9) 1980 and 81

About the time the 1980s began, I got a job in the Perkins Restaurant that used to be close to the Summit Park Mall. It was better organized than York Steak House had been. I worked Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday evenings busing tables or washing dishes. I was attending college during the week.

What I really wanted to be able to do was to lift more weight. I had a strong back and around this time, I was deadlifting well over 400 pounds and bench-pressing 245 pounds.

Before lifting a heavy weight, a lifter must thoroughly believe that he (or occasionally she) can do it. I sometimes read stuff about positive thinking, with this in mind. One day in the school library, I happened across the book, The Amazing Results Of Positive Thinking by that well-known apostle of positive thinking, Norman Vincent Peale. (He must be right about the connection between positive thinking and health because he lived to age 95).

I was merely interested in hoisting some heavier weights down in the gym, but the book had something in it that I had not anticipated. Dr. Peale was a minister and the book contained quite a bit of religion. The book really left my head spinning.

If one had asked me if I believed in God, my answer would have been "yes". But I never really thought that much about religion. Not that I didn't want to. If there was a God that had created me, I would like to get to know him. But, I had too many interests and was too distracted by other things.

There is no doubt that religion is a very powerful force. What this book did was to make me think of religion in a way that I never had previously. For the rest of the day, I was in a kind of a glowing daze. Like I had first realized that there is another dimension to life. How much weight I could lift seemed insignificant by comparison.

When a person forms any kind of connection with God, everything appears brighter. I mean actually, physically brighter. After doing a little bit of reading about God that spring, I was struck at how the grass and dandelions and sky seemed to be actually brighter than before. It was as if I had a new pair of lenses.

Today, I actually disagree with some of what positive thinking is about. In the Bible, what is referred to as "the world" is not something that we should think positively about. It is portrayed as a sinful and foolish place that does not, for the most part, follow the Word of God. It is God that we should think positively about.

But it was this book that got me thinking about religion in a new way.

The local news in the spring of 1980 was dominated by the Love Canal. Perkins, where I was working, was within easy walking distance of it. One day, two government officials had visited the Love Canal area and met with property owners. The people became so mad at them that they took a cue from the Iranians and held them hostage for several hours. The officials were shut in a room and not allowed to leave until the people were given some satisfactory answers.

The international news was dominated by the hostages in Iran. It does not appear that Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the embassy takeover and it looked as if it was a somewhat impulsive action. But once the students and others took it over, he backed them.

I later thought that the real reason behind the embassy takeover is that Iran is a very fractious country. In the revolution that was taking place, a number of factions were vying for control. Khomeini was the leading figure, but by no means did he have the support of the entire country. His chief rival was apparently Ayatollah Shariatmadari.

The seizure of the embassy gave Khomeini a common enemy to unite all the factions against and his backing of the takeover and denunciation of the "Great Satan" cemented his position as leader of the revolution. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is a classic example of how leaders do not actually start revolutions, but take control and consolidate one that is already underway.

Ayatollah Khomeini had another enemy. Iraq is the country bordering Iran to it's west. The new leader of Iraq was another name which we would all become familiar with, Saddam Hussein. Several years previously, the Shah had forced Iraq to sign an agreement concerning the valuable waterway between the two countries, the Shatt-Al-Arab River (River of the Arabs).

Saddam saw Iran in revolutionary turmoil and cut off from the U.S., which had been it's main ally. He decided to take advantage of the situation. He renounced the treaty with Iran concerning the river and signed by his predecessor. This was followed by border clashes between the two countries, which in September 1980 turned to all-out war.

Saddam was hoping that Iran's Arab minority in Khuzestan province, just over the border, would join their fellow Arabs, the Iraqis, against the ethnic Persians of Iran (who are not Arabs and speak Farsi, rather than Arabic). The Iranians, meanwhile, were hoping that their fellow Shiite Moslems in Iraq, even though they were Arabs, would side with their co-religionists from across the border in Iran and rise up against Saddam so that Iraq could also be made into a Shiite Islamic Republic.

Neither side got what it wanted and the war dragged on for eight years, with no one gaining much except full graveyards.

As it turns out, it was the war with Iraq that would turn the attention of the militants away from the hostages and they would ultimately be released.

One spring day, I had taken a nap after attending college. When I awoke, I was given some news "They've tried to rescue the hostages". The news was definitely not good.

A military operation had been attempted to try to rescue the hostages. It had been dubbed Operation Eagle Claw. It had not gone well and President Jimmy Carter came on television to take full responsibility for it.

An isolated spot had been chosen in the desert outside Tehran, referred to as Desert One. A group of U.S. military planes and helicopters had entered Iranian airspace and, flying below the radar, had made it to Desert One undetected.

But the desert had sandstorms of fine-grained sand. Helicopters are wonderful machines, but helicopters and sandstorms do not go very well together. The fine sand found it's way into the engines and equipment of the helicopters.

