re: #13 Unshaken Defiance

I remember smog alerts, cancelled physical education classes, burning eyes, heavy lungs. Heavy lungs as a kid! The skyline all obscured apart from rare days. I also remember looking up at the layer of tobacco smoke in the room when mom and dad threw a party. Ashtrays all over the place.

Now since gasoline has been cheap in recent years we have muscle cars. Loud, hundreds upon hundreds of horsepower. But no smoke, start easy on cold days and can turn or stop quickly too. All at better mileage.

It just astonishes me (although it probably shouldn’t) that a lot of people have no memory of how horrible the pre-EPA days were. And establishing the EPA in 1970 did not instantly produce clean air/water.

For me, it was not so much urban smog that is my most vivid memory, it was the acid rain.