Report from the Interior (29 page)

Politics was a nasty sport, you now realized, a free-for-all of bitter, unending conflict …

… the Great Spirit they believed in struck you as a warm and welcoming deity, unlike the vengeful God of your imagination …

Lone Ranger: Well, Tonto, it looks like we’re surrounded.

Tonto: What do you mean
we
?

The Cold War was in full bloom then …

… the Red Scare had entered its most poisonous phase …

… the only noise from the zeitgeist loud enough for you to hear was the bass drum sounding the alarm that the Communists were out to destroy America.

… the supersonic jets roaring across the blue skies of summer …

… a flash of silver glinting briefly in the light …

… the great detonation of blasting air that signified the sound barrier had been broken yet again.

You never worried that bombs or rockets would fall on you …

That was fear. Not bombs or a nuclear attack, but polio.

… your father’s mother, an alien presence who still spoke and read mostly in Yiddish …

… no Sabbath meals on Friday night, no lighting of candles …