers came to school to scare us straight about the dangers of illegal drugs. Teachers took up the mantle.They loved to warn us about sinister drug pushers and the awful life of a junkie and remind us that drugs were “just an escape from reality.” More grim filmstrips followed.
What kind of twisted minds decided this is the right thing to tell young teenagers:
1) You may have no future since you’re all in danger of dying young due to war, nuclear explosion, or the hideous effects of radiation. If you’re lucky enough to survive, you will eventually live in the toxic tundra of the approaching New Ice Age.
2) Drugs are an escape from reality.
Like a million other cold war kids, I jumped at the chance to escape a reality where the sun might get blotted out by commies. Please tell me where I can get some of this reality escapism you speak of, thank you very much. I need something to replace the hope you stole. If I get really high, maybe I won’t notice the sun is missing.
I took the first drugs ever offered to me. I smoked the first joint ever passed my way. Zero hesitation.
The only ones not terrified into apocalyptic nightmares by the Doomsday Club of teachers and experts were the ones too ignorant to believe. Lucky them. The doubters thrived and mulled over college majors while those of us who believed what we’d been taught were praying for God to bring our planet back from the eve of destruction and make our pot plants grow faster.
When I look back at the 1970s it seems possible an entire generation may have been manipulated through fear and hopelessness into using drugs by sinister people for nefarious purposes, but that’s another story.
What I pray for today is that teachers and academic experts spare our children and grandchildren from being hurt by wretched terrorists like all of those teachers who were convinced they knew the facts and we needed to hear the Truth.
Inspire the young to care for the planet and have compassion for every living being but leave their hearts untroubled to enjoy growing up. They need protected from fears and obsessions that are not their concern.
There is nothing kids can do to fix wars, the climate, or disease. To worry the innocent is a mistake. They need laughter and carefree days to grow into happy adults.
Kids don’t thrive in an atmosphere of fear. Love teaches, fear destroys.
Even if war is just a shot away, give them shelter.
Leave our children and grandchildren in peace.
