CHAPTER FIVE PAVLOV AND ME, A STORY ABOUT ATOMIC BOMB DRILLS IN THE FIFTIES! My razor thinks this story is depressing. Probably jealous! Pavlov! He was this guy who was doing all these experiments with the dogs. You know, making them react to various different forms of stimulation and that kind of stuff. There is a big word called behaviourism, gee that sounds almost like communism, well anyhow behaviourism is a theory about giving living organisms certain stimulation in order that they react in a certain way. Sort of like locking a kid in a closet, feeding him and telling at the same time that he is Jesus Christ. The obvious reaction being that the kid after a period of time thinks he is Jesus Christ. Me! Well that is a good question or the question rather is who's me? My name is Bob. Yeah, just Bob. I mean telling you my last name certainly would not tell the reader anything about my mothers side of history. Her name was McGruder and she raised me because my father died in 1942, the same year I was born. For some reason I got his last name. I mean I never even met the guy. Who the fuck is he anyway? Going off and dying on me and my mom. Oh, I almost forgot, that is another story. Anyhow,Bob is living in exile in Sweden. A little country on the Scandinavian peninsula. A place called Robertsfors which lies fairly near the polar circle. If I were to draw a straight line around the globe, I would find myself on the same level as such places as Fairbanks, Alaska or Zyryanka, that's some fucking place in Siberia. Here we have a winter which lasts about 6 months. It is cold and dark here in the winter. When I say dark I mean dark like almost 24 hours a day dark! However summer is light and just the opposite. The reason I am living here in exile goes back to the war in Vietnam. If I were to return to the United States I could be put away for a very long time because of my activities in opposition to the war in Vietnam. However that is also another story. Christ Bob, stop ego tripping and get on with the story about atomic bomb drills during the fifties. The fifties! That was when the newspapers were writing about the American soldiers captured by the Chinese Communists in Korea. The newspapers were saying that the soldiers were being brainwashed into making all kinds of weird confessions about American Imperialist aggression.They, the Chinese Communists, were using the old dripping water torture trick. Lying a soldier on a bench or a table and letting water drip on his head until he confessed; to his crime of being a tool of American aggression, according to the newspaper reports based on leaks from high government sources and the C.I.A. This was the McCarthy era. By the way, Richard Nixon was a torpedo lawyer for Joe McCarthy. They were trying to get all of the "Pinkos" to confess and after confessing to jump out of the nearest window. The main question of the time was: "Have you ever been a member or sympathiser of a communist organisation?". Even the liberals were terrified of getting the red stamp on their foreheads. Joe McCarthy and his freedom fighters, like the young lawyer Nixon, had just about everybody scared shitless of being a part of a gigantic communist conspiracy. I mean these Commie creep could come in the middle of the night and rape your mother and your sisters, if you didn't watchout! Even Robert McNamara, who recently wrote his book about Vietnam, was a victim of these times. All this stuff about the "Domino Theory" was a product of the McCarthy era. At least the feeling one gets when hearing McNamara , 25 years later, whining about the domino theory and the war being all wrong confession on his part. In my opinion Bob McNamara is a political coward and responsible for sending a lot of American poor and working class kids to their deaths, not to mention the suffering of the Vietnamese... At the same time people, like me, who really and actively opposed that war are still living in exile unable to return to the United States. If McNamara wants to do something besides making a lot of money on his book, he could try helping the victims of his mistakes. People like meee! Ob,s! There I go again. Ranting and raving on about something that has nothing to do with the story. Sorry about that! I was just a kid during those times. I was living on Staten Island, in New York City. That was before they built the bridges and the Staten Island ferry only cost a nickel. I think the street I was living on was Lockwood Ave. My house was right across the street from the Bethlehem steel plant. I remember the grey walls, the grey men, with their lunchboxes, and the smoke and noise coming from across the street. I did not know that the McCarthy era was at its best, nor did I know that I was a part of the gigantic Pavlonian experiment of the times. In fact most of the time, if I wasn't in school, I was playing with my friends in the streets or playing with my prick on the rooftops! Little did I know that I was being set up as future cannon fodder, in future wars, a future victim, so that corporate creeps could make profits... No, not at all, I was just a kid who did not know his ass from a hole in the ground. I was going to school. Public School! You know the place where there are forty kids in a class. The schools got numbers on them like P.S.8 or P.S.45. School for me, at this particular time, was made up of seasons. There was the spitball season, the paperclipp season, the water balloon season, the peashooter season, the baseball card season and so on. The other important part of school life was the Atomic Air Raid Drills, which went on in the fifties about once a week, in my public school and probably in many other public schools at the time... Little did I know that these drills were of the higher Pavlonian school of behaviourism. Little did I know that these drills were created to make little kids like myself begin