April 15, 2006

  • Michael in Stephenville.  It really is a new age.  For a decade, I lived and worked right in the middle of the Fulda Gap in Frankfurt, Germany.  With Frankfurt serving as the economic, transportation, and military center of Germany, and with Rhein-Main Air Base right outside of town, we knew that if the Russians ever attacked, we would never know it in all probability.  (If you haven't read it, Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising is an exciting read even if it is a bit dated, and it will explain what I am saying about living in the Fulda Gap.)  We had to have an emergency evacuation kit ready at all times, and, periodically, we would have to undergo emergency evacuation drills -- which everyone laughed off because conventional wisdom said that we were wasting our time.  We tended to be extremely fatalistic about the chances of escaping if there were an attack by the forces of the East.


    The wall and the fence were incredibly chilling and somber.  Both were actually built inside Communist territory, so that if one made it over the wall or fence or if someone went out to help someone escaping, they were still in the bad guy's land so they were fair game.  Horror stories were told of escapees' misadventures.  On one of our trips to the border, we learned of a father/son team of which the father made it over the fence but whose teenage son triggered a mine and became entangled in the wire.  The father went back to try to comfort his mangled, dying son where he was recaptured for an unknown (but very unpleasant) fate.  Numerous markers and graves memorialized failed escape attempts. 


    When we helped Lia Sipova defect from Prague through Berlin, Lorena and I had to go, in the middle of the night, to a home in West Berlin immediately next to the Wall to get her things that had been smuggled over.  (Don't ask me how.  I have no idea.  I just know that my activities ruined my chances for subsequent State Department service.)  Lorena and I were both extremely concerned for the other's safety because it was the most ominous, dark sistuation I have ever been in.  I could literally feel the evil of the place.


    Crossing into and out of the Soviet Bloc was invariably a scary time although I was never actually threatened, but it really opened my eyes.  I could not have lived the way those people lived.  In Poland, a family fixed some friends and me a nice meal.  I enjoyed it, but it was nothing special -- until I learned that they had used several months worth of their rations for meat, sugar, flour, coffee, etc.  For me, it was just a nice meal; for them, it meant that they had to do without for months after I left.


    Most people there had no concept of the outside world.  I don't know how many times I was asked about the Indian problems in Texas and if my family was safe from them.  Of course, everyone was determined that I lived on a huge ranch with oil and gas well, huge herds of horses and cattle, and was filthy rich.  It amazed me to learn that the thing I tended to be envied most for was the ablility to travel.  Those in the East Bloc could go (with difficulty and varying degrees of usually horrendous expense) to other Soviet Bloc countries, Cuba, Angola, Vietnam, and perhaps a few other countries.  It also surprised me to learn that I could use my Spanish on the streets of their major cities because their "guest workers" were invariably Cuban.


    The reason I mention all of this is that this last week I mentioned the Iron Curtain several times in different classes -- to junior and senior level students.  Repeatedly, to my deep dismay, I was asked what the Iron Curtain was...  We have a great school system.  We do not have stupid students.  But far too many of my students are ignorant and don't have a clue...  That is incredibly sad -- and dangerous...


    Lorena knew, and Lorena knows...  Even as a Mexican citizen, before she naturalized, she was a powerful defender of the U.S. and an advocate of capitalism and the free market system.  Thank you, Darling.  I would love to have more immigrants (legally) like Lorena.  It is too bad we can't kick out some of the Americans we have who abuse, disrespect, and disparage our values and our way of life.  Our way of life can certainly be better, and I want to work to make it so.  That said, I treasure my US citizenship -- and so does Lorena...


    God bless the USA!!!