One by one, the helicopters failed due to mechanical troubles. The decision was made to abort the mission. In the blinding sandstorm, the rotor of a helicopter struck the side of one of the planes, which exploded. Eight U.S. servicemen were killed.

The force was evacuated without being detected. The Iranians apparently did not know about the attempted rescue until the next day. Naturally, it gave them more confidence that God was on their side.

I along with every other American male my age, was required to register for possible conscription.

There was plenty of other news. The Government of Cuba permitted that basically anyone who wanted to leave could do so. The result was a massive exodus to Florida in what would become known as the Mariel Boat Lift. The Cubans seem to have also emptied their jails by sending criminals to America and there were a few who later committed horrendous crimes among the evacuees.

In Washington state there was a massive volcano eruption, Mount St. Helens. It affected the composition of the atmosphere in the area where it was located. One evening, I was standing outside Perkins Restaurant and I could see the blue tinge to the western sky.

There was a new video game that everyone seemed to be playing, it was known as Pac Man. The French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec held a referendum on independence. The voters decided to remain as a part of Canada.

Our sheltie, Cindy, had died. My parents went to a house in Cheektowaga to buy another one, who we named Prince. This dog would live until 1993.

Prince would more than live up to his name. He would have his own way all of his life. Shelties are very intelligent and family-oriented dogs, but they have a subtle way of taking control of things. The sheltie lets you believe that it is your pet, while you are actually it's servant.

I made another trip back to England in the summer of 1980, this time for three weeks instead of the three months the last time. I continued where I had left off two years before, often taking the bus to Gloucester, Cheltenham or, Hereford. I went down to Weston-Super-Mare, where I had not been before. There was a big disco in Gloucester called Tiffhany's, where I went a couple of times, but I can see no sign online that it is still there.

This time, the sky was not cloudy for the flight over. Prior to landing, we had a magnificent view of what must have been Ealing, a western suburb of London. People beginning the morning commute from the endless rows of houses there.

In the spring and summer of 1980, there was plenty of good music. A band called The Clash had "London Calling" and "Stand By Me".

Toronto's band Rush did "Working Man" and "The Trees". Both these songs were probably older, but this is when I recall them always being on the radio.

Jackson Browne sang "Boulevard"

Charlie Daniels did "In America"

The Pink Floyd album "The Wall" was always playing. How many times did we hear them sing "All in all, you're just another brick in the wall"?

Lipps Inc. had a disco hit with "Funkytown".

Split Enz did "I Got You".

The old Sixties singer Tommy James contributed a really good song with "Three Times In Love". It was 1980, but that song did have a Sixties kind of sound to it.

There was a local band, that played in bars, called The Road. Their most popular song was "Music Man".

Some older songs that I dug back up around this time were "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones and two old Beach Boys tunes "Be True To Your School" and "Shut Down".

I went to a different college in the autumn of 1980, Buffalo State College, in north Buffalo. It was a far different environment than the community college. I voted in my first election, for Jimmy Carter to win reelection. There was a destructive earthquake in central Italy.

In Buffalo and Niagara Falls and other places, someone was going around killing black and dark-skinned men. He killed with a .22 caliber gun and was dubbed the .22 Caliber Killer. He was also the one who killed taxi drivers and cut out their hearts with a knife.

Near the end of 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed in New York City by someone who said his ambition, and reason for killing Lennon, was to be "something other than a nobody". The attempt was a complete failure.

Toward the end of the year, there was more good music. The Rolling Stones were there with "Emotional Rescue"

The B-52s, who had earlier done "Rock Lobster" gave us another look at their style of music with "Private Idaho".

Kool And The Gang had a couple of hits with "Celebrate" and "Ladies' Night".

Blondie had "Rapture" with it's utterly nonsensical lyrics.

Finally, there was Olivia Newton-John with the magnificent hits "Magic" and "Xanadu".

I also listened quite a bit to a much older song, "It's My Life" by The Animals.

There was a large movie theater down on Main Street in Niagara Falls that I think was called The Rapids and had been there since the 1920s. The theater had eventually closed down. But then, someone had gotten the idea of converting it into a bar, which was named appropriately, The Late Show.

The Late Show became the place to go in Niagara Falls. The best thing about it was how much room there was inside it. There could be several hundred people there and there would still be room to move around. The Late Show had a balcony, which in itself had more room than a lot of bars have in the entire place.

The bars across the border in Canada closed at 1 AM while the bars on the U.S. side were open until 3 AM. As you might expect, there was a rush of Canadians over to bars in the U.S. after closing time over there. The 3 AM closing time was actually the policy of Niagara County. In Buffalo, which is in Erie County, bars were open until 4 AM.

Then, there was Niagara University not far away. The university had it's own bar, The Rathskellar (or simply The Rat), but that closed at 11 PM. At that time, the exodus of NU students to the Main Street area bars began.

