Duck & Cover

In 1962, I was in the 2nd grade in south Denver, Colorado.  We started having Air Raid Drills during school.  (Much later in life a I put together the facts.  Cuban Missile Crisis and a big mountain in southern Colorado that housed NORAD.)  The drills scared me.  I dreamed of tiny planes dropping black bombs on my school.  The Cold War was in full swing.

Somewhere during my early teens, I started thinking about atomic bombs.  We had thousands.  The Soviets had thousands.  It seemed clear to me that if you exploded that many hydrogen bombs on the surface of the planet that it would probably destroy the atmosphere.  Nuclear Winter became a popular concept some years later.

And when had we as a species not used a weapon in a war.  And when had there not been another war.

I didn't think I would live to 30.  If the balloon went up, I intended to sit on the roof of my house and watch the incoming missiles.

In 1977, my wife was pregnant and I was a college drop out with no marketable skills.  I joined the Air Force.  They made me an F-4E Crew Chief.  My name was spray painted on the left side of the front cockpit.  I followed my "aerospace vehicle" to Germany for an exercise.  In a concrete revetment, on the final day of the exercise.  We loaded a live nuclear bomb on my plane.  We'd loaded lots of dummies during exercises in the states, but here in Germany, a man with a gun guarded us at all times.  I started the engines and taxied my plane out of the bunker and saluted the pilots and prepared for the end of the world.

A month later I was baptized.  I believed we as a species needed a miracle to survive.  I only knew one place to look for a miracle.

In the early '90's, I became involved with a bunch of Episcopal Radicals.  They talked about non-violence.  I didn't know what that meant, so I started reading.  Being a small "f" fundamentalist, I went back to Gandhi.

I've lost my way over the intervening years.  I'm going back to Gandhi.

Join me.