The common name for diplomacy is the Golden Rule, and we learn by experience that its employment is one way to avoid a bar fight. Self-defence is what we tend to use after we’ve already lost a couple of teeth.
— P
The day the Russians nuked my sawmill camp. A survivor’s memoir.
It’s an October morning, 1975, in Upper Fraser, a remote sawmill camp in north central B.C. I’m 9 years old, sitting at my desk in the portable classroom where I’m to spend the remainder of my elementary school years. A bank of windows running the length of wall to my left looks across the dirt road we call the highway and at the log deck just beyond. An eager student, I sit with my books open, waiting for my teacher, Mr. Morrice, to arrive and start roll call. And rather than talk with my peers as they settle in to their seats, I prefer to stare out the windows. My thoughts run over the words I’ve memorized for our spelling test, which three books I want to order from Scholastic Book Club, and why garter snakes bloat when they die. I wonder why, since people eat insects in other countries, we don’t eat ants and earthworms and grasshoppers here in Canada. And I imagine a baking sheet full of dried worms being pulled from the oven like chocolate chip cookies. I wonder at what point, deep in its cocoon, a caterpillar looks like a butterfly. I imagine what the earth looks like from outer space. And I wonder if Mr. Allan, our principal, will read us the next chapter in 2001: A Space Odyssey today.
My daydreaming is broken by a clunk, a clank, and a bang. Mr. Morrice pushes the rattling projector trolley from the cloak room at the back of the class and positions it in front of his desk with the projector lens pointing toward the chalk board. Mrs. McCree, the school helper, appears and pulls the projector screen, a compact metal tube, from its corner to the right of the board. She and Mr. Morrice unfold its legs and balance the screen behind Mr. Maurice’s desk, front and center of the chalkboard. Grabbing the metal handle, Mr. Morrice whips the screen up to its full height and secures it on a rod that Mrs. McCree draws up its backside. Then Mr. Morrice pulls a large, round metal tin from the shelf under the projector. I’m shaking with excitement, A film!! A surprise film! Maybe we get to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Zorro. Or The Bush Baby. Or Evolution, my favourite Canadian Film Board animation. I watch as Mr. Morrice and Mrs. McCree unfold the projector arms, remove the lid from the tin, and lift the film reel. One mounts the film reel on the front arm of the projector while the other mounts an empty reel on the back arm. Mrs. McCree plugs in the projector while Mr. Morrice loosens the end of the film from the front reel and threads it through the projector. Mrs. McCree grabs the length of film spewed from the projector body and secures it to the back reel. All right, says Mr. Morrice, put your books away.
Mrs. McCree draws the curtains shut and stands at the side of the room, resting her hands in front of her long, colourful skirt. Mr. Morrice stands beside the projector. He plays with a thread on his fraying jeans and watches us silently until our desk tops are clear and we’ve assumed our polite movie-watching posture. We’re facing front, our hands folded on our desktops and our feet planted squarely under our desks. I’m feeling a little dizzy from the interruption to our routine, and I fight the urge to remind Mr. Morrice to take attendance. Something tells me not to. Okay, says Mr. Morrice, looking toward Mrs. McCree then back at us, pay attention. Mr. Morrice flicks on the projector and watches the reels spin for a moment before joining Mrs. McCree at the side of the class. She switches off the fluorescent lights. The room darkens. Numbers, test signals, hairs, and glitches flicker across the screen. It’s a black and white film, I think, my heart sinking. A plastic-looking man with short hair and dressed in a suit speaks in a plastic voice. He’s a boring man, I think. I slump in my seat and wonder how long the film will be. I stare blankly, listening to the click, click, click, click of the projector reels. I’m so tuned out I scarcely notice the click, click, click of the boring-man’s monologue come to an end. Boring-man disappears, and in his stead army guys assemble in a line on the fringe of a desert landscape. Now I’m interested. And I squint to figure out what is going on in the scene. As I do, the entire screen brightens and dims like a lightening flash, a magic white curtain that changes the stage setting in an instant. A low dust cloud crawls along the ground in the wake of the flash, and a fireball raises like a giant fist from its center. I think of our story-time book, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Are these aliens? I wonder. I search the image for a spaceship. But there is none to be found. Instead, the dust cloud and flames bloom into a menacing giant mushroom. Boring-man’s voice returns like a poltergeist to narrate the scene. This is an atomic bomb, he says, and you need to learn what to do if one explodes near you. I straighten up. What?!
