Anybody here old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?

[liberalpragmatist]

What was your experience? How did you feel during the whole ordeal? How did other people act? What was the whole climate like?

This 20-something would like to know. So share your stories. I'm all ears - or, rather, since it IS an online forum - I'm all eyes.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I was 11

my brother was in the army, stationed in Germany. When we heard the news, my mother was worried sick--for us AND for my brother, who she felt would be killed if fighting started in Europe. I had a very scary feeling all the time it was going on, and felt immense relief when it was over.

[Parisle]

5. Same here,......

--- I was 12 at the time, and I was scared to death that atomic bombs were about to start raining down. It seemed that we were that close. Many people in my neighborhood were building fallout shelters as fast as they could. It was nerve-jangling, to say the least.

[Monkeyman]

20. Duck and Cover drills

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

44. Yes. Under the desk, hands over the head. That never made sense to me. eom

[Seabiscuit]

69. We were doing that beginning in first grade in 1951, all through grade school.

We had no idea why, besides being warned bombs might explode and blow glass into the classroom.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

43. I was 11 too and aware of it and yet a bit too immature to realize how serious it was. eom

[SharonAnn]

75. I was 16. I remember my mother pulling the car over to the side of the road and

making us be quiet so that she could listen to the news. Whatever it was, she was frightened.

I'm embarassed to say that I was so immature that I didn't really get the connection about the Missile Crisis, but was frightened because my mother was frightened. And she didn't scare easily.

[Hardrada]

2. I felt......uneasy.

Actually we never knew at the time how close it was. Awfully glad it was over though so could go back to being a striving college freshman.


They sure don't make crises like they used to!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. When the "threat was imminent" we were marched out of our

5th grade classroom, walked down the street to the neighboring church, were taken down into the basement classroom.... and made to get under the desks at the appropriate time and put our hands over our heads. So went the drills that were designed to save us from a nuclear attack.... what a way to scare younguns.... but I suppose they were doing the right thing... sort of... maybe but probably not.

[Hangingon]

6. I was a college freshman

and my roommate's reserve unit was activated. He spent several months in Louisiana.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. I was locked in a barracks during the missile crisis.

We were preparing to "transpac" to Japan. Our planes had been junked and we were to inherit the planes of the squadron we were replacing. The rest of the squadrons at MCAS El Toro were dispersed to safer locations. Having no planes we were expendable but they didn't want us to get an idea that being targets wasn't such a hot idea. So they literally locked us in our barracks with chains and padlocks and MP's. We were marched to chow to keep anybody with any sense from making a break for it.

God bless Krushchev for "backing down" and Kennedy for trading those missiles in Turkey for the ones in Cuba.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

8. Lucky thing that Russia isn't on one planet and the U.S. on another

cuz things most likely would have been very very different. Someone would have drawn first no doubt.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. The thought did cross my mind that being incinerated at 18 was a bit unfair.

Because a couple of bigshots wanted to wave their jockstraps at each other and play chicken.

[EST]

7. Interesting topic.

I was in high school. There was a lot of fear. Some people were in tears. I was scared but trying to be brave and being less than kind to some of those who were scared to death, almost.

When the pressure eased, my latin teacher was making the point that saving face was very important and that Kennedy had allowed the Russians to save face.

Little did we know, the truth was that a deal was made to remove missiles that were much closer to the Soviet Union which was the primary interest in setting up the threat in Cuba.

It was a pretty horrible time, especially since we had been living under the threat of nuclear annihilation for some time.

[Raven]

9. I remember it well

and it was mind numbing. It was very quiet, people watched and waited and my folks prayed. My father was a JFK friend and advisor and there were phone calls to our house. We were always shuttled out of the room and, as I recall, my Dad mostly listened to the voice on the other end. His notes on this are in a vault not to be touched for many, many more years.

Looking back on that time I can't help but be struck by one very important difference between the crisis then and the crises we face now. Then we had a sane, sound minded leader who listened, sought advice and was not a reckless man. We had a leader who had been to war and knew, personally, the toll that war takes. We had a leader who had the confidence of the American people. Somehow, during those frightening days I always knew that JFK would do the right thing, the sane thing and that it would work out. Maybe that was the optimism of youth, but I have no such confidence today.

[liberalpragmatist]

31. Really?

If you're willing to say, who was your father? Or at least, what did he do? Was he in government at the time or was he simply an associate of JFK? Was he very close to JFK? And why are his papers vaulted?

Sorry to pry - it's just that what you said was very interesting and I want a little more info. At least, whatever you're willing to say.

