If you’re like me and a true believer, the millennium began January l, 200l. I didn’t hear any warning cries about any X, Y or Z bug for the upcoming year. Y2K received more hype than a Don King boxing match. P.T. Barnum is probably laughing in his grave. There was so much anticipation of the event, we were disappointed rather than relieved when nothing happened. We had more serious disruptions in our lives with more dire consequences during the last century than an invisible bug.

I remember as a youngster the air raid drills that we had in school during WWII. A siren would sound, bells start ringing and we would all march out of our classrooms and down the stairs to the school basement. There were gym mats on the floor for the youngest children to lay on and we stayed there until the siren and bells sounded to give the “all clear.”

In the early days of the war, my dad was the local air raid warden. He would don his hard hat and, with flashlight in hand, patrol the streets to make certain the neighbors’ blackout curtains were in place so no light could be seen by enemy aircraft. If he saw any light, he would knock on the homeowner’s door and ask them to either put it out or pull down their blackout curtains. All of this for the small town of Saratoga, which wasn’t even a targeted bomb site as we didn’t have any industry to speak of with the exception of the Van Rallte Mill, which had converted to making parachutes instead of women’s hosiery.

The Cold War escalated the need for preparedness in the event of an atomic disaster. By this time I was in high school and the consequences of an atomic event were greater and much more real. Our home was in Schenectady and my father worked in one of the industrial plants in the area. We knew that the city was a prime target due to the presence of the General Electric Company, the Knolls Atomic Power Research Laboratory and several military depots. Our drills in high school were more serious and there was no need to escalate the hype.

It was during this period that the federal government was advising people in vulnerable areas to build bomb shelters near their homes. Contractors were advertising their abilities to construct such shelters and many people did. They often stocked them with non-perishables, water, flashlights, etc. On our block, a neighbor was digging a large hole in his backyard and we all swore that it was a bomb shelter. If so, it would be the neighborhood’s first. What a disappointment when we found out it was his new cesspool (We didn’t have central sewage where we lived!).

In l962, we all got a good scare during the Cuban Missile Crises. President Kennedy came on TV and told us what was going on, what actions he had taken (blockading Cuba) and that he had told Russian Premier Kruschev to remove the missiles from Cuba post haste. This was the nearest to a nuclear confrontation that we got during the Cold War. No hype, just deadly consequences.

The great east coast blackout came in the mid-60’s. No hype, no warning, just total blackness in an instant. I was working part time in the sporting goods department of the GEX store in Latham, NY when the lights went out. Everyone was momentarily pitched into a state of hysteria, wondering whether or not the big bomb had finally gone off. A collective sigh of relief echoed throughout the darkened store when we realized there was no explosion and everything was still intact. Fortunately, we had access to flashlights and lanterns. We handed them out and they were put to use assisting people to evacuate the store. I had an eerie ride home in total darkness, as no street lights or traffic signals worked. The next day the lights came on and we were told the fault lay in the failure of the east coast power grid. No one had launched World War III.

In spite of all the hype last year and the insistence by many that the new millennium begins this year, the only thing that we can be sure of is change itself, and that all depends upon how Alan Greenspan feels when he gets up in the morning.