This song came out around the time I first started waking up and began experiencing the sad and terrible realization that I had been duped since childhood and everything I had hoped for and believed in was a fraud. At one point I couldn't listen to this song or have it come on the radio without sobbing. It reminds me of growing up as a JW during the turbulent 60's and all the momentous things that happened in history at that time. We thought we had all the answers as to why the things the way they were. It was easy to believe the Vietnam war, Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, race riots etc, were all signs of the end rather than just another part of the worlds history that we happened to be alive during.
This song made me sad for the little boy Pete who was only trying to be a child but was constantly being reminded by the adults around him that the world was going to come to a horrific end at any minute and when it did, God was going to kill my father, teacher, neighbor kids and grandparents because none of them wanted to become Jehovah's witnesses, and if little Pete wasn't a good enough JW, didn't answer enough at meetings, give good enough talks, and didn't go in field service enough, he'd be a goner as well.
Here I am about to turn 60 and none of it happened, not one single thing and there's no way to go back an undo the irreversible damage or to make up for the losses that took place in my family because of the faceless men who made up the entire belief system of the Jehovah's Witness religion. Men who are long gone but the damage they caused, continues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ekTCh5JiA0