[PhilipShore]

33. Some of my family and their friends knew JFK...

I was an infant at the time, I'm half Jewish and half Irish. On my fathers side; my grandmothers sister, helped decorate the White House for JFK, and on my mothers side my mother used to date Ray Corbett who was president of the AFL-CIO of New York; and he used to visit JFK often at the White House. My mother, even met with Jimmy Hoffa with Corbett (at dinner) as Hoffa was all pissed at Robert Kennedy, saying Bobbie grew up with silver spoon in his mouth and never worked a day in his life.

Right before I was born -- while my mother was pregnant, she went on vacation to Kingston Jamaica, and was in the hotel where Dr. No the first James Bond movie was filmed.They even asked her if she wanted to watch the filming she did not --but she seen most of the actors there at the first Bond film.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. Oh, yeah!

:scared: I was in 8th grade, old enough to have a pretty good idea of what was going on. People were riveted to news reports, and most of us kids were scared to death we were going to be annihilated. In the late '50s and early '60s, kids were taught in school to "duck and cover," meaning that if there was an air raid warning you were supposed to crouch under your desk, like that would help. Even then, the running joke was that you were supposed to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

All the schools and other public buildings had air raid shelters that were supposed to be stocked with canned goods so people could go there if there was a nuclear war, and wait until the fallout subsided (in several thousand years, I suppose). Also in those days the U.S. was doing above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the desert, and on the radio they'd report how much radiation (mainly strontium-90, which had a nasty way of getting into milk supplies) was in the atmosphere every day. That creeped me out.

Anyhow, when the Cuban missile crisis happened we figured it might be the end of everything, and we wondered seriously if it would be fast and clean or if we would survive in some squalid school fallout shelter and get radiation sickness and die horribly, like in Hiroshima (which at that time wasn't all that long ago, and people remembered).

There was tremendous relief when the Russians backed down. Even at the time we didn't realize how close we'd come to all-out war, and how that batshit crazy asshole Curtis LeMay nearly destroyed the world...

Scariest shit ever.

[PhilipShore]

11. No, I was an Infant

[MissWaverly]

12. well, I remember people laughing about raking up their leaves

saying we never thought that we would have to rake them up (WW III) would bring about the
end of our civilization, there was fear, a great deal of fear in those times, people took
the test of the emergency broadcasting system seriously, we understood that there was
a confrontation between Russia and the US over the missiles in Cuba off our main land
and the only thing we thought we could rely on was our president. Nikita Krushchev, was seen as a loose cannon, he had appeared at the UN and had taken his shoe off and rapped on the desk, there was a video tape of him, saying about America (we will bury you). Those
were difficult times but people believed in JFK and they liked the Kennedys.

[dogman]

13. I was a paper boy around 13 years old.

I remember getting my papers for delivery in the morning and when I opened the bundle and saw the headline, I was pretty freaked out. That was in the days we were taught to duck under our desks when we saw the flash from a nuke. I wondered what the day would bring. I had an aunt who worked in the PX at a base near the Keys in Florida and she told us that when she went to work that morning, she knew something was happening because all of the missile batteries were facing Cuba.

[niyad]

14. I remember it very well indeed. one of the things I remember is knowing that when my father left in

the morning, he might not come home that night--such was the nature of his job. Since I lived next to one of the top three targets in the nation, I fully expected that, if the bombs did fall, I wouldn't have to worry about it, since I would be pretty much at ground zero.

it was a frightening time indeed. students in my classes, many of whom had fathers in the military, were even more worried, as most of us knew that their units were on high alert.

it did, however, remind me of a game of "chicken" and I kept wondering which side was going to back down, or do the diplomatic thing, or whatever it was going to take.

I see so much of the same fear being inculcated today, and I feel the same way I did then. I REFUSE to give in to the fear--WHOEVER is creating it.

[liberalpragmatist]

32. Where did you live?

What was the major military target?

[niyad]

55. NORAD

[Individualist]

15. I was 19 years old,

had been married for just over a month and was living in Charlotte, NC. Announcements had said missiles were supposedly targeted at all the major cities in the southeast, and there we were in the largest city in NC. There were announcements on TV news and in newspapers about the locations of bomb shelters; what wasn't announced was how woefully inadequate they were to accommodate the number of people living there. It was a scary situation, but I had confidence in JFK. Thank heaven he was president at the time!

[Crunchy Frog]

16. I was in my mommy's tummy when it happened.

I might have been affected by her stress hormones, but I don't remember anything about it.;)

[karlrschneider]

17. Oddly enough I have no memory of being afraid. Maybe I was too busy with college

to get exercised about it...apparently I was more worried about my grades in aerodynamics. :D

[redwitch]

18. I had a recurring nightmare. I was in 2nd grade at the time.

I dreamt my friend's dad dropped me off at the end of my street. I watched him drive away and when I turned back my neighborhood was a smoldering ruin and I was the last person left alive. Used to wake up sobbing. Awful.
My dad was a newspaper reporter and a total news junkie. I was sitting on the couch watching TV with him when Oswald was assassinated. Scary times for grown ups who grasped what was happening but worse for kids, who couldn't.

