HERE is the latest installment in the ongoing series, “Tales of Chester,” a first-hand account of my husband’s childhood in the industrial — and strategically-vital — town of Chester, Pennsylvania.
The End of the World
We were not surprised to learn that the living Satan himself had added the strategically-vital town of Chester, Pennsylvania, to his itinerary. Chester was home to one of the world’s great shipyards and would be a magnet for Russian atomic bombs. So it only made sense that the great conqueror and oppressor and hater of all that was holy, Nikita Khrushchev, would want to see this inviting target firsthand when he visited the United States.
The buildup to Khrushchev’s visit to America evoked images as threatening as a gathering of thunderheads along a storm front, the way we imagined the sky might look when Gabriel sounded the trumpet to wake the dead at the end of world. Normally, the Chester Times devoted its pages to Iocal Republican politics (the only kind we had) or the exploits of fullbacks at St. James and the basketball superstars at Chester High, the only kind of kids worth a damn in this town. These were extreme times, however. In the summer of 1959, on the eve of Khrushchev’s visit, the paper rolled out an extensive series under the headline, “We Will Bury You!” It was described as the Communist “Blueprint for the Future,” and we had every reason to believe the Russians could execute to the letter their plans for world domination.
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