On Hilgard Avenue he walked alone past low-slung apartment buildings and thought about the old days, what his mother had told him.
The constant intensity of the times eluded him. He couldn’t grasp what it would have been like to live with the knowledge an atomic bomb could be dropped at any time.
If imminent death was an everyday reality, how did this shape lives?
Which lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been learned and which had been discarded?
He walked alone on Hilgard Avenue.
Rounding a gentle bend, he heard a faint strain of Emitt Rhodes from one of the otherwise quiet apartment buildings.
It was a fine, forgotten song from a fine, forgotten time.
He would never say this. It would be erudite and embarrassing. But he yearned to take a page from Prometheus, steal something from the powerful and hand it over to the masses.