[pocoloco]

21. This happened during the height of the Cold War.

It hadn't been very long since Khrushchev banged his shoe on the podium and said he would bury us. If you could afford it you had a fallout shelter, a Geiger counter, an AM radio for the alerts. We believed that a nuclear attack was a distinct possibility!

I don't remember if the guard was called up but for sure they went on standby. Every one payed close attention to the news and there was a collective sigh of relief when the ships turned around.

We despised the Soviets for their secret police, the Gulag, the lack of justice. We hated them because they were doing all the horrible things that we are doing now, and that is what pisses me off beyond belief!

[manic expression]

28. Pardon me

this is completely off topic, but I'm pretty sure the USSR shut down the Gulag system after Stalin died in 1953. Furthermore, the USSR was far better for the people of Russia and Ukraine than what replaced it.

Again, that was way off topic, but I thought it was valuable.

[Hekate]

42. The works of Alexander Solzhenytsin certainly seemed to be current...

...when they were finally able to be read in the West. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" and "Gulag Archipelago" seemed to be about something that still existed in one form or another.

The Soviet system was cruel -- a worthy successor to the Czarist oppressors, unfortunately.

Hekate

[rug]

22. The nuns made us all go to confession and it wasn't a Saturday.

[Monkeyman]

24. Ya they even forgot to smack my hands with a ruler

[xxqqqzme]

23. I was a freshman in high school.

I remember every one being very scared - waiting to exhale. My psychology teacher put the teaching plan aside and spent two days talking about the situation. The first day we discussed what the facts were; what was happening; the history of the fear; the 2nd day what our feelings were. It helped tremendously. I have always been glad I had a teacher who addressed the tension directly and encouraged all of us to seek our own information beyond the nightly news (back in the day of 3 networks - Walter was the source in our house))

[murielm99]

79. I was a freshman in high school, too.

But I have absolutely no memory of what was happening in school during that time, or if any teacher addressed it.

I do remember being a news junkie at that age. My father brought home several daily newspapers at that time. I learned to be a news junkie from him. I read the papers daily, and I was scared of what I was seeing.

My family was frightened. So were my friends. I was sure there would be a nuclear war, and we would all be killed. I seem to remember a pervasive atmosphere of fear. I remember the stores running out of milk and bread after Kennedy addressed the nation about the embargo.

I went downstairs to check out the basement and a crawl space under our house. I wondered if my family could live in it, in case of a nuclear war. And since I was not yet allowed to wear lipstick, I wondered if I would live to be old enough to do so. My mom would never bend the rules just for a nuclear war.

I wish we had saved some of the newspapers of that time. I can still see in my mind the pictures on the front pages of the Chicago papers. I can see the ships, and their confrontations.

Remember when Khrushchev was removed from power a couple of years later? I was in P.E. class. We were not having gym classes at the time, but seeing movies about health. The P.A. system came on near the end of class. There was the usual crap about who had to report to the office. Then, the secretary announced that Khrushchev had resigned. I said out loud, "Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis!" Some of the girls looked at me like I was crazy. But I knew that had to be it.

I think my high school had a good track record about announcing major events over the intercom. After all, it hadn't been that long since the principal came on the intercom to announce that Kennedy had been shot. That day, he came back on a second time and left the radio on so the whole school could listen to events unfold in Dallas. Things haven't been the same since they killed Kennedy.

[karynnj]

25. I was 12 years old, but was obsessed with

JFK and current events. Even so, my memory was extremely vague. I remember going to school worrying that a missile would hit and we would all be killed. (As I lived in Northern Indiana - only a missile that missed Chicago would be likely to hit us.) I remember a tremendous relief when the crisis quickly ended.

[mwb970]

26. It was my 13th birthday.

I knew it was something important when my parents wheeled the portable TV in and turned it on during dinner, which they never did. So we watched the speech while we ate birthday cake. Even at the time, it seemed a bit surreal.

[nevergiveup]

27. I was 16

and I remember thinking that we were all going to die.

[Poiuyt]

29. I was only about 9 or 10 at the time

I just remember a friend telling me that it would only take a missile 90 seconds to reach the U.S. Of course, that meant from Cuba to Miami and I lived in Wisconsin, but it still scared me.

Years later, I saw an interview with Robert McNamara. It was right after the Kevin Costner movie, Thirteen Days, came out. McNamara said the movie did not convey how close we actually were to going to war. When the movie was made, they did not know that the Russian generals in Cuba had tactical nuclear weapons already in place, and had authorization from the Kremlin to use them if attacked. Curtis Lemay and others wanted to go in, so WWIII was closer to reality than we all realized.

