So it’s still a conspiracy theory, right?

Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri started it on October 19, 2023, just twelve days after Oct. 7. In a speech before Parliament, he said Israel planned to “evacuate” Gaza so it could build a sea-level shipping canal near or through Gaza to rival the Suez, like bulldozing an old neighborhood to make way for a new five-star hotel/casino.

Starting with the “who,” as in the who-what-when-where and why of any story, I learned that Bakri was a “Nasserist,” which led me to 1956 when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

The year 1956 was my first year of Little League and I was in the second grade at St. Mary and St. Joseph school where the Dominicans would teach us how to duck under our desks when (not if) Russia dropped a nuclear bomb on our small home town at the edge of the woods in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They also taught us what prayers to say, which we practiced while huddled under our desks. Some of the girls cried. But the boys didn’t and they didn’t talk about it after school, either.

My home town, Iron Mountain, along the Mesabi Range in Paul Bunyan country, was far from Washington, D. C., the nation’s capital. That’s where the President lived. In a big house. I remember watching him on our 14-inch black and white Sylvania. He reminded me of my Grandpa Wahlstrom.

Grandpa Wahlstrom was my mother’s father. He lived with us until he died when I was in college. He’d been born in Sweden and came to America as a child with his family to homestead a farm in northern Wisconsin. He ran logging operations and worked in the woods most of his life and his body remained rawboned into old age. He played poker with old pals in the back room of Mario’s pool hall. Every night before bed he drank one shot of Christian Brothers brandy. He was a member of the local lodge of the Knights of Pythias. He drove a ’52 Chevy sedan. One time he ran for county drain commissioner and almost won. He believed in reincarnation.

For some subtle reason, Eisenhower reminded me of Grandpa Wahlstrom. His body was still lean into old age. He seemed like a friendly old-timer who didn’t have to yell to get you to listen. You knew he would never tell a lie unless it was for your own good. You’d feel safe going into Pine Creek country with him. 

One time Grandpa Wahlstrom came up on a really bad situation. A tree had fallen on one of the other lumberjacks. He had to do something. He decided what to do and did it. He carried the injured man out of the woods, on his back, through snow up to his knees. He never bragged about it. I just knew for sure that Eisenhower would have done the same thing. There was something oddly feminine about the two of them. They seemed moved by an inner duty to protect.

America liked Ike.

My father, who’s still doing good at age 96, had been raised during the Depression as a Roosevelt Democrat, but had voted for the Republican Eisenhower in 1952 because Eisenhower, too, had seen war up close and, so, would have powerful personal reasons for trying to avoid reliving those scenes. He didn’t have to try to act tough. He’d been “the General.” He had nothing to prove. We were still at war in Korea. My father didn’t know if he might get called back up. There was danger all around.

On October 3, 1952, just one month before Eisenhower won his first election in a landslide, England exploded its first atomic bomb, becoming the world’s third “nuclear nation.”

The following year, on August 12, 1953, Russia exploded its first hydrogen bomb. The genie was out of the bottle. Pretty soon everybody would be making atomic bombs, mass producing them like cars. In fact, by 1984 there were more than 80,000 nuclear warheads in the world.

As everybody had hoped, right away Eisenhower went to work to secure peace. He negotiated a peace in Korea on July 27, 1953, just six months into his first term. I was only five years old at the time, but I can still remember my mother crying that day. Tears of relief. “Your father won’t be going away,” she said.

Next, Eisenhower turned his attention to the threat of nuclear war, intensified by Russia’s successful thermonuclear test.

Throughout human history people have used their latest technologies when making war. But this was something new. It could be the End of the World.

I thought a lot about the End of the World as a kid growing up in the 50s. Would it be the end of consciousness throughout the universe? Can anything exist without Mind? – honestly, I thought about things like that as a kid.

Eisenhower was scheduled to address the General Assembly of the United Nation on December 8, 1953. The world had radios by then. The world waited anxiously to hear what he had to say. What would America’s position be, stepping forward onto a nuclear minefield, maybe ending consciousness in the universe?

Eisenhower, like any president, was surrounded by competing voices, “suggesting” what he should say in his speech.

On one side was Oppenheimer’s disarmament crowd. Like telling a child to not play with matches, they said “ban the bomb.” They said the only solution was for everybody to give up humanity’s new power.

On the other side were the new Cold Warriors like the Dulles Brothers and Joe McCarthy, telling the president to unsheathe our phallic sword; use our new power to crush the vermin Commies so life could get back to normal.

Eisenhower listened to everybody and then acted.

The speech he gave at the United Nations that December was first dubbed by the press and then known throughout the world as his “Atoms for Peace” speech.

I remember the day when our fifth grade teacher (Sister Mary Alexander) hung a new poster up on the wall in our school’s science room. The poster said: “Atoms for Peace.” That’s when I first started wanting to know what an atom was.

(to be continued…)