Children of the Cold War

Fort Devens, Ayers MA. June 1968. As a kid, we used to do donuts with our mini bikes around silos as several huge white radar dishes were pointing down on us like death ray weapons of the future described in the pages of Popular Science. Images in my mind of laser beams frying us to barbecued roadkill. They had been tracking us as we approached the area from miles away. We are being chased by a camouflaged green military jeep mounted with a 50mm machine gun that a soldier was hanging on to and other soldiers with M-16’s. We are bolting from the secret military instillation with our mini bikes at top speed, dirt, and clouds of dust being kicked up behind us. A sign on the gnarly barbed wire topped fence read, “will be shot on sight,” next to the gate that they left open so we could play chase around the missile field like willie coyote and the roadrunner.

 We are children, taunting the military, playmates for a chase. Laughing and jumping on the stainless steel circular domes that covered the cement underground cocoons housing nuclear-tipped Nike Hercules Missiles ready to launch, taking down a sky full of enemy bombers, triggering the 3rd world war. Mutual obliteration of all life on the planet, a hundred times over. Duck and hide under desks was discontinued in the schools as the intelligence center, missile base, and cyanide plant would be vaporized along with the city, the southern part of the state, and us. We are on the ‘top ten hit’ list of targets in the US for Russian ICBM’s.

Children of the Cold War, caught between the balance of global powers, playing on weapons of mass destruction and extinction of all life. A field of death, ready to launch at a seconds notice, laying all civilization to waste.

 The US touched the moon with Apollo, space explorers, adventurers in the infinite space frontier. Satellites spinning around the globe, data mining the earth. Cold War-era children schooled/steeped in history, the blood, sciences, research/exploration, and victory of the American revolution. Pumped with the latest sciences, chemistry, electronics, and physics. Nurtured in the crossroads of international arms, pharmaceuticals, and intelligence. A slice of Eureka, a scientific/defense community, nestled in the rolling hillsides of the Merrimack Valley and into MA.

 Sensitives, type T geeks, neurodiversified, the protégés of the next generation. We are the children of the Cold War.

Playing on brink of the Third World War. Yesterday was gone, tomorrow might not come, but today we dance on a techno steel phallics of planetary destruction and death.

 Decommissioned and silent, a field of Wildflowers bloom peacefully in its place today.

 Otto Snow 2020