Can you imagine if Bush and Cheney had been in power instead of Kennedy?

[tinfoilinfor2005]

30. I have lived in the Florida Keys for several decades, and although I wasn't here at that time,

I can attest to the fact that we are a bit like the canary in the mine. Whenever there is a crisis of any sort, we see and hear an increased number of military planes coming into and going out of the bases in Key West. It really gets scary when they are flying very low, "under radar" so to speak, at least that is what the locals here call it.

Even though I wasn't here for the Cuban Missile Crisis, I've had a lot of conversations with locals who were, and it was quite frightening. Parents kept their kids home from school and from going out to play, and they were all very aware minute to minute of the crisis. Most of the rest of us on the big mainland weren't nearly as apprehensive.

[rzemanfl]

34. It was tense for a few days, but nothing like the slow, persistent,

pernicious insanity of life since November of 2000.

[lonestarnot]

35. I was little and got under my desk at school.

[chieftain]

36. It was the only time I ever saw my Marine hero father show fear.

One of the best evocations of the time was in the movie 13 days where the line of people to make a possible last Confession extends for blocks from a church.

[murielm99]

80. Dang, I forgot about that!

My family were always churchgoers, so I knew how full my church was on a normal Sunday. During the missile crisis, it was packed. The only time I saw it more full was right after the Kennedy assassination. The balcony was full, and there were literally not enough seats.

[williesgirl]

37. Yes - my brother was in the Air Force and Mom & Dad went crazy with worry

thinking he'd end up going to war. It was very tense, but no one was saber rattling at the time. Kennedy was firm but not an asshole like *.

[Bigmack]

38. I was in the invasion force....

.. the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade. In C Co. 1st Bn 1st Marines. Aboard the USS Henrico... a troop ship.... packed in like pigs, with a hold full of ammo underneath the troop holds. There was 11,000 of us in the MEB.

Went thru the Panama Canal into the Caribbean and sat and waited. Did some practice (threat) invasions in Puerto Rico. Then we were sent in to reinforce Gitmo.

Later, I learned that the Russian field commanders had the "go" to use tactical nukes to stop any invasion. Would they have done it? Who knows. Would have fried my young ass.

[annabanana]

39. I knew it was "serious", but I didn't think I was in danger.

I was 12 years old. I understood what was going on, but I think I also understood that Lexington Mass wasn't a likely target. I was scared for the country, but not myself.

I was rather surprised to find out that the girl I usually walked to school with was, in her words, "shaking in fear, really, look at my hand".. watching the sky and swimming in the kind of delicious fear that only 12 year old girls understand.

[ninkasi]

I had just turned 19 the June before

and had a baby less than a year old. My father-in-law was a doctor, and his house had a bomb shelter in his backyard. We were not, however, invited to share this space with him, since he had remarried, and his current wife, young son, and her sisters had priority.

I remember the feeling that it wasn't real, and wouldn't happen. It didn't, and my baby turned 46 last month. Remember, my generation had been raised, not long before, to learn to "duck and cover", and there were still sirens that went off on Fridays. Sometimes, there were drills conducted when we were walking home from school, and we were trained to run into the ditches, and "duck and cover" there.

As if that would have protected us, right? My dad was in the U.S. Army of occupation in Nagasaki. He was on the way to Japan when the bombs were dropped. My brothers and I grew up hearing a lot of stories about Japan, but my dad always had a great respect and affection for the Japanese people.

Years ago, my younger brother told me that after an evening drinking, and hearing my dad speak of his experiences there, my brother was convinced we had a half-sibling somewhere in Japan. If we do, I wish I could find him, or her. Or maybe not, depending on what happened after my dad left.

[ninkasi]

40. Dupe

delete

[peacetalksforall]

41. I lived in South Florida and we were told that Miami would be a

target. We were tense. I remember being impressed with the way it was all being handled. The companies we worked for came up with contingency plans for the work force. The focus was all on the USSR, not Cuba - Cuba seemed to be in the middle or off to the side.

My strongest memories came many years later.

The first was a long (really long ) conversation with a neighbor who was high up in the behind the scenes plan to move people, bodies out of South Florida - the use of buildings, manpower, transportation, and all the thousands of body bags and supplies that were brought in and hid from us. This person went into great detail that I no longer remember, but I was amazed at the extent of preparation that I had never suspected or heard about previously. I was impressed with the thoroughness.

The other more recent memory came from books and films - I never stop thinking about the stand off between the Kennedy's and the generals who fought Kennedy - choosing to go to war with the USSR.