foaming at the mouth, every time I heard the word "Russian" or "communist". Nor did I know that I would still even today, get chills up and down my spine on hearing the American National Anthem. No not at all. I was just a poor kid in a neighbourhood with other poor kids trying to make the best out of what life had to give. The truth in fact was, I was trying just to survive circumstances which I in no way had control over... The Atomic Air Raid Drills usually started with sirens. Sirens on the school roof, sirens everywhere. Our teacher would inform us that this was a drill by screaming, "The Russians are coming!, he Russians are coming, take cover!". Then the actual detonation of an atomic bomb was surpose to take place. Obs, I almost forgot that before taking cover some of the kids in the class were assigned the duty of pulling the dark shades over the classroom windows. Then the teacher began screaming, "FLASH" which meant that we kids were to cover our eyes with our hands. After that the teacher screamed, "BLAST" which meant that we kids were to cover our ears. Then the teacher screamed, "SHOCKWAVE" which meant that we kids were to roll up in a little ball under our desks. Finally the sirens would start again and the teacher would scream, "ALL CLEAR". Then we would sing the American National Anthem. Now if you, the reader, had been there I believe that you would have been scared too. Not only would the Russians rape your mother and your sisters, but they would drop atomic bombs on your fucking head too. This stuff pulled on innocent kids was the result of the McCarthy era. It was a fucking crime. A Pavlonian experiment to get kids like me prepared to foam at the mouth when we heard the words communist or Russian. Not only that, for poor and working class kids who survived in New York City until the age necessary to go out and fight for "your country", it was a mental training ground to prepare you as a piece of meat to be used by those in power for future wars. It is not the rich guy who goes out and dies for his country, he's to busy making money for that, no it was and is poor creeps like us, living in the ghettos, who's main choice in life usually is go be a soldier or go to jail, who always gets the shitty end of the stick! Anyhow these Atomic Air Raid Drills, at least for me, made an enormous impression on my being. For many years it effected my life. It effected the lives of my family. A good example of this is my sister Judy, who came to visit me here in Sweden in the seventies. She came to visit me a grown up woman,she had a fur coat, a diamond ring, two sweet girls who she sent to Catholic school. Christ this sounds like the American dream in a nutshell. Anyhow we got drunk one night and talked. She said to me: "Bobby, you remember how poor we were when we were little, well I am never going back to that.", she said and furthermore: "Bobby you are my brother and I love you, but I think your a Communist and if you come back, I hope they put you away!" That really convinced me that my sister had also been brainwashed during the fifties... She was extremely convinced that my actions in protest to the war in Vietnam was a plot! A gigantic communist conspiracy and I had been duped by communist propaganda. Wow, my very own sister who when little did not have a pot to piss in. My sister convinced I was a part of a gigantic conspiracy. But she also said to me: "Bobby you remember how poor we were when we were little, I am never going back to that!". So this was her way of climbing out of the pot, a bit selfish, but for my sister a way out. HMMM. I wonder how she is doing today? Maybe she is on unemployment. Maybe her husband, a jockey, dumped her. Who knows? The point being that my sister was also a victim of these times... Another good example I found during my stay in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. I was imprisoned there for some of my activities against the Vietnam War for 27 months. I met a "Russian" spy named R,G. Just meeting him gave shivers up and down my spine. I mean, here I was face to face with a guy who people were telling me from the time I was little, would drop atomic bombs on my head and rape my mom and my sisters! Well it turned out different. R.G. wasn't even a Russian, but a German. Not only that he was one of the few people, I have met in my life, who turned out to be a very kind, thoughtful and intelligent person. But that is another story. However my feelings for him the first time I met him belong to the Atomic Air Raid Drills, my teacher and her, "the Russians are coming" screaming bullshit of the McCarthy era. So, what kind of conclusions should one draw from this story? You could, of course, go out and shoot the first Russian you meet! However the Russians have their own problems these days. Of course you could say that the author of these lines is really fucking sick in the head and probably be shot on sight. My own conclusion is that my children and my grand children, whom I have not had the privilege of meeting yet, because the American Government is still pissed off about my activities during the Vietnam war, should read these lines and perhaps think about what it is the rich and powerful people in America are using today in order to prepare the future generations of cannon fodder to fight their enemies! Anyone else can decide to do what they think best.. Besides I am soon 53 years old and who cares what I am thinking about. Just an old bullshit artist. Well, I guess I will end the story here with the following words. There was this Jewish grocery store where a young man with long hair walked in to buy milk. The Jewish man, behind the counter, told the young man to stand over there with his hands raised on the cross. Then he , the Jewish man, took his hammer and nails and drove threw the hands of the young man with the words.. "YOU WILL NEVER LEARN, WILL YOU?"