Fourth grade Ditch Quick In America. I was born a long time ago back in the fifties. I remember a lot of things that took place back in the 50's and in the 60's and in the 70's and in the 80's and in the 90's. Like other people my age, today I can remember back in fourth grade. I guess that was the first time that I started paying attention to things that were happening around me. It seems so far away. It was at that time, when the outside world came inside to mine. It began with my fourth grade teacher taking us all out into the hallway after an alarm was ringing at school. We all lined up very quickly and quietly. One of the people in the classroom was called the window monitor. It was the window monitor’s job to pull all the shades down across the whole length of the wall, so that there would be no light to come into the classroom nor was there a chance for shattered glass to fly. Every single classroom in the whole entire school had a person designated as a window monitor. So every single window in the entire school had a closed window shade where no light or glass could get out. No light could be seen from the outside. Once the Bell started ringing as an alarm, and we were all lined up.

WE had to be very quiet. Our teacher led us out into the hall at which time we all were to put our backs to the wall– put our heads down in our laps– as we were told, and to sit in Indian style. We were then told to put our sweaters or coats over our heads while having our heads in our laps. We were to stay like that until the all-clear bell sounded . That would last about 10 minutes. We did that every single day for I would say about 3 weeks. Before this time we would simply hear an alarm or we would have in- class protective actions where we would simply go underneath our desks and stay under our desks while the teacher would shut all the window blinds. But that didn't last very long. After a short time, maybe one week later is when the procedure changed for our safety and security. We transitioned into the Hallway procedure. We were then led out into the hallways. Now as a child, I was used to going out into the playground and playing in the open Sunshine. Open air and kids screaming and yelling and kicking balls and chasing one another. As children we were playing hopscotch and what we like to call Four Corners, and dodge-ball or baseball. We played on monkey bars, swings and merry-go rounds for about an hour after lunch. It was called recess. So as children, we lived in a world unaffected by anything else other than our own childhood routines. But then when I was in 4th grade something happened! I didn't know what happened at the time. And I didn't understand it. I only know that people, even my own parents we're watching the news intently. I was being told to be quiet in no uncertain terms! My parents were very intent on listening without me as a distraction. It wasn't till years later that I realized what all the commotion was about. I hadn't said it up until now. but I can tell you that it was also at this time or a little bit thereafter when my next door neighbor and I as explorers of the great neighborhood– that we decided to walk up the great big hill called Murray Hill Boulevard, and then it was up to the Highland area where the big new high school was built. We started exploring around the open fields and the forest that surrounded it. We came to a clearing within the woods. We saw it! There was this shiny metal box of a building. Only This Box- like building looked exactly like a giant silver aluminum shoe-box standing up on its end. It rose high into the sky . There was one door and we found it. We went inside to investigate. There was nothing at all inside the building. It had a dirt floor and it was simply an aluminum box. When inside of it, we lifted our heads to the lean way back to see the top of the big box. What was this place? Why was it here? What did it use to do? Well I can tell you being kids at that age it didn't take us long to look at the bone structure of this shoe-box on the inside, and determine how we could climb this. And so looking at the height of the structure, I decided very quickly that my little legs were not going to be able to climb it. I was a tree climber but this was no big tree. But not so with my neighbor. He was an avid climber and I don't think there was anything he couldn't climb and so therefore he went scaling the inside of this giant silver aluminum shoe-box. Now there is another aspect that is relevant to my little shared story here, and that is what we called Daystrom. I have no idea if that is a real word or not but, that is what we called it . You see Daystrom was a field that joined a small Pine Grove of trees. And, next to the Pine Grove of trees was an asphalt sidewalk that meandered down through a thick small group of bushes and trees. The asphalt sidewalk led to a small house. It was a cute little house and nobody lived in it. It wasn't old. It was actually fairly new. It had brick on it and yellow shutters. It had a nice front door and a storm door. It seemed to us that the door was never locked. And no one was ever inside. It was very strange because the lights worked, the refrigerator was on, and the water was running. There was furniture like a couch and chairs and a bedroom with a bed in it and a dresser. But there were never any people in it. The closets were empty. The cupboards in the kitchen were empty. There was no TV. There was no radio. It was simply an empty furnished house with the electricity on . Oh I can tell you, that we had found the perfect Playhouse which wasn't little by the way. I would say it was probably a two bedroom house, although right alongside our pathway and enclosed within this little Forest, all by itself. The playhouse was all alone just waiting for us to enter. And we often did. Now, if you followed the path further past this perfect little Playhouse, then you would come to another field. This green field opened up to a parking lot. When crossing the parking lot getting to the other side, you would find a tall square brick tower with a green roof. At the top of the tower were glass windows. Those windows were dark tinted windows. Going further on foot, across the grass away from the tower, we came to the driveway and the gated entrance to a huge, huge Building made of red brick also with a green roof. It was too big for a school and it was too big for a hospital. It had rows and rows and rows of windows. The strange thing about this big brick building was its entrance. The entrance consisted of double glass doors. And next to the glass doors stood a man. This man was dressed in normal clothes. He wasn't wearing a uniform or a special hat. By looking at him he was simply a visitor. Another thing we noticed and took note of especially was a small white bus that would drive up and down the driveway and come to a stop at the entrance way of the building. The open bus doors allowed people to come in to the bus and to exit the bus. As children and at the age of 4th graders, we were not concerned with what was going on inside that building. The only thing we were concerned about was that there was a building there and that there was a bus that went up and down the driveway. And that there was a tower and a great big green grass yard around it and no fence. There was no fence around this building. You see, the front yard was so deep and wide that from the busy street that it was facing, there was no need for a fence. It probably would have taken 20 to 25 minutes to walk the distance from the main road to that building. Everything could be seen by that tower sitting in the yard. That's How deep the front yard was!