The boring-man’s voice affects the manic staccato of a radio sports announcer and my heart skips beats along with his words. You’ll see a flash, he says. Don’t look at the flash. It’ll blind you. I’m suddenly glad the curtains are drawn. He continues, the bomb destroys everything in its path. So, kids, when you see that flash, you have to act quickly. What do you do? You duck. And cover. The radiation from the bomb causes burns, he warns. Worse than any sunburn you’ve ever had. So, when you drop, curl up tight. Cover your face and the back of your neck. Try to get under a desk or some piece of furniture. If there’s nothing near to hide under, tuck up tight against a wall. If you’re caught in the open, use a newspaper, a jacket, whatever you have handy to shield yourself. And stay away from windows. Breaking glass will fly through the air and cut you. Make sure, the boring-man adds, that you stay down and covered up. If you stand up too soon, you’ll be hit by the back wave of energy.
I commit each safety step to memory like words for my spelling test. Got it. If you see a flash, don’t look at it. Don’t think. Duck and cover. Stay down. My boney bottom rests painfully on the edge of my seat as my toes feel for the distance between the legs of my desk. I’m on the cusp of sliding to the floor but I don’t want to miss further instructions from the boring-man. Your family know should know what to do, he says. Mine doesn’t. How long do I have to warn them? The boring-man answers my question. An atomic bomb can explode any time of the day or night or year. I shudder. There is no time to lose!
Whatever is said in the last few minutes of the film is drowned by my racing thoughts. I have to warn my family, I have to get them to safety! But where? And how? The fluorescent lights flicker and hum as the classroom lights up. I flinch. Mrs. McCree pulls open the curtains, and, in an effort not to look at the windows and risk being blinded by a flash, I fix my eyes on Mr. Morrice futzing with the projector. My classmates rustle through their desks for their recess snacks. Paper lunch bags crinkle and crunch, and a pungent smell of apples, peanut butter, and baloney fills the air. Jimmy, biting into his fruit, stands behind Mr. Morrice and asks, where do the bombs come from? Russians, says Mr. Morrice, as he presses the lid on the big, round tin, now go for recess.
Russians, I repeat silently. I conjure a mental image of the USSR on the world map. Why would the Russians want to bomb us? I think of Boris Badenov and his partner Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and experience my first wave of incredulity. Mr. Morrice played a joke on us. Relieved, I swing along the rungs of the monkey bars until the buzzer sounds. I race to the portable and bounce up the springy wooden steps into the cloakroom. I grin at Mr. Morrice, standing at the entrance. You’re joking with us, the Russians aren’t going to bomb us. He shakes his head, I’m not joking.
It takes everything I have to concentrate on my schoolwork until lunchtime. I can’t understand why the Russians want to bomb us. Why not a big city ? I wonder. I shuffle out of the classroom, plod past the playground, and cut across the soccer field to sit beside the creek. There, I can eat my squishy sandwich and think in peace. A breeze loosens golden leaves from the aspens above me, and they swirl against the blue sky before they land on the water and drift out of sight. A crow hops and sidles down the length of a branch before he springboards into the air, sending more leaves to their fall. An explosion of noisy crows bursts from the spruce trees in the distance. I mindlessly snap twigs between my fingers as I sit with the heaviness of my disbelief. Why? I need reasons. I roll my head onto my shoulder and find myself looking at the log deck. Of course! Now I know what the Russians want with us. Upper Fraser has a sawmill, a sawmill makes lumber, lumber is needed to make houses. Big cities have lots of people, and lots of people need lots of houses. If people don’t have houses, they’ll get cold and die. And so, if the Russians bomb Upper Fraser, they’ll kill lots of people in the cities. Upper Fraser is a very important place.
Since the Russians are dropping a bomb on us, I need to get my family out of the village. We have to move. Fast. There’s an abandoned trapper’s cabin along the Torpy Creek in the MacGregor mountain range where we spend our weekends fishing. Perfect. We’ll fish, hunt, and eat berries. But we’ll have to stock up with flour, lard, and salt. And also coffee, tea, sugar, tinned milk, and powdered milk. And bandaids. I think of only one snag in my plan. We’ll need a fire to stay warm through the winter, and the Russians will see the smoke coming from our chimney. I imagine banking the cabin with snow like an igloo and huddling together under blankets to avoid lighting a fire. But that seems impractical. We have to cook and go to the bathroom. Thinking the problem over, I decide its worth the risk that the Russians won’t waste a bomb on one cabin and I consider the matter settled. My next step is to break the news to my parents.
