Fear & Loathing at 35!

Fear & Loathing at 35!

By

Tom Davidson

Skylab Skylab Skylab! I remember it falling and my father collecting a piece of history in our basement. At least, that was a family joke!
The mid-to-late 1970s were a national joke and I was a punch line, a long-lost “All in the Family” episode waiting to be filmed.
Sheet & Tube had yet to be closed and my maternal grandfather had yet to be killed – squashed like a bug, according to his co-workers at Valley Mould – shortly after my parents met. Two years later, in 1975, I was borne of them, a child of the flashy-oversized collar and bell-bottom Baby-boomers who are taxing our government today.
My first relevant memories are a house-explosion on Youngstown’s North Side and the capture and release of the hostages in Iran during the Reagan Revolution. I kind of remember that Black Monday in 1977 when Sheet & Tube died and the Steel Valley became a part of the Rust Belt, but those memories are hazy.
I thought we’d be nuclear war-remnants by now; I remain astounded we’ve survived Y2K, 9/11 and whatever you want to call our world-at-the-brink-on-the-blink world as we know it.
All I know is I feel fine.
I’m glad I know what it’s like to struggle. I also remember the shock-and-awe of the 1980s: Challenger falling before my 11-yeat-old eyes, already shaded with the 1985 tornadoes; the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Communism as a Red Scare; the rise of Terror!
The horror, my horror. And now I’m tasked with covering it all. I feel it’s a sacred duty despite the horrific corporate corruption of my calling: The Truth is my bottom line, all other be damned.
As a scribe, I’ve survived Y2K, 9/11, War and Act 47. I’ve written books about sewage and comprehensive plans; I covered Hurricane Katrina and tired to do our local war dead justice.
I maintain a succor for seeing something new every day and writing about it; The Shenango Valley has yet to stump me with its foibles and I keep chasing the sirens and the story that helps to tell the tale of the best and worst of times in this Dickensian, Faulkneresque Valley that is my valley! Still green, though rust-littered after all these (35) years!
And so it goes...