DUCK AND COVER!!

April 28, 2014

 “Remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?” ~Warren Hutcherson, with thanks to Janis Ian  

DUCK!!! ...and COVER!!!





When I was 6 - 7 years old, I attended a medium-sized private school in Washington, D.C. I have mostly pleasant memories there - phonics, reading, arithmetic - the usual stuff. This was in 1957 to 1958. We were at peace - sort of.

Across the Atlantic, Europe was still rebuilding after being nearly levelled by bombs during World War II, and the horrors of that war were still vivid in the minds of those who experienced it first-hand. The newsreels said we won, but I didn't thing we did.

An "Iron Curtain" had descended over Europe, separating the free West with the Communist-controlled East. We were being threatened by the very people who earlier claimed to be our allies a dozen years before in World War II. Daily we heard stories of refugees who were able to flee into the west - and of some who were shot or imprisoned while trying.

I read the newspapers, watched the news on TV (such as it was in 1957! (and had a good reading vocabulary, reading on a college level as a child. I also heard the adults talk. I even knew what the "A-bomb" was all about. Heck, even a friend of mine in my class had a daddy who was building his own bomb shelter! This was serious stuff! Programs on TV would advise what items to stock in your basement in case we were attacked and A-bombed. Magazine articles offered tips on prepping.

Throughout the world, countries were split in two: Nationalist and Communist China, East and West Germany, North and South Korea, and North and South Viet Nam. (I remember putting together a puzzle of the 48 states, and noticed that there was a North and South Carolina, and a North and South Dakota, and there was a West Virginia and a Virginia. When I got through with putting the jigsaw together, I asked my mother: "Which states are Communist?" She chuckled.

Things got more and more serious, and we were indoctrinated as to what plan of action we would take in the event of an atomic attack. "DUCK!!....and COVER!! was a little TV ad I recall seeing. We'd actually practice that in the classroom, quickly ducking under our desks - as if that, somehow, would prevent what surely would follow.

One day we had a fallout drill. In case a nuclear bomb fell near us, we'd retreat quietly (so the Russians wouldn't hear us??) and in single file usually from smallest to tallest, to the basement and cower along a wall. There were a few students who didn't have space along the wall, so they sought shelter under the substantial protection of a card table.

"Do you have ANY IDEA..." I wanted to tell the teacher, while I watched that silly exercise, "ANY idea at all what would happen to us if an A-Bomb fell anywhere near here???"

But for once I was quiet. I ducked - and covered!!

Thank God the bombs never fell...


10 January 2013 I wrote: "Just picked up the boys from school. They had a lockdown drill today. Man, have we lost our innocence ! When I was a kid, all we had to drill about was an Atomic Bomb attack!"