I run home after school. Fat Danish meatballs are spattering in the frying pan on the stove, and Mom is setting her hard hat, gloves, and work boots near the door in preparation for her graveyard shift at the mill. Mom! I blurt, The Russians are going to drop an atomic bomb on us! Mom raises an eyebrow. It’s true! I say. Mom laughs as she turns to flip the meatballs, No, honey, the Russians are not going to bomb us. But…I start to say, and she shakes her head. But Mr. Morrice says so, I persist. She frowns and says, Mr. Morrice is wrong. This is going to be harder than I thought. Dad walks in the door, smelling of sawdust and sweat, and he plunks his metal lunch kit and thermos on the table. Dad! I say, the Russians are going to drop an atomic bomb on us! He laughs. And with his big, calloused hands, he gently musses my hair. No, sweetie. He doesn’t believe me, either. But I can’t give up. I spend an entire suppertime explaining the film, the reasons the Russians want to bomb us, the details of my plan to move us to the cabin on the Torpy creek. I’m still talking as Mom clears the table, and dad opens a beer and heads to the couch with the newspaper. I continue my pitch while he reads. And I keep talking as he closes his eyes. Uh-huh, he says, uh-huh, uh-huh. There’s a long pause, then he snores. Dad? I say, Dad? Dad? But he doesn’t answer. Now what? Pajamas! Mom calls. I obediently slip into my pink flannel nightie, brush my teeth, and crawl into bed. Mom tucks me in, smooths my hair from my forehead, and kisses me goodnight. I stare into the darkness for the longest time, thinking of nothing at all.
The next morning, I sit quietly at table and eat my porridge. Mom, dusty from her shift at the sawmill, smooches with Dad on his way out the door. Then she hands me my lunch bag and kisses me good-bye. Good-bye Mom, I think, and I look at her for a long time before I leave. She’s standing on the steps yawning and waving as she watches me walk away. I don’t wave back. I stare at my feet as I drag the toes of my shoes through the dirt on the path all the way to school. I slump into the portable and plunk myself at my desk. I set my pencil beside my closed notebook and stare at the blackboard, arms folded across my chest. And I am very, very careful not to look out the windows.
*After 44 years, my memory of this event is not perfect, but it left an impression that planted seeds for my future interest in social epistemology, the social dimension of knowledge. Perhaps as something like Y2K will do for others. I will revisit this memoir in future posts since there are so many epistemic problems that present themselves here.
**The duck and cover clip that I’ve linked in the body of the text may not be the same propaganda film that we were shown in class. I provide this clip for those unfamiliar with Duck and Cover.
***I’ve changed the names of my teacher, our school helper, and our principal.
See also (short), The human GPS network: navigating our lives.
Thomas Hobbes on controversy. A quote worth contemplating. Series 3.3.
“And as in arithmetic, unpracticed men must, and professors themselves may often err and cast up false, so also in any other subject of reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may deceive themselves and infer false conclusions, not but that reason itself is always right reason, as well as arithmetic is a certain and infallible art. But no one man’s reason, or the reason of any one number of men makes the certainty, no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously approved it. And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord set up for right reason the reason of some arbitrator or judge, to whose sentence they will both stand, or their controversy must come to blows or be undecided, for want of a right reason constituted by Nature, so it is in all debates of what kind so ever. And when men that think themselves wiser than all others clamour and demand right reason for judge; yet seek no more but that things should be determined by no other man’s reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of men, as it is to play after trump is turned, to use for trump on every occasion, that suit whereof they have most in their hand. For they do nothing else, that will have every of their passions, as it comes to bear sway in them, to be taken for right reason, and that in their own controversies, bewraying [revealing] their want of right reason by the claim they lay to it.” (Hobbes, 28) Part : 1, Chapter 5; Paragraph 3 (Right reason where.)
Thomas Hobbes. J.C.A. Gaskin, Ed. Leviathan. (1651) Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford University Press: New York. Reissue 2008.
*Compare with A Walter Lippmann (1922) quote worth contemplating. Timely.
** Compare with John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. A quote worth contemplating.
***Compare with Hobbes’ Humility Check
And as to the faculties of mind, … I find yet a greater equality amongst men, than that of strength…That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and few others, whom by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be so many as wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and other men’s at a distance.” (Hobbes, 82. Oxford.) Part 1, Chapter 13, Paragraph 2. Men by Nature Equal.
**** The works of Hobbes, Lippmann, and Mill are broadly available and the writings of each is accessible (i.e. understandable) to general readership. Each work is easy to find via your search engine.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. A quote worth contemplating. Series 3.2.
“[Cf Cicero] He who knows only his own side knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may be able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side: if he does not so much know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from people who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of the truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know; they have never thrown themselves in the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know the parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth that turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind; they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devils’ advocate can conjure up [bolding mine].”
John Stuart Mill. On Liberty. New York and Melbourne: The Walter Scott Publishing Company, Ltd. Chapter 2. pp 68-69
*Compare with A Walter Lippmann (1922) quote worth contemplating. Timely.