I couldn't know at the time, but I will always feel that our lives were in the hands of genuine, skilled, and gifted diplomats.

The lead up to the revolution led by Castro took place before Kennedy became President. The horrible diplomatic decision to shun the new government of Cuba has to be the worst diplomatic catastrophe of that century - that diplomatic blunder was also pre-Kennedy. Once again - fear reigned and nearly won. Once again - the call for war reigned and nearly won.

And to the person who mentioned Turkey - we put missiles in Turkey and the USSR was unhappy. They tried to put missiles in Cuba and we were unhappy. Perhaps it was an easy solution to make a deal - that is what give and take is all about. Now - diplomacy in this administration is all about take. There are negative and disastrous diplomatic catastrophes taking place with this administration.

I thank the Kennedy's and their advisors for being there.

I have always said that I support a military for our defense. I can't begin to write how despicable I hold most of our military brass today versus some of the military brass then.

I now feel that our military is not of, for, and by the people - they are of, for, and by the coporations and the right wing and the barons they serve.

USSR 43 years ago. Tomorrow - Iran and who knows who else will retaliate against us for invading Iran.

ANd there are no diplomats to be found - only war mongers and destroyers of people and places. And extraordinary liars and thieves.

[Golden Raisin]

45. I was 13.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the apex moments of the entire Cold War Era and that's saying a lot. This went beyond the sort of constant, low-level hum of fear and paranoia that we all faced back then. The ever-looming threat of nuclear annihilation suddenly came into super-clear focus. People were scared and rightly so. I look back now, like so many others, and laugh in dis-belief at how we were made to crouch under our desks, as if that were somehow going to protect or save us when the bombs started falling. It truly was another, almost unimaginable era. People actually had fallout shelters. J. Edgar Hoover was in power. The McCarthy era was not yet forgotten or old news. There was a "commie" under every rock. Khrushchev was banging his shoe on the desk at the U.N. and threatening to bury us. No Internet. No constant 24/7 TV news (propaganda). You watched Walter Cronkite or Huntley/Brinkley for a brief half hour each evening and read the newspaper. When they interrupted for a special bulletin back then it meant something BIG was going down.

[RB TexLa]

46. My mother told me that, my father told her not to worry. That Kennedy would take care of it.

She said, "That was enough for me and I believed him."

[Hekate]

47. O'ahu is filled with military bases; we thought we were going to die

The fathers of a lot of my classmates were in one branch or another of the military: they were on high alert, so were their kids, and so were the rest of us.

I think I was a freshman in high school, and I had spent my entire life under the shadow of the atom bomb. I really thought this was it. There is no place on the planet that is safe from a nuclear holocaust; there's no winning a nuclear war. Recently someone at DU posted something about photos of Hiroshima/Nagasaki having been "suppressed" until recently -- I can tell you they were not, because I saw plenty of them when I was just a child. I read fictional works that had gruesome descriptions of what would happen to survivors. Maybe this has been forgotten by American society in the decades since then, but not suppressed in the beginning. We knew all too well what an atom bomb could do to human flesh.

But a strange thing happened to me during that week: I got over it. At the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was still alive and the planet was not a scorched cinder. I made up my mind to live my life without the Bomb hanging over it -- to recognize that yes, it could happen, but that I had a choice about my attitude toward how I would live on a daily basis and how I would plan for my future.

I rejoiced when the US worked toward detente and signed treaties with the USSR. I rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down. I rejoiced when the Cold War was officially over.

I made the choice to not let fear of the Bomb rule my life in the full knowledge of what it could do. What appalls me beyond words is that BushCheney and the corporatists are choosing to bring back the nuclear arms race, and even talk casually of "tactical usable nuclear weapons." They are mad.

Hekate

[Hardrada]

48. The Cold War had a number of high tension areas.

The Middle East, for one. Taiwan was another. But, before and after Cuba, I was most worried about Berlin since there had been a serious confrontation over the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. And I also wondered if LBJ or Nixon would get frustrated enough to use nukes in VietNam and risk a showdown with the USSR over that. And there was always the chance that something would start out at sea with Soviet warships and our nuke subs. Or if a reconnaissance overflight by the air forces would be seen as something else. As I indicated above, the crises of today are not quite so blood chilling.

[RebelOne]

49. I knew there was something going on, but never was really

frightened. I should have been as I lived in South Florida right in the sights of the missiles.

[Thothmes]

50. HS Soph at the time

Remember getting a refresher course on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.

[CTyankee]

51. I was a new mom, with my baby son. I was terrified. My husband

was at work. I called my landlady (a nice woman)and asked if I could bring my baby over and be with her while we waited for the outcome. I can remember the fear as if it were yesterday. Until that moment, I had never had such a terrifying experience!