Where I lived, my neighborhood was full of other kids my own age. This suburb had been built quickly. The houses went up fast enough that most everyone had moved into that neighborhood around the same time, so we can say that everybody in the neighborhood began in the neighborhood at the same time and so all of the children of course grew up together at the same time and became good friends and good neighbors. So it was nothing for even fifteen young children to be playing in the late evening a game of Hopscotch, kick ball, Kick the Can or just all kinds of games together and not only that but the large group of children that played together at night would often you know separate from one another and small groups would play together. Maybe the children that were just on one street would play more than play with the entire neighborhood. My street was very close to the Boulevard, and to the Highland atop the highest hill. It was not a strange thing that I would wander into the little perfect playhouse and to the Bell Laboratory which was the huge brick building with the brick Tower and the little white bus that drove back and forth up the long long driveway. Now it was about this time in my fourth grade that Bell Laboratories was working very very hard to develop a satellite. The United States was not the first one to put a satellite up in space. It was actually Russia that won that race to place a very first satellite up into space. The Dreadful fear of placing a satellite in space was that inside the satellite someone could actually put a bomb in there. So when Russia announced they had placed their first satellite into space it caused a lot of oh dear and fearfulness into the American government and population. By the way, that satellite was called Sputnik. And it was at this time that I was in fourth grade. And it was also at this time where the scientists that were housed in the Bell Laboratories were working on components for four satellites and for radio frequency technology such as transistors. I remember one day a friend and me we're just hanging out and playing and running around climbing trees -nothing much to do but we decided that we would walk over to Daystrom and walk down the path to check our little Playhouse and actually I believe it was Beverly who was with me. Beverly was my best friend and we somehow grew closer to the Bell Laboratories building . Now remember we did not know it was Bell Laboratories at the time. We had no idea what that name meant and what it was associated with. We were simply kids and Came Upon a great big building and we were inquisitive. We saw the bus go up and down. And believe it or not little girls play war games just like little boys do. We use sticks and rocks and sewer pipes and trees and anything that happens to be within our environment to pretend war games. And Beverly and I were no different. So we were used to playing our game called it Ditch-Quick. We would pretend that we were soldiers and army men and we were coming up to the front of the battle. When one of us spotted an opposing Soldier we would yell ditch-quick to one another ! When investigating Daystrom and the Bell Laboratories we simply fell into our game of ditch- quick. So when we saw a stranger or we came close to the tower, which by the way was a guard house–- we would say to one another ditch -quick! I mean sincerely, don't you think that would be more fun anyway? So little by little we made our way past the guard house to the corner of a building. We saw the little white bus drive up, go around a circle and return out to the outside of the driveway towards the main road. The coast was clear so we decided quickly to run across the driveway towards the main glass doors. The man outside the glass doors was not there so we felt we had an all-clear. So off we went over the grass around the bend, inch by inch, across the round circular driveway and up the concrete steps that led to the glass doors. All of a sudden we heard a horrible strong voice behind us. Stop where you are! As we turned we saw a man dressed in black business-like clothing. He wore no hat, he wore no gloves, he wore no boots, he had no gun . but his commanding voice immediately got our attention . He asked us what we were doing there and so of course I spoke right up. Will you see, mister? We saw the little white bus and we thought we'd like to take a ride on it. (I lied.) But we missed the bus so we were going to try and go in these glass doors here to get a ticket or find out how we could ride the bus.( I was good at improvisation.) At that point Beverly and I were very scared. We were shaking in our boots. We had no idea where we were. We had no idea what this place was, we only knew that we had been caught trying to enter into a place that we were not invited to enter into. I believe the man who was questioning us knew without a doubt we caused no kind of threat from Nor in looking back, do I think he believed us to be a double agent or a spy of any kind–- whether industrial spy, psychological spy or a Russian double agent. He simply understood probably because he had children of his own, that we were simply stupid little kids wandering into a place we had no business wandering into. So with that the man said you need to leave and leave now and don't come back here ever again! And that is a small story about Bell Laboratory in my neighborhood.

