GETTING UNDER THE DESK!

A sign of the times!

Ah, I remember it well, we as a nation were waiting for the Russians to come and bomb us and so we had bomb drills, as the paranoia reached frenzy in the mid-fifties Cold War.

Families were building bomb shelters and every siren I heard I wondered if it meant a fire, lunch or a bombing! The Russians now had the Hydrogen Bomb and the Korean War wasn’t settled yet. Our only confidence was in the fact that we had General Dwight D. Eisenhower as president.

I remember the classroom when the alarm went off. We were told to get under our desk and to cover our heads. Each of us would pop down under and hide, as Mrs. Walsh would pull the shades and walk around the classroom. Peeking I would know when she stood nearby, her shoes with her toes pointing out in various directions until they pointed to me. Then I would close my eyes and wait for her to move on.

It was a frightening thing to have to practice since we, as a nation had never experienced war on our shores. The thought of a mushroom cloud and the thunderous noise it would bring only helped to scare the bejeebee’s out of me. It would be a sudden flash, followed by a big hot wind and noise!

Home sweet shelter

I remember once seeing a film in black and white on a screen in front of the classroom where the procedures to stay alive while being bomb were introduced. First you had to have a bomb shelter, stocked with food. Second, you had to stay calm, and walk in an orderly fashion, especially as the bombs rained down on you!

I wondered where Dad would put the salami and cheese and not to mention the wine in a bomb shelter. How would I ever get all my toys in there also? Probably one of my sisters would have to stay outside! They were talking canned goods and water, like canned corn or stringed beans. I thought: hey, you need tomato paste and boxes of macaroni! And where would I be able to store a couple of cases of Yoo-hoo, the chocolate drink? In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Yogi Berra and other New York Yankee baseball legends starred in the most successful Yoo-hoo advertising campaign of all time. A photo of Berra drinking Yoo-hoo along with the new slogans "Me-hee for Yoo-hoo" and "The Drink of Champions" became especially

famous!

 

I imagined the Russian people as being enslaved, with Joe Stalin holding a whip, and men with pug noses and cauliflower ears dressed in green uniforms and jackboots as the enemy. I thought that the red star on their aircraft was designed to confuse America as we had a white star on our aircraft.

 

All this in one easy bomb drill! When it was over and we left school for the day, I would get myself a Yoo-hoo and Devil Dog cake, lick the sides of the cakes for the white cream and savor a slug of Yoo-hoo for being brave!