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The correct procedure to protect yourself in an atomic bomb attack.
Communists everywhere.
Fox Terrier,
We seem to be of the same general age. I entered the first grade in September of 1952.
I remember the anti-Communist radio shows "I Led Three Lives" and "I Was a Communist for the FBI", interspersed with "Gangbusters", "Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy", "The Great Guildersleeve", "Jack Benny" and others. I remember listening to the nightly Korean War reports that told (among other things) how many MiGs were shot down that day. I remember atom-bomb drills at school where we were herded into the hallways and taught how to take shelter against the hall walls. I remember the later "duck-and-cover" drills where we were taught how to use our desks as a (very paltry) form of shelter.
As a high school junior in 1962 I remember sitting in the classroom, silently and nervously waiting for word that missiles were inbound from the Soviet Union, and breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief when word came that the Soviets had "blinked".
The correct procedure to protect yourself in an atomic bomb attack.
Communists everywhere.
LOL, on a side note, my parents had a 'Castro Convertible' sofabed. I was so freaked by the real Castro (a scary, shadowy, unformed figure of a beast-man) I often wondered what they were doing with a communist sofabed!
I don't think newer generations really understand that people during the fifties expected nuclear war, and for everyone who built a bomb shelter in the back yard, there was someone who decided it might not be worth surviving. But yes, we grew up in a time when most people expected to end up living in a post atomic world. On the day Castro would blink or not, my parents kept me home from school. My dad stayed home from work. If it was the end we wanted to be together.
I'd also add polio, though as a kid I really didn't know that the year I was born more people contracted it than any year before. One of my dear friends in Jr. High was still damaged by it. I was her friend even though everyone picked on her since she couldn't walk without a brace and was hard to understand her speech.
And yes, I remember rock and roll. My mom listened to big band and Sinatra all day every day so I appreciate her music very much too. My aunt loved surf music and played that all day. She also wanted to see the Stones but her kids were to embarresed to have MOM go to take her.
And don't forget the war and the social uphevial and the way I remember my teens being in a state of perpetual anger and worry and wondering when some other city would riot and the way people hated each other for politics. In my family it was NEVER discussed. Thus, we stayed a family.
Much of the stuff the current generations started out with as issues seem so... small .... some how.
I was a high school senior (Class of 1964) when Kennedy was assassinated, an event which I've come to recognize as THE pivotal point in my life because EVERYTHING changed from that point forward. The nation's big issues at the time, and for the next decade or so:
Civil Rights
The Spread of Communism
Vietnam (an extension of Item 2)
The clash between Rock & Roll, Motown, Folk, and "real music"
Oh, yes, and in the late 1960s came the hippies, free love, psychedelic music & drugs, Sergeant Pepper; basically the end of the world as my parents knew it... [<Grin!>]
I've been watching the pbs documentaries on the fifthth aniversity. I was eleven. I'd been sick and was home from school. Mom and I were on the couch, in our little den, listening to Arthur Godfrie's raido show when the bullitan came in from CBS. Listening to Walter's voice on the tv brought back all the little details in sharp focus. The disbelief and horror. Turning on the tv and waiting. The later time, with the train which took his body home. Seeing people just silently waiting to honor him as the train passed. The whole feeling of disbelief that the world could go so wrong.
Add that to Cuba and I think we all grew up fast as a generation. I still remember seeing these pictures of riots and violence in the campuses and streets and feeling nothing but a fascination since our sensitbility to violence had already been erased. I think I still carry that with me today.
What are some things you remember from your youth that society was foaming at the mouth over?
Laziness, lack of respect, being spoiled and over indulged (see Benjamin Spock), over sexed, lose of moral values, over sexualized music and dance, in short the same things that folks are foaming at the mouth about now.
I was born in 1943 and by 1955 Rock n' Roll was the devils music. Bill Haley and the Comets and Elvis Presley records were being smashed to bits by the thousands.
Nobody mentioned the Watts riots? LA in flames? Yeah, Eisenhower sending in the troops to enforce the Supreme Court decision on integration, Joe McCarthy's commie hunting (If mommie is a commie then ya gotta turn her in), the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the cold war in general sent me to bed with nightmares for a long time. Kruschev ("We will bury you!"). the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The John Kennedy assassination and Lyndon Johnson escalating an unpopular war. The Summer of Love. Charlie Manson and Abbie Hoffman. Country Joe McDonald (What's that SPELL?). Joni Mitchell. Woodstock. Richard Nixon (really?). Star Trek. 2001, A Space Odyssey. The Graduate. Firesign Theater. Cheech and Chong. Sock it to me. (Richard Nixon again. Really?)
Then I turned 21, and nothing ever happened after that.
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