[LanternWaste]

52. 13 Days

There's a wonderful docu-drama starring Bruce Greenwood as President K and Kevin Costner as K's special assistant called '13 Days'. It's a pretty vivid and gripping account of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the POV of the Whitehouse.

Just my minor recommendation if you ever come across it.

[ProfessorGAC]

53. I Was Only 6, but. . .

. . . i remember my parents being VERY worried. My parents were not high stress people, but i clearly remember the concern was palpable. (I probably didn't use the word palpable when i was 6, though.)
The Professor

[trof]

54. I was 21 and soon to join the military.

I'm embarrassed to say I really don't remember anything about it.
Back then I didn't pay much attention to world affairs or news.
Just pretty much focused on my own little life with no concern about how world events might affect it.

I guess I knew it was happening, but that's about it.

[ChickMagic]

56. I was pretty young

but we did the duck and cover drills in school. The cafeteria at school had built shelves and stocked them with canned goods - mostly peanut butter and other relatively non perishible items. I lived just outside Houston and we were told we were a target because of NASA. I had recurring nightmares. I had to bring home a piece of paper for my mom to sign wanting to know where I should go in case of nuclear attack - home or stay at school. She checked stay at school and I was horrified. I prayed every night that our whole family would die at the same time.

Several years ago, I asked her if she remembered that note. She said, "It was just school stuff". To me, that slip of paper was devastating. It seems like it was soooo much longer than 13 days.

[kestrel91316]

57. I was 5, I think. It wasn't on my radar. My parents, however, would

have been acutely aware of it. My dad was career USAF and flew reconnaisance.

[gardenista]

58. I built traps in the back yard to catch Castro and Kruschev

in case they tried to come into my house and hurt my family. I was 4 years old. These were elaborate structures made of twigs with mud balls on the inside to slow them down. I thought they would accidentally step on the twigs, and we'd hear the commotion as they bumbled around on the lawn like any other comic-book nemesis, and this would give us time to escape through the front door before they could get into the house and force-marched us to the gulags.

My understanding of the world was obviously quite limited, but I know that my parents were frightened, particularly because my uncle, who worked for the NSA, called my parents and told them to gas up the car, pack it with supplies, and be ready to leave when they got a call from him. (We were 20 miles outside of DC).

Over the years, that same uncle made similar calls. I remember my mom filling the bathtub with water on his advice during some other potential cold-war crisis, since I guess the theory was that there was a chemical weapons attack imminent, and the water supply would be poisoned. I did the same thing during the uncertain early hours of 9/11. By that time, my alarmist NSA uncle had passed away, so I suppose the ingrained fears took over.

[Hekate]

60. Awwww, that's sweet. Kids really hear much more than adults know, don't they?

Speaking of 9-11, Mr.Rogers did a couple of specials -- one for the kids ("you can change the channel if it's scary" among other messages) and one for parents, urging them to try to shield the little ones from the worst of the tv news and images, and to talk to them about their fears. He was such a good man -- I didn't even have any children at home and *I* watched his special!

As regards your uncle with the inside scoop, a couple of years ago I sat in on a videotaped personal history with a man who was in the military during the Cold War. (It's a project of a local member of the VFP, starting with the WW II vets who are nearing the end of their lives. That day we had him and one of our WW II vets, who has since passed on.)

He seemed apologetic because he wasn't a combat vet, but his story was fascinating because it gave me a glimpse into a piece of history that I had experienced only from a kid's perspective. He had been trained to interpret the photos taken from U-2 spy planes. When the Cuban Missile Crisis began, at a certain point he knew he was about to be phoned to come back to base and that he would be cut off from his family. He piled the wife and kids in the car and evacuated them instead, just drove several hundred miles to some relative's home to make sure they were safe. I don't remember the rest of the story, but I know he returned to duty ("phone call? what phone call?" and of course no answering machines in those days) and rode out the rest of the crisis. He was able to act on behalf of his family, and he did. It was a very close call.

Hekate

[gardenista]

61. That's quite a story, and more confirmation of just how close we were

I also agree that Mr. Rogers is probably one of the best things that ever happened to television. Too bad he's gone. He was a good man, and no wonder kids all over the country loved him.

I talked with my mom about this, and she reminded me that I used to say, "Kruschev hurt ya", I suppose this was some sort of warning to stay away from Kruschev, like he was a busy street or a hot burner on the stove.

I guess my folks spent a lot of time talking about current events in front of us because my dad was a poly sci teacher. I picked up on everything and gave it my own spin.

[blues90]

59. I was 14 and I remember it well

I was in Jr high in Illinois . The teachers we had , especially the history class talked about this throughout the entire time period as we waited and wondered if we were actually going to be in a nuclear war .

