Nuclear Winter

The ancient date is an intersection. I am sure of this because of the meticulous records of weathermen and government. About the time we heard thundersnow, blinded in that driveway down which no cars could travel, the Joint Chiefs told Reagan they could protect, not avenge, America from nuclear fire. The idea, the hopes were so high, they were in orbit over our country, a network in the stars to shoot down the missiles and prevent the war.

The president may have been pondering as the first flakes fell over the capital while to the north, I saw a snowmobile carom down Keighler Avenue as if the apocalypse had already fallen and the cars we depended upon were suddenly useless as an appendix.

We built snow forts the next day after the blizzard finally relented, walls of white taller than we had imagined were possible, defending our childhoods against nameless threats we knew lurked. Meanwhile, our parents broke down the frozen battlements just so their world could function.

About then, perhaps the walls closed in and grew taller in Reagan’s mind, the paradox between seeing the madness of Mutually Assured Destruction and selling the Evil Empire and Star Wars like an actor pitching soap.

It is another convenient juxtaposition, all things coming together like weather fronts. It was before the 1980s, the true ‘80s, my ‘80s, really began. It all happened just before Michael Jackson moonwalked over luminous floor tiles, before Soviet fire destroyed its target, black box and bodies falling far from Seoul.

It happened when we were just young enough not to see what danger, true danger, lurked under all the world’s beds.