Cold War Stories

Cold War Stories

 

1. Playing Chicken with Earl

My father, Earl Hellerstein, told me this story when I was a young lad, many years after it happened. It was a home-front war story. During World War 2, my Dad served on a secret mission. His mission was to truck supplies for the armed forces. He did not know why he was trucking those supplies, for he did not need to know; but he did need to know what those supplies were, and where he was going. The truck he drove was full of high explosives. His destination was a secret weapons laboratory, in a small town in the American Southwest, named Los Alamos.

He did not know then, but he knew by the time that he told me this tale, that he was working for the Manhattan Project. Young me hung upon his words, wide-eyed.

It was a long drive, through boring empty desert. An approaching driver chose to break the boredom. He shifted into Dad's lane and stayed there. And stayed there, and stayed there. He was playing chicken!

Decades later, I blurted, "What did you do?!"

My father mimicked holding a steering wheel. He said, "I did nothing at all. I kept driving, as if nobody was in my lane, and  pretty soon, nobody was."

Young me had two realizations.

First, that the other guy (and it was certainly a guy) made five mistakes:

1. He played chicken...

2. ... with an Army truck...

3. ... filled with high explosives...

4. ... for the Manhattan project...

5. ... driven by my Dad.

The second realization was that it's a miracle that I exist!

 

2. On My Own Terms

As I grew up, my father and I often argued, for we liked to argue. During one such argument, he waved a hand dismissively and said, "Ahhh, you'll become a Conservative in your old age!” Stung to the quick, I retorted, “If so, then it shall be on my own terms!” Since then I've seen that we were both prophetic. He knew me, and I knew me.

As an example of those terms, I fondly remember when I shut him up. He had the bad habit of referring to someone's "good intentions" with an audible sneer. Finally I had enough of that. I told him, "I get it. Intentions are no excuse for bad results. I get it! People have the responsibility to be competent! I get it! But do not insult good intentions as such... or this conversation is over!" My dire threat made him stop talking, and from then on he never sneered at good intentions. 

 

3. Dragon's Hoard

When Mikhail Gorbachev disappeared, I got a bad case of coup flu. For three whole days I held my breath. I would go up to people and ask, "What do you think?" and they knew what I was talking about, because they too had coup flu. For three whole days the world watched the past and the future play chess. We hovered, suspended, over the abyss. We saw ourselves within it, screaming, burning, dying, but we did not have time to be afraid. We did not fall; we flew.

Then suddenly the crisis was past, the coup had failed, the Cold War was over, our deaths had died.

Days later, driving home under the influence of the full moon, I was still grinning, still laughing at nothing in particular. The attendant at the toll plaza had headphones on, and he was dancing. 

I parked my car at home, then climbed up to a park atop a nearby hill. I sat on a stone bench there, and I stared at the city. Downtown was close by, for long before I had moved to within the second circle in the explosion maps, where death would be within milliseconds. I never intended to envy the dead.

It was night. The city's lights were on.  White incandescent lights, blue mercury lights, orange sodium lights. The city at night was... beautiful. It looked like a dragon's hoard of citrons and sapphires. I gazed at the city at night. I said to myself,

"Maybe we'll live after all."