The duck and cover drills along with the feeling of impending doom at this time were something that left one feeling scared to death and gloomy .

I actually became physically ill with the prospects wondering if I would ever see my next birthday and the talk about what happens during a nuclear blast , man this was horrid stuff in the mind of a 14 year old .

Class seemed in a state of silence while we waited as the possibilty of this nuclear exchange seemed to go from red to green and back to red again while Kennedy worked endlessly to stop this from happening .

Now we seem to be back once again in a similar situation but with a madman behind the wheel and I am worried in a different way . Not afraid to die , I have had many birthdays pass since then and the world has changed into a place where I no longer recognize it as a place of hope and a future without continuos wars and death .

It is really difficult to believe we have regressed so very much since that horrid time in so many ways they are difficult to list .

I do feel we have lost the community spirit and courtesy has taken a back seat to the self serving attitude .

It is once again a very sad and disheartening time but in a very different way . We have somehow been clouded with many issues and a division does exist in this country I never felt before .

[windbreeze]

62. I was a young mother

with small children....and it was scary...I remember watching the black/white tv non stop...I remember Kruschev making his speeches...Kennedy making his...and those pictures of the missile sites on Cuba, which were truly frightening....but at the same time, we trusted Kennedy to handle the situation, w/o getting us into serious trouble, or getting us into a nuclear war...and he did just that...I often wondered how much sleep he lost during that time...and was he confident that he could pull us out of the fire...he acted as though he was...I was proud of him because he refused to back down...
wb

[maveric]

63. I was seven.

My parents were freaked and were bottling water, stocking up on canned goods and bought about 100 candles.
I remember watching JFK's address to the nation and the expression on my parent's faces.
Utter horror!

[Vadem]

64. Absolutely! I was 18 in DC working for the FBI...my future husband...

was with me as we watched on the black and white TV John Kennedy's speech! We thought sure that we were going to be bombed into rubble with the nuclear weapons that the USSR was threatening us with. It was an extremely frightening time for all of us! It was horrible, in fact! We didn't know if we would wake up on a particular morning or if we would be decimated by the nuclear bombs the USSR was bragging about! Dear Lord, I hope we don't have to go through any such thing again in our lifetimes!

Peace forever!

[Seabiscuit]

65. I was 17 and a Senior in high school in October, 1962.

I followed it all via a ham radio I'd built in my sophomore year. I was able to listen to what people were saying about it all around the world.

Yes, people were frightened. People even started talking about building more fallout shelters (a lot of people built them during Eisenhower's second term, when the Soviets were approaching parity with us in terms of missiles and nuclear warheads).

Adlai Stephenson's presentation of the evidence at the United Nations and his tongue lashing of Gromyko, et. al. was a wonder to behold. Contrast Stevenson's performance with how Colin Powell disgraced himself before the world at the U.N. 4 years ago. Is it any wonder some of us long for the "better times" we once knew?

Some of us had confidence in the intelligence and wisdom of our young President, JFK. Others thought he was too young to deal forcefully with Kruschev. He proved them wrong with the blockade, and Dean Rusk cleverly got people in the JFK administration to refer to it as a "quarantine". And sending his brother, RFK into secret talks with a top Soviet agent, put an end to it all.

JFK became a national hero overnight. To most of the country. The far right wing always had it out for him and nothing he did would ever satisfy them. All the adulation heaped on JFK following the Cuban Missile Crisis just incensed them more. They wanted him out. Gone. Kaput. And we all know how that turned out.

The scariest moment of all was just before the Soviet ships turned around when confronted with our "quarantine". Everyone was glued to their radios and TV sets at that moment. In public gatherings around TVs, the roar of the crowds that went up when the Soviet ships began turning around was deafening. As if the entire country's long nightmare of cold war tensions was suddenly relieved all at once.

[mzteris]

66. My Dad was whisked away......

I was 6 yo - and we got a call that "they" wanted Dad - NOW. They were sending a helicopter to land in the vacant lot next to our house. Dad was packing, Mom was freaking. My brother and I promptly told all the neighborhood kids.

The helicopter came, hovered pretty low and then left. (The power lines and trees in the area made it unsafe to land.) We were all soooooooooo disappointed. The phone rang shortly thereafter and my dad was told to report to the airbase immediately. We all jumped in the car and drove "very fast" to Warner Robbins AFB in Georgia (We lived in Macon at the time.)

We walked Dad out to the plane - (you could do that back then) - he got on the plane - and that's the last we saw/heard from him for several days.


Dad was a "weapon's specialist", btw. He wasn't much one to talk about stuff he did - only on rare occasions and only when directly asked - and I never thought to ask him about it when I was older. I should ask my older brother, maybe he knows more about the why's, what he did, etc. . .

