By now you have heard all the grown-ups talk about Ronald Reagan. Would you indulge me for a minute as I share a few thoughts on what it was like to be a kid during the Reagan years?
I was 10 years old when Reagan entered the White House. I distinctly remember my mother saying she feared that Reagan, with his tough talk on communism, would get us into a war inside of two years.
It was a harrowing thought for a kid who lived fearing that the Russians were going to launch nuclear missiles at the power plant near my hometown or the oil refinery 30 miles away, places that seemed to be likely targets.
Maybe I watched too many nuclear war movies like The Day After or too much nightly news. But the Cold War that Reagan is now credited with winning left a deep impression on me.
When Reagan was overheard joking before a radio address that Russia had been outlawed and we were going to bomb in five minutes, I didn't laugh.
I remember stopping by my mom's workplace after school one day and hearing that President Reagan had been shot. I rushed home and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the replays of the mayhem and worrying about the president.
Mine was a family of Democrats, but we still rooted for Reagan to pull through. I remember Frank Reynolds, the anchor at ABC News, growling on the air at his correspondents when they fed him misinformation that James Brady, also wounded in the shooting, had died.
Reynolds, having just killed off Brady moments before, brought him back to life before my eyes. It was a scary time.
Soon, Reagan was joking again - about forgetting to duck and hoping his doctors were Republicans - and it took some of the fear away for kids like me. He deserves credit for that.
Still, Reagan remained something of a caricature in our house, what with his perpetually rosy cheeks and starring role in Bedtime for Bonzo, which I had seen on cable. We never felt connected to Reagan. And we weren't alone.
In eastern Kentucky, where hard economic times during the 1980s reminded older folks of the Depression, the Reagan revolution seemed hollow. Rather than a hero, we tended to think of him as the president who wanted to declare ketchup a vegetable for schoolchildren.
A very tall West German exchange student came to my high school when I was a freshman in 1983. And we were thrilled that he joined our basketball team. But I remember the blank look on his face when he asked - and heard - what people thought about Reagan. In a county where the unemployment rate stayed in double digits during the Reagan years, the lesson our exchange student took home with him was this: Reagan had left the poor folks behind.
A couple of years later, in the warmth of a new baseball season, we were loosening up in the outfield grass when one of my teammates said they heard Reagan had sent warplanes to bomb Libya. Back then, we weren't used to America bombing anybody.
Vietnam had ended a decade before and things had been quiet since. We all feared the worst: being drafted upon graduation. We learned, through Grenada and Panama, that America would throw its weight around occasionally. And this didn't necessarily mean we were going to war.
The next year, I remember sitting transfixed in front of the television during the Iran-Contra hearings. I fell under the spell of Oliver North's testimony. He seemed like a real patriot. Until I figured out the real plot line: He broke the law.
In my youthful haze, Reagan's greatest moment - telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall - seemed a bit melodramatic. I kept wondering who could take this guy seriously.
But sure enough, a few years later in college, my buddies and I watched together as our peers in Germany started tearing chunks from the wall. It was a surreal moment. The Cold War we grew up with had ended. The bombs we feared weren't going to fall.
I never joined the College Republicans. I couldn't stand the bow ties and the smugness. But that doesn't stop me from giving Reagan his due. He deserves at least some of the credit for putting the Cold War of my youth to rest.