But wait, oh there's more. Remember I told you about the tall aluminum shoe box on its end building that my neighbor and I were inside ? Well it wasn't long after- maybe a year or so -that I came to understand what that silver metal aluminum frame shoe-box actually was. You see, many of the houses that were built along with my house had what you would call bomb shelters built into the basements . How did I know this? Well when the houses were under construction some of the kids in the neighborhood as well as me openly investigated these houses. In fact we were overwhelmed with one particular house that had an inside swimming pool built into the house . This swimming pool was enclosed by walls with regular windows in the walls. All of us wanted to live in that house. Also in that house we noticed there was a stairwell. It was made out of concrete and it went down from the basement. So if you were inside the house on the ground level we'll walk down wooden stairs to the basement and once inside the basement, you would see another set of concrete stairs. I would say about five stairs that led to this small concrete wall room. This small concrete room below the surface of the basement was not a fruit cellar. This was a bomb shelter that had been built with the house. Now there were other houses being built at the same time and many of those houses also had these bomb shelters built in them as well. Of course ours didn't have bomb shelters because our houses were built a couple years prior to these. So back to the aluminum shoe box . It was about this time that in 4th grade we were having to go out into the hallway sit indian-style put our heads in our lap as far as we could and put jackets or sweaters over our heads until the all-clear was sounded. it was at this time that the United States of America when President John F. Kennedy was at the helm and was in fear that we would be attacked with a nuclear bomb. You see, the Russians had come close to our border with their troops along with Cuban soldiers. This made the United States very uncomfortable that we would have a foreigner and also a foreigner considered somewhat an enemy to be so close- 90 Miles by the way- from our border. And not only that, but our supposed enemy was putting in weapons of massive deadly force and destruction . This massive deadly force was in the form of missiles. We had no Iron Dome. We had some radar but we did not have advanced Weaponry like there is today and there was no such thing as Hypersonic missiles F-16 , F-35's or F 36’s etc. nor was there any type of is anti- missile defense systems. No we had none of that, but we did have nuclear weapons and we had nuclear bombs that would be housed inside of a silo. It was held underground. On top of the ground was a tall silver structure that would look like a giant upended aluminum shoe-box. Nuclear missiles were being transported to Cuba and put together throughout the areas of Cuba and they were directed towards the USA, only 90 miles from our border.

