Or something.
Have we really fallen so low that such fantasies have any currency at all? Apparently so.
When I was young -- but maybe not so innocent -- my buddy and I would play out fantasies based on the latest science fiction movie shown at the kiddie matinée in town. If one of us missed the movie for some reason, the other had to tell the story convincingly enough to make our playacting in the dusty schoolyard believable to us both. We pretended in all sorts of ways to battle aliens and spiders and ants and mutants and whatever else we could think of to battle against as we saved mankind and the earth itself from a fate worse than death -- again and again and again. And when we tired of that, we played at Space Adventure. For not everything had to be battled against. We could explore the Moon and Mars and distant Jupiter if we wanted.
Bobby and I were eight or nine years old, barely out of our Cowboys and Indians phase. If you'd asked me in 1955 or 56 what my favorite "land" at Disneyland was I'd say Frontierland. By 1957 my answer would be Tomorrowland.
Well, Tomorrow is here and this isn't quite what we bargained for.
Not hardly.
This notion that an AntiFa-Zombie Uprising, engineered by the Clintoons and Obomba and funded by the Other Devil-With-Horns Alien-(read "Jew") Soros is just daft, but it seems to have some currency among the not so bright 40-somethings in the alt-right who never progressed in wisdom beyond their eight or nine year old play-selves. Is this what comes from too much World of Warcraft? I wouldn't know. But something definitely odd has been put in the water, that's for dang sure.
Maybe while we weren't looking, the Rooskies won?
"Commies!!!" was part of our schoolyard play as well. We saw plenty of anti-Communist propaganda pictures at the kiddie matinées, and we were shown plenty of others in our school's cafetorium.
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| Cafetorium |
Not only were we shown lots of anti-Communist movies in the cafetorium and at the kiddie matinées in town, we were also treated to plenty of nuclear annihilation movies, the kind that show the test dummies being blown to bits along with their incinerated houses. Made quite an impression, those movies did. We lived only a few miles from an Aerojet plant which we were told would be a prime target when the bombs started falling, and because of the mountain range just beyond the plant, the effects of the nuclear bomb would be reflected right back at us. See those windows high up on the north facing wall of the cafetorium? The plan was that the heavy canvas drapes would be pulled over them when the sirens went off and we, the children, would shelter under the tables and benches and along the walls in the cafetorium if we had time to get there. Otherwise, we'd duck and cover in our class rooms, where one whole wall was windows practically down to the floor and the opposite wall had a high strip of windows. How were we supposed to survive being cut to ribbons even cowering under our desks? There was a sort of plan of pushing all the desks against the wall away from the window wall and then getting us all to shinny under the desk-fort we'd made, but it was a madhouse when it was tried out, so they figured out the best thing would be to have us kneeling against the far wall, backs to the window wall, with desks lined up between us and the windows. On the other hand, I remember teachers shaking their heads during annihilation drills as if to say "This isn't gonna work." Something they dare not say out loud.
One day, one of my favorite teachers was absent and a truly stupid substitute had taken his place. I mean, stupid. We asked what had happened to Mr. Beamas, At first, we got no answers, but as the days wore on and Mr. Beamas didn't return, the class got restless and defiant. Where was our teacher? Was he sick? Was he dead? What was going on? Why did we have to put up with this idiot substitute?
No answer. After a week, though, maybe two, Mr. Beamas was back in the classroom, but he wasn't the same. Like the Body-Snatchers had got him or something.
After class one day, a few of us stuck around and asked him what had happened. Had he been in a car wreck? Was he in the hospital?
He finally opened up a little, but he clearly didn't want to say too much. He said he'd been suspended and reported to the police/FBI (I don't remember which) on suspicion of Communist sympathies. He'd been interrogated about his own actions and about everyone he knew, and about what he'd been teaching in class. Apparently there'd been a complaint from... someone. He didn't know who. About ....he didn't know what.He assumed he was under surveillance and he couldn't say much more.
This is the idyllic world we lived in in the 1950s.
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| In the schoolyard, c. 1958 |
After a while, it occurred to me that the safest place we could be when the bombs came was that concrete ditch -- as long as there wasn't any water in it. It was 10 maybe 12 feet deep, maybe 50 feet across at the top, 15 feet at the bottom, and at least a mile long, from the base of the hills on the east to the big ol' culvert under the roads and houses to the west. If we could get to it -- it was pretty far away -- the culvert would be an even better shelter yet.
I remember mentioning the ditch as a shelter once during a duck and cover drill and being promptly hushed up. One wasn't supposed to have ideas, after all. Not during a Commie-scare bomb drill. For cryin' out loud.
My buddy Bobby lived near the culvert, though, and he'd checked it out on his own. He said it was pretty hard to get into because of the fencing around it, but he managed to and said it could hold the whole neighborhood. So we made plans to get there when the time came.
But it never came, did it?
That's the thing. Despite all the scares and the drills, the time never came, and eventually the threat of instant incineration was forgotten. Even if NK goes ballistic and annihilates a city or two, we could hardly care less. Oh well, who really needed Seattle, right? Buncha Leftists anyway. No one even notices the obliteration of city after city in the far-distant lands of our Imperial conquest. They deserve it, whatever, right? You bet.
No, what we're to fear are hordes of Mexicans crossing the southern border to steal our stuff and rape our women. What we're to fear are the hordes of bearded Mooslums itching to blow us to bits or run us down with rental trucks. What we're to fear is Zombies and AntiFa and AntiFa Zombies and Clintoon and Obomba and George Fucking Soros!!!!! Aiyeeeee!
How far we have fallen.
Welp, this is supposedly the Day that They Rise... and round up all the Trumpazoids for final disposition.
One awaits...
Cheers.
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