VIRUS INSIDE ALL OF US- Part Two: My father would pick me up from elementary school and take me for my haircut. We went to Jerry’s and Son in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh. My dad knew Jerry from way back and my dad was one to support his friends whenever and wherever possible. Jerry’s and Son was a three seater barber shop, Jerry would say he had a second son who he knew one day would give up his career as an electrical engineer and become a barber thus the third chair. Jerry’s and Son also had a TV hanging from the wall precisely in a corner where anyone sitting on the barber chair could get a clear picture. There was a sign under the TV that read, no news is good news so yinz’ (Pittsburgh-ese for you) ain’t gonna watch it here. But this day, October 22, 1962 when we walked into the shop my father and I immediately noticed and heard Walter Cronkite speaking to us in a very somber and guarded tone. Instead of the usual Hi’Ya greeting from Jerry we heard upon entering, “this is serious stuff Benny”.(My father’s nick name was Benny). Walter Cronkite was reporting that President John F. Kennedy had imposed a blockade around Cuba to prevent further nuclear missiles being delivered by the Soviet Union. There was one other customer actually standing in the shop and pacing side to side, he looked grim, and as we entered he also told my dad, this might be the beginning of the end. I was in 7th grade and became quite nervous, the beginning of the end, a serious Walter Cronkite on TV and the news on the screen in Jerry’s and Son Barber Shop. Little did I know that the VIRUS IS IN ALL OF US, and today it was about to announce itself.
We had something called a Retention Drill, at Linden School. We would listen to a very severe siren blurt out a high pitched noise, our teacher would place her index finger to her pursed lips as if to silence us because the enemy might hear our voices and with her free hand usually her right hand would wave it side to side then take the index finger on that hand point it downward and that was our cue to immediately tuck our selves under the desk. Our teacher knew the VIRUS IS IN ALL OF US but didn’t want any of her students to catch it because this virus also might contain radiation. The kids in the older grades of had to practice duck and cover while in the hallways, because the government had instructed us in case of a nuclear bomb that getting into a fetal position and then covering our heads would keep us safe from the VIRUS INSIDE ALL OF US actually killing us.
I had no idea it was the VIRUS INSIDE ALL OF US, but as I approached my adult years living in this nation I learned about a term called domestic terrorism and how easy the VIRUS INSIDE ALL OF US could permit someone to blow up a building in Oklahoma City, shoot up a school in Columbine, or Sandy Hook. I saw how someone could stand atop a bridge in Washington DC and randomly shoot motorists. And then I became part of something so unknown to me, foreign terrorism as the Twin Towers collapsed upon themselves, the Pentagon receiving a Kamikaze type attack, and a highjacked plane plowing into the fields in Pennsylvania. I didn’t know what to call all this madness, when simply the answer was there is a VIRUS INSIDE ALL OF US. And now I know there are infected people with the virus and we must await and wonder when their disease will manifest itself again. We are warned that sanity has no place in society any longer. IS THE VIRUS IN ALL OF US?-(Part Three to follow)