[Bullwinkle925]

67. What do you mean - "OLD enough"??? Sheesh .... thanks for the reminder of time passing by at the

speed of sound. LOL.
Certainly - I remember. In the 8th grade. Scared shitless. Knew the world was going to become a nuclear holocaust at any moment. On pins and needles the entire time. It was such a relief when Pres. Kennedy came on air to exclaim that the crisis had been adverted. Those days are indelibly etched into my very core existence - as well as those of November, 1963.
I've just recently realized that the 'Camelot days' and the feelings of my generation of changing the world for the better are over - as your generation will discover in 30 years. Unfortunately, the souls of men are unchangeable. If you can just keep the same pace going - you're ahead of the game.
BW925

[Seabiscuit]

68. If we "keep the same pace going" with the current crowd in D.C., we're doomed.

[Bullwinkle925]

71. What I mean (t) is .....

not going to the 'next level' - all-out nuclear war. With the crazy bunch in the WH - who knows? I think they know there are enough eyes watching them now that they have to tread a bit lightly. However, I have lost all of my '60's' hope and innocence. Things will never change. Utopia will never be realized. People world-wise and universally will never 'Come Together' for the sake of all involved.
Sad to say - but it is realistic. Just do what you can do on a daily basis to make your surroundings a bit better for all involved.

[Seabiscuit]

74. Got you. Yes, hope and innocence ended in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963.

And even in insane times, such as the past 6 years, most of us have preserved our sanity.

What's really disturbing to me is that most of these PNACers around Shrub are a few years older than me (they were always weird, even in the 60's) except for Shrub who is a year younger. All should know better.

[Bullwinkle925]

76. You're right.

One would think that people who are of our generation would have the understanding of 'peace and love'. Guess not. That was when I had my 'epiphany' the other day. GWB and his ilk don't have the compassion it takes to truly want the world to be a better place. As I don't have the capacity to understand that mindset, neither do they to understand mine.

[Seabiscuit]

78. Yes, I think of them as "Pod People". The humanity/compassion is entirely missing.

Might as well try to wrap one's mind around the twisted stuff Charles Manson spouts to the TV cameras. Jibberish.

There have always been "Pod People". But how the hell did they steal our country from us??? We must have been asleep for too long. Oh, yeah... that's how it happened in the movie. :)

[Raine]

70. I was about 10 years old and

I was scared I thought we were going to be attacked any minute and I wanted to fill up the bath tubs with water so we would have clean water to drink.:scared: Luckily my parents took it more in stride but I still had actual nightmares for awhile and we had "duck and cover" drills at school.

[texanwitch]

72. I was almost 9 years old, so I knew what was going on but not old enough to fully understand.

I remember getting out of school early and walking home with the other kids watching for the sky for Russian planes.

When we didn't see any we thought everything would be OK.

I don't remember really being scared, we were just to young to understand.

[WhiteTara]

73. I was 11 and I each night I looked under

my bed to make sure there were no communists there. :rofl:

[tableturner]

77. I was 13, living in Tampa, 3 miles north of Mac Dill AFB...

I was already a news junkie, and DID know what was going on. At either end of my block were major north south arteries (Mac Dill Ave. and Bayshore Blvd.) leading directly into the base, which was on the southern end of a peninsula. Mac Dill AFB (where the Central Command is now located) was one of the three U.S. mainland bases that were closest to Cuba (along with Key West NAS and Homestead AFB in the Miami area). It went unsaid, but not unknown, that the base certainly was ground zero for at least one of the nukes aimed at the United States.

As if we needed to be further reminded of that fact, on both Bayshore Blvd. and Mac Dill Ave., and at all hours of days and nights that were as tense as tightly wound steel cables, constant convoys of troops and armaments rolled into the base. As chilling as the crisis was for all Americans, it was particularly chilling to those who were living near an air base in Tampa, a distance of about 300 miles from Cuba, who could look a couple of hundred yards down their streets and see the tools of war streaming ever southward in parallel unison.

There was an overbearing metaphysical chill in the air, and everywhere you went, even in the middle of the day, the voices and noises were subdued. People breathlessly went about their business, afraid to exhale, as if an act of heavy exhalation would sever the nuclear tripwire. Quite a few people left town, some headed to rural Florida, some to the Appalachian Mountains, while others headed anywhere their crude calculations lead them to believe the radiation would be the least severe. A family on my street left town for Australia, never to be seen again.

Yeah.....I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[B Calm]

81. I was 11. I remember the duck and cover drills. I think I was more

worried about my bicycle chain needing oil and what was playing at Fisher Theater..

[leftyladyfrommo]

82. I was in Junior High. I remember going to school that day wondering

if there would even be a world by that afternoon.

Those were very wierd times.