What is any kid’s return to school but excitement mixed with trepidation? You want to see what’s changed for the better since you checked out last June, but you’re also scared of things being weird or scarier than before. Like some classmate is now a head taller than you, or you’ve got a new teacher who looks like Pennywise the Clown.
When you’re small, the world is gigantic. And your fears are outsized. These days a kid might have worries over climate change, bullying, neighborhood violence, family economics, active shooter insanity and more.
OPINION
When I was a kid, what I remember, what I’m going to say actually altered my thinking and scarred me forever was the Cold War. There was the Soviet Union, and there was the United States. Every kid knew this. Communism vs. Democracy. Khrushchev vs. Kennedy. Evil vs. Good. And to make it all matter, there were atomic bombs.
The Cuban missile crisis hit Peoria
In school, we practiced civil defense postures, above and beyond the normal fire drills, in that we climbed under our desks, covered our heads with our arms and crouched there in case of — whether the teacher spoke it or not, we all knew why — nuclear attack.
It was early fall of 1962, during my eighth-grade year at Kellar grade school in Peoria, when it came to a head. For 13 days in October, the Cuban missile crisis hung over the world like a sphere of poison gas. The Soviets had secretly put nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from Key West, Florida, and the United States had ordered a blockade of the island.
In a speech carried on radio and TV, President John F. Kennedy grimly described how the warheads could travel far enough to eradicate Washington, D.C., and most of the Southeast. New ones being added by the Soviets, he said, could fly farther and hit any city “ranging as far north as Hudson Bay in Canada and as far south as Lima, Peru.’’
That meant Peoria. I knew this. All of us kids did. We had Caterpillar Tractor Co., and we’d heard those big yellow bulldozers were a prime enemy target. We’d all seen film clips of atomic bombs exploding in the desert, on Bikini Atoll, and the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’d heard over and over again the dreaded word “fallout.’’ This I envisioned as ash descending from a giant bonfire, blanketing the land and killing anyone it touched. Forever.
No one knew what would happen
The Cuban missile crisis was real, and the end of the civilized world did indeed hang in the balance. For almost two weeks in October 1962, no one knew what would happen. Until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev flinched and removed the warheads, mutually assured destruction was shining right there, a button to be pushed. In his warning to the Soviets, Kennedy had said in that thick Boston accent we kids loved to imitate, “One path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.’’
I remember that fall when I was the quarterback on Kellar’s touch football team, playing another school, maybe it was Hines, Sipp or Von Steuben, looking around and thinking, What’s the use? Where would I run when the fallout came? How could I get home and find my parents, my sisters and my dog before the end? The game was irrelevant.
Despair is not a good fit for a 13-year-old.
I mention this only as a historical footnote to remind parents that what goes on in a kid’s mind may not be obvious. What troubles him or her deep inside may come from anywhere. School should be a good time. Every generation, likely forever, has had its worries. Keep an eye on your kids. Hug them. Make it a good day, every day.
