Cold War Childhood

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wA8z94MXo9M#!

I ran across the attached You Tube video the other day and it brought back a lot of memories about growing up in the 1960s where nuclear war with the Soviet Union was viewed as a real possibility.  One of the toughest things to describe to kids today and certainly my own children is what it was like to grow up in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War.  It’s simply something they’ve, thankfully, never had to face.  By the time Reagan and Gorbachev drove a stake in the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the US in the 1980s it had evolved to a much less of a staring over the abyss kind of thing.  The Soviet-US confrontation dominated our lives as we seemed to compete with them on every level after emerging from WW2 as the two true super-powers.  The confrontation took place around the world where a nation friendly to the US would have their traditional rival country allied with the Soviets.  The only vestige remaining of this is North and South Korea.  People were actually shot trying to move from East Berlin to West Berlin.  Whenever I visit my hometown, my friend’s house is literally right next to the elementary school and I can see the windows of the classroom where I attended second grade.  I never fail to point this out to my children which never fails to produce the eye rolling, “There he goes again!” reaction to my nostalgic ruminations. One of my clearest memories of second grade were the air raid drills when all the kids were trained to move quickly to the interior hall way and told to brace against the wall and shield our eyes against the nuclear flash.  I can remember wondering at the time whether school kids in the Soviet Union were doing the same thing.  The town regularly tested the air raid siren and civil defense shelters were clearly marked throughout every city and town.   This sounds scary and I can imagine the hue and cry nowadays about the deleterious effect these measures would have on the psyche of our young.  I don’t think I was scarred by the experience – it was just how it was.  I don’t think we were any tougher back then but I think our parents were.  They had just gone through the cataclysm of World War 2 and were dealing with the very real possibility of a nuclear war.  I remember asking my father why the Soviets would bomb Keene and he bluntly said it was because we had a ball bearing plant that made a good target.  He didn’t seem to worry that we could look out our living room window and see that plant, so I didn’t.   I guess there is no good way to explain to kids of this day what is was like and maybe that’s a good thing.  I’m glad my kids grew up in a world free of this type of fear, hopefully their generation can build the elusive lasting peace so many have yearned and died for. 

Thankfully we Avoided This