Billy B. thought of his childhood…so many years ago. He remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Both events were chilling and he wondered as a youngster and a young man…what purpose did War achieve. He and Chet and Jane had grown old and hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolving of the Soviet Union and the seeming goodwill of Soviet Union Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and the humorous drunken. bumbling of Boris Yeltsin signaled that the worries about a nuclear war with Russia…had finally come to an end. The television images of the people of East Germanys’ first taste of freedom were inspiring. Their standing on the top of the Iron Curtain and demolishing it with sledgehammers was a sweet and long-awaited victory for these oppressed people. Talks occurred among political leaders regarding not only reducing nuclear bombs…but eliminating them. The foolishness of the Cold War and the wasting of human potential and the coming of Glasnost…was the culmination of many hard years of suffering.

Vladimir Putin became the interim leader of Russia when Boris Yeltsin hand-picked him and then stepped down. President George Bush said of Putin that he had looked into Putins’ soul and that he was a person that we could do business with… But we were weary of watching Russia. Our former President had nothing but effusive praise for his buddy…Putin. He accepted his word over his highest advisors.

Chet said that he had been called up to serve as a soldier in the Illinois National Guard. Billy B. and Chet were in their mid-60s and had been retired for some time. Jane said that she had recently traveled to St. Louis…and the Arch was no longer there…