NU students often favored smaller bars, instead of The Late Show. There was one bar, which could generously be called "a dive" (a run-down, inelegant bar), known as McQ's. It was popular with NU students and there were other bars close enough for frequent bar hopping.

Aside from bars, Maple Leaf Village was an amusement park located just on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to which I often went in the summer. It's former location is now occupied by the casino.

I had been taking some drawing classes in school and was getting pretty good at it. I never put in enough time to get really, really good, but I did enjoy drawing for a while

I began working at the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Main Street, not far from The Late Show. I had been a regular customer at the Kentucky Fried Chicken store on the other side of town, near where I lived and found that they needed some workers. But I was put in the store downtown. Aside from working in the store, I painted the outside of the store in the summer of 1981. For a school drawing assignment, I drew a sketch of Colonel Sanders.

I was by now really interested in religion. But I did not read the Bible that much, I read much more about the Bible than the Bible itself. It was during the summer of 1981 that I first read some books by Hal Lindsey about the prophecies about the end of the world in the Bible.

In the Student Union of Buffalo State College, I had picked up some literature about the Bible. I was absolutely amazed at how the life of Jesus had been foretold by the prophets in the Old Testament. I won't go into detail here but it was absolutely astounding. How could this not be true?

God is the ultimate authority, with all others far below. God knows everything, past, present and, future. All that we are trying to learn, God has always known. He can do anything or create anything. The universe and living things could not possibly have come into existence by itself.

Life is a test designed and set up by God, but he will be glad to guide us through it to the best possible life. God should be our main concern in life. One person standing with God can stand against the whole world.

The true objective of life was to get to Heaven. Life was a test in at least two ways, on a collective scale to prove that it is only the ways of God which are correct and, on an individual scale to determine which ones of us will spend eternity with God. What good was anything that a person could accomplish in life if that person failed to get to Heaven?

All we know is this earth and we cannot even imagine the eternal paradise of Heaven. The best of this earth is like rags by comparison. Heaven is what we were really created for.

There was plenty of news in 1981. The hostages in Iran had been released just after Jimmy Carter had left the presidency. One of the first things that new president Ronald Reagan did was to fire striking air traffic controllers, thus indicating that the days of union domination were over.

A warning was issued at Buffalo State College that a girl had been raped by a stranger in a nearby park. This was to be the first we would hear of Buffalo's Bike Path Rapist. He would terrorize the area and would not be caught until 2007. Tragically, an innocent man would spend 22 years in jail due to this.

In Poland, there was a movement called Solidarnosc (Solidarity). It began with a labor union at the shipyards of Gdansk and was led by future president Lech Walesa. It opened the possibility that the Soviet Union would send troops into Poland as it had with Hungary and Czechoslovakia, when movements of independence got underway there.

One day, I was walking across the Student Union at Buffalo State College and there was a bunch of people crowded around a radio, as if some important news was taking place. All I could hear from the radio was that "a sandy-haired male has been arrested".

It turned out that the "sandy-haired male" was John Hinckley, Jr. and that he had shot Ronald Reagan while Reagan was leaving an event at a hotel in Washington. I read about Hinckley and he apparently shot the president to make an impression on actress Jody Foster, because she had been in a movie, Taxi Driver, in which Hinckley related to the character in the movie, who tries to assassinate a politician.

Anyway, there is no way to say that violence on television and in movies is not harmful.

Then there was the news that Israel, feeling threatened by the nuclear program of Iraq, had launched a surprise air raid on the Osirak Nuclear Reactor in Iraq. The Israeli Air Force planes had apparently flown low over the desert and had gotten to the site of the reactor without being detected. The raid was a success but brought international outrage. Even Iran, which was at war with Iraq, condemned the raid.

In the summer of 1981 came one of the most destructive terrorist attacks ever. The government of Iran was the target. A massive explosion in Tehran killed many of Iran's top government officials. Although Ayatollah Khomeini was not among them.

Finally Egypt's Anwar Sadat, who had pioneered peace in the Middle East by meeting with Israeli leaders, was assassinated while reviewing a military parade. His vice president, Hosni Mubarak, took over and still leads Egypt, as of this writing.

There was plenty of music in 1981. I listened often to a number of songs from years past.

Such as the rocking "Highway Star" by Deep Purple

"A World Of Our Own" by The Seekers

"Baby, Now That I've Found You" by The Foundations, the band who also did "Build Me Up, Buttercup"

"You Showed Me" by The Turtles

"Shapes Of Things" and "Heart Full Of Soul" by The Yardbirds

There was also the new music.

We first met the Go-Gos with "Our Lips Are Sealed" and "We Got The Beat".

Quincy Jones did the mellow "Ai No Corrida".

Blue Oyster Cult appeared again with "Burning For You"

The Cars had "Shake It Up"

There was a band called Diesel with the song "Sausalito Summer Night" I liked the song but we never heard much more from this band.