Now it is 2022. And the shoe-box is on the other foot. And John F Kennedy is no more to be found on this Earth. Intelligent conversation, good treaties Bound by Honor and reputation no longer exist in this world. This is not the same world. That world ended years and years ago. It was only a month ago where it was Russia wearing those shoes that John F Kennedy wore. Putin has thick soles, tough leather boots and much more to fear than a few or more short range missiles that could only go a few miles. Now Putin has the enemy at his doorstep and it is less than 90 miles from his border. And instead of having a good opponent such as John F Kennedy to speak with and to come to a mutual agreement, Putin has had to undergo talks with people like Joe Biden and the idiots that Joe Biden has placed in key positions that have little to no experience and very very little intelligence or common sense about them. They are comic-book characters. And not only that but Putin has had to deal with other idiots of a show called false capitalistic groups which hails itself and the United Nations. Paid for media from Soros, Rockefeller greedies as others are also part of the insane circus. Constant barrages of propaganda fills all the frequency bands.

Listen, I remember watching my parents tune into the radio and the television, and I've seen the look of fear and worry on their faces as a child. I heard them whispering together sitting at the kitchen table- talking about serious matters. And it wasn't just my parents that I watched. But I watched the parents of my friends doing the very same thing. I remember going to my friend's house right after school. I got off the bus at her house and we both walked into her front door. You know like kids do to go get something to eat in the kitchen –and there were her parents sitting around the coffee table in their living room and they were having one of these quiet fearful looking discussions about this time. The whole country was on edge. No one knew what would happen. No one knew if these peace talks and negotiations would amount to a positive ending. No one knew if the ships around Cuba would stop bringing in the weapons and the instruments needed for the Soviet Union to complete its building of more missiles just 90 miles away from the Coast of Florida.

These days you see it's not important. It is no longer necessary to shut the window blinds to hide under your desk. How to put your legs in an Indian style position, put your head but you know as low as you can and cover your heads with sweaters or coats that's no longer necessary. Because the simple fact is that by the time the announcement would even get to a school to inform them that a missile is on its way the missile would have already hit and killed them all. So what would be the use of an alarm or pulling the window shades down or having any semblance of a discussion with your husband or your mother or father about what to do in the case of a missile strike? You see there is no time to discuss this after the decision has been made. Pray for Putin, Pray for Biden and Pray the Lord will forgive us and keep us and deliver us and bring us close to Himself. Pray for people of the whole entire world to come to know HIM.

The United States of America has been blessed in the past throughout its existence by God . We as a society used to live as best we could as a free Society within the rules of right and wrong, good and bad that was set down by the highest judge who is full of compassion and mercy and rules . But little by little the rules have become mixed. Good has become confused with evil , good living with common sense and kindness has been misconstrued and confused with self sufficiency me-me-me attitudes and I take what I want when I want it . We have left no room for God in the United States of America. God has stood by us in the past and had mercy on us . But I'm afraid that God is not happy with us here in the United States and we have a reckoning and we are going to pay the consequences of our actions and the consequences of a darkened heart within us as a society and a government.

I had a great childhood and even though there were times of struggle within the United States, I lived in my childhood days in a time of great peace and stability and a good economy and a thriving industrial America where the American dream actually was realized every single day. People from other countries flocked to our country. They wanted as well to have the American dream realized in their own lives and many of them did. But now, this American dream no longer exists. God is almost totally removed. The ideals and beliefs of our earlier Generations are gone and the only reason anyone would want to flock to this country is as an enemy to destroy it. And why do you think all these different peoples in the world want to destroy America? It is not out of greed. It is not that they want what we have. It is that we, Americans, have become the enemy. No one country can save itself. It has now become a matter of saving yourselves. You must come to know GOD by yourself. He is the only one who can save you and give you an eternal life of peace, love and charity. Now is the time. Speak to God from your heart. Ask Him to help you come to know HIM. HE will answer you. He will set you free. Free indeed, and everlasting love and freedom in HIM though Jesus Christ.