**Compare with Thomas Hobbes on controversy. A quote worth contemplating.
A Walter Lippmann (1922) quote worth contemplating. Timely. Series 3.1.
“And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent always has to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit, we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and consequently in the treacherous character of all opposition. For while men are willing to admit there are two sides to a “question,” they do not believe there are two sides to what they regard as a ‘fact.'” (Lippmann, 69)
Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. Dover Publications, 2004. (Original: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922.)
*Lippmann’s quote is non-exclusive; i.e. we’re the other-guy as much as the other-guy is the other guy. But, here’s the kicker, we need other-guys. And so,
** I recommend ten minutes of your time to read Lippmann’s essay entitled “The Indispensable Opposition.” The Atlantic, 1939. Link here.
***I also suggest my post Hobbes’ Humility Check
****And Resistance is….
Dinner for one.
A Community of Sufferers*
I’m having a meal with my husband at a pub in Bristol, delighting in the warm and jovial conversation of the three older men having a pint at the neighbouring table. By their camaraderie, I assume they’ve had a long history together, probably meeting at this very pub over many years. As I finish my chicken salad, I notice their glasses are almost empty, and so I think it a polite time to tell the men what a pleasure it’s been to be sitting with them. It’s a wonderful thing to see that community still exists, I add, since so many people today are without one. There’s a brief silence as they soberly look at each other, then one quietly tells me I don’t have it quite right.
We’re retired dock workers, he explains, although none of us have worked together. In fact, he says, exchanging another sober look with his table mates, we’ve only recently met. All three of us are recent widowers, another continues, that’s why we’re here. We meet for drinks and company. I’m sorry, I say, worrying I’ve intruded. But I’m wrong again. There’s not a single pause in conversation as we cover everything from local history, to family, to grief and loss. And then, of course, all those general observations about the world. We’re still talking as the waiter clears our glasses, gently pressing us to make room for the people milling about waiting for a table. We say our glad-to’ve-met-you’s, shake hands, and make for the door.
While we walk, my husband and I go through our affectionate routine of checking each other over for crooked collars and forgotten items, when one of the trio abruptly stops in front of me. He’s tall, burly and bearded, and his eyes are moist and brimming as he looks down at me, his expression imploring me to understand, I’m going home to cook supper, he says. It’s so hard to eat alone.
*I take liberties with Charle’s Fritz’s conception of a “community of sufferers”; roughly, a positive phenomenon of disasters where people, often strangers and irrespective of differences, are drawn together by their common experience of the disaster, providing for each other support and social reorientation.
See also On aging.
Small town diaspora.
Are there any, like myself, the diaspora of a small and rural, remote town.
Are there any, like myself, who used to yearn to know where the gravel road led. But, now that it’s gone, wish I could follow it home.
Are there any, like myself, who used to think the open spaces were like walls that kept me from the world. But are now the space that once embraced my world.
Are there any, like myself, who can find only traces of my home. And beneath the overgrowth of brush, discover hard-packed remnants of roadways dotted like scabs on the healing earth.
Are there any, like myself, who feel displaced. Prodded like cattle to keep pace with an impatient world.
Are there any, like myself, who move like a ghost through the crowd.
Some grey morning.
But for the use of the zoom lens, I’ve made no adjustments to this photo. Some mornings just are this grey. Dull, heavy, wet. I’d have missed this view had I let these things deter me from a walk.
Draw the linen curtains
One who drags herself to safety, or survives intact on her own, is an anomaly. Yet we make heroes of people we think do, people who survive on their wits, courage, and will, and nothing more. Hence, the popularity of lone survivor books and movies, usually about men, such as Robinson Crusoe, The Revenant, Cast Away, Buried Alive, and The Martian. But some are about women, such as Gravity, and Wild. These heroes sometimes contort with angst and agony while hovering on the brink of human endurance, and they aren’t typically portrayed as falling asleep whimpering Mommy. But it happens. A lot. One of my most haunting memories as a Nurse’s Aide is that of hearing an elderly palliative patient sobbing inconsolably for her mommy in a little girl voice. Instead of being warmly embraced by loving arms, she lay cradled by a hospital bed behind the linen curtains in a cubicle, the caring but busy staff feeding, changing, and cleaning her, and gently brushing her hair as they found time — a token gesture of comfort. Some, like myself, lay awake nightly under a heavy blanket of unmet needs. Mine, my family’s, and theirs. Hence the phenomenon of caregiver burnout. This story, played out every minute of every day, wouldn’t be a box office hit. Withered old women surviving pain and isolation are burdens, not heroes.
