The Unthinkable

Since that unnamed summer day in 1968 when cicada shrills reverberated in the humidity and the small of flowers and cut suburban lawns filled the sunshine; on that day after my family moved to Levittown when I first saw the Old Motor unfurl before me, it has been my meadow of contemplation and solitude and companionship.

Today, my kindergartner entomologizes here amid the wildflowers with her own butterfly net, hand lens, and collecting jars. She gives chase to painted ladies and monarchs through the foxtails that wave like a sea of pennants; undulating in gentle ripples across this overgrown site of the Vanderbilt Cup Race. How very much her childhood frolic in this place is as mine own, decades ago. How very different, too, the world and its own unthinkable has become.     

Across the street from the Old Motor, off Skimmer Lane, was my contingency plan in the event my own youthful unthinkable became imminent. As a Levitown yourth in the 1970's, I estimated that I could, climbing over the chicken wire fence that filled the gap in our neighbor's hedgerow, reach the sump's subterranean drainpipe in less than three minutes from my parent's back door; the living room clock ticking off the countdown of the American Dream's last moments before detonation. A child of the Cold War wondering just which of my neighbors, in this town of basement-less houses, secretly had a fallout shelter. A scheme to survive the apocalypse involving Nassau County storm basin No. 43.    

Just how probable was the Twilight Zone-esque scenario that haunted suburbanites - especially those dwelling in proximity to a strategic military target like Grumman's? I suspect - and this is entirely in hindsight - not very likely. Consider that with many of the same geopolitical disadvantages the Central and Axis powers possessed in the two world wars, with a vast global coalition marshaled against them, the Soviets could only have won World War Three by striking the Allies' planet-wide retaliatory launch-capacity naval and land-based forces. Or by disrupting coordination with EMP's generated from high-altitude nuclear explosions. That's a lot of boiling sea water and a lot of broken windows after an impressive fireworks display overhead.

But no metropolitan areas reduced to radioactive rubble, casualties in the tens of millions, and the collapse of modern society's fabric. No "World War II in a single afternoon" as President Ronald Reagan described it over the car radio one day in the 1980's while I was driving down Orchid Road past Skimmer Lane.

Indeed, a sustained, largely conventional conflict over months would have been are more feasible outcome as the writings of NATO strategist, the late General Sir John Hackett, convincingly argued. Moreover, it might have been more advantageous for the West - however Strange-loveian that calculus might seem - to have attacked the Soviet Union first. This I suspect is one of the reasons China and the West will never go to war in the 21st Century even if relations were to deteriorate to the brink of hostilities, which seems unlikely. China will never repeat Japan's tragic mistake at Pearl Harbor and although it will never enjoy the power the British Empire enjoyed in the 1850's or the United States in the 1950's, it will doubtless assume the role of global superpower, building its own Levittown's to accommodate its burgeoning middle class.   

Oftentimes I go by that sump off Skimmer Lane, across from the Old Motor. I ponder what would have been my next step after that blinding sunrise in the western sky washed over suburbia and that little meadow, albeit scorched, spread out before me to the horizon awaiting the return of wildflowers and butterflies. In that other reality, with all the time in the world, I would have thought of something whilst giving chase to painted ladies and monarchs through the undulating foxtails under the cicada shrills reverberating in the humid air; sovereign of all I survey.     

Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org.