The second-graders in Mrs. White’s class became schooled in the distraction of desk-diving.

At our teacher’s instruction, we would duck down, ball up and put our noses near the floor.

We were Cold War children and not apt to give the Russians a clear target.

Not that the godless Bolsheviks, held in the same disdain as soybean cyst nematodes where I grew up, had designs on Missouri’s Bootheel. But that was the point. You never knew what a Commie was thinking.

Who’s to say that the Soviet menace, on the lookout for an ICBM silo in the Mississippi River bottom ground (which any New Madrid Countian would attest could never be made watertight), might not want to target the local cotton gins?

So, people stood ready, and kids ducked with quiet efficiency. We lived in a nuclear world.

It’s hard for my younger colleagues to identify with the notion of school preparedness against atomic attacks. They might also question, rightfully, how a thin construction of wood and metal could be used as shelter against a payload of numerous megatons.

Hey, we did what we could. And, apparently, it proved enough.

Twenty years ago next week, the Berlin Wall came down.

During its 28 years of existence, it symbolized for the United States the oppression of totalitarian governments. The so-called Soviet bloc stood on the other side of the wall, mysterious and foreboding.

The Soviets tested us with Sputnik. They tested us in the seas off Cuba. They always seemed up to something in the Olympic Games.

Mostly, they had all those nuclear weapons pointed at the land of the free, home of the brave.

That includes local land, though St. Joseph was thought to be a “tertiary” target (behind “primary” and “secondary”) in the win, place and show of nuclear destruction.

In the summer of 1950, St. Joseph Mayor Stanley I. Dale took to the City Council a proposal of a civilian disaster corps.

“We are going into what might be termed the atomic era,” he said. “Not even our military leaders know what might be in store for populated areas should war come.”

The fire chief at the time, Leo Urbanski, added: “Since the atomic bomb, we’ve known devastation from fire can be sudden and widespread. Even in St. Joseph, we need to be prepared.”

Despite a Missourian in the White House, local officials offered no enthusiasm for federal readiness. Mr. Dale said Washington’s civil defense organization was “in a state of hopeless confusion.”

Money would be spent, here and elsewhere, to build fallout shelters that became relics. When the date came, Nov. 9, 1989, the wall came down and the Soviets seemed failed, not mighty.

They still had nuclear weapons, still pointed our way.

Nine months later, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and American worries rearranged themselves to a different locale. Public treasure goes to fighting enemies without nationality. Everyday folks get scrutinized at airport gates. No shelters stop the madness.

I encountered some German journalists, from the wall’s West side, not many years after Berlin’s rejoicing. I suggested it must be a source of national pride.

One of them shrugged, saying his taxes had risen to pay for the reunification.

Pride and finances goeth after a fall.

Ken Newton’s column runs on Tuesday and Sunday.