The other day, as Freida and I headed to Dallas to celebrate our grandson completing his first trip around the Sun, a thought struck me. And that thought had to do with the center stripe painted on the highway — a line directing my path, signaling me not to stray across it without taking precautions. Then other lines holding sway over our daily lives came to mind. Lines like the one we sign our name on to pay a bill, or take title to a home, or apply for a fishing license. And there’s the line Johnny Cash sang about in “I Walk the Line.” Staying true to that course through five decades of wedded life has been my joy. And then there are lines such as Col. William Travis drew in the Alamo’s dust after Santa Ana demanded surrender or death. Roughly 200 brave Texans stepped over that line, thus entering history as slain heroes. That’s when lines on a map, boundary lines to be precise, gripped me.

It was on Monday, Aug. 29, 1949, that Russia tested its first atomic bomb, ushering in the Cold War. Just a few days after this fateful announcement, I entered the first grade at D. McRae Elementary, Fort Worth, Texas. By the end of the school year, I recall we were having regular air raid drills, hunkered down under our desks, hands clutched behind our necks, six-year-olds wondering how much it would hurt to be vaporized. The world had entered the MAD era of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’. An era lingering in the wings to this day, waiting for an incident to re-invigorate it.

Well, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done exactly that. It again has placed the world, in its entirety, on the cusp of nuclear holocaust. And for no more justification than that jokingly voiced to me once by a Montana rancher: “I don’t want all the land in the world, only that touching mine.” As Putin clumsily orchestrates his cowardly war on Ukrainian civilians, whilst rattling his arsenal of 6,000 plus atomic bombs at freedom-loving nations, an appalled world can do little more than watch the conflict play out on Fox and CNN, lest Putin’s finger on the nuclear button be inadvertently bumped. And let’s face it, taking away a schoolyard bully’s lunch money is unlikely to forestall his attacks on those perceived weaker. No, Putin knowingly has crossed a line far more profound than Ukraine’s borders. He has slipped a toe across the hellish line leading to all out thermonuclear war. I pray he proceeds no farther.

President Kennedy said, “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or by miscalculation, or by madness.” The Ukrainian people now bear the brunt of Putin’s madness. Let us hope against hope that all of humanity doesn’t suffer far worse at his hand. And may God save the brave souls of Ukraine, especially her children.

Hoy Bryson is a resident of Van Zandt County.