While other girls my age coveted a Barbie Dream House in 1962, I longed for a home fallout shelter.
It was the great disappointment of my mid-century childhood that my New York family never had one. The truth is Barbie’s Dream house with its modern built-ins, slim-lined furniture, and backyard terrace that was oh so perfect for fun-filled barbeques with Ken and Midge, may have been a real dream house for Barbie, but it glaringly lacked that one Cold War essential – a home bomb shelter.
Nuclear Jitters- Bedtime Stories collage Sally Edelstein. Nuclear attacks were and still remain a common nightmare for me.
For those like me who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, the unrelenting fear of an atomic bomb was the subtext of our lives. It was a time when most Americans assumed the United States and the Soviets stood continually on the brink of nuclear war. I would lie in bed at night feeling helpless, slowly counting to twenty-five as each plane passed overhead, afraid to miss the flash of light that would be our only warning.
The fallout from Robert Oppenheimer’s atom bomb had a long reach, scattering its toxic fear to the suburbs of Long Island.
Just as there are children today who never knew school life without shooter lockdowns, I never knew school without air raid drills.
A Cold War childhood included civil defense including plastic ID Tags to wear in case of an Atomic Attack!
During my first week of kindergarten in 1960 I was indoctrinated into the Cold War world I would be growing up in.
Along with being given my very own Dick, Jane, and Sally workbook, I was issued a dog tag with my photo, address, and telephone number written in ink, that we were to wear in case of an attack. For the first few years of my elementary school life, the dog tag became as much a part of my school uniform as a pair of sturdy saddle shoes and a plaid jumper
Several years earlier, my suburban school district in Franklin Square N.Y. had developed a plan for evacuating elementary school kids in the event of a threatened enemy air raid upon N.Y.C. They believed these identification tags would prove invaluable. It was all part of the government’s propaganda that “Civil Defense is Common Sense” assuring us that the nuclear family’s chance of surviving a nuclear attack was good if you learned and prepared.
Unlike the shiny metal tags issued to GIs like my father, this one was a clear plastic case with paper inserted in between. That the flimsy case would melt immediately in the event of a nuclear attack proving it utterly useless, did not seem to cross the school committee’s mind when it came to common sense.
Duck and Cover was as much a part of my school life as playing in the playground.
I quickly became accustomed to a school day filled with the strident, unmistakable, and bone-chilling sound of the air raid drill alarm ringing every few weeks. It became as normal and ordinary as a fire drill.
The board of education had warned teachers to avoid tension in connection with the drills. They were instructed to smile when they announced the drill giving a surreal quality to the experience. The prevailing wisdom in how school civil defense should be conducted was to warn but not frighten the children.
It didn’t work. I would catch a Cold War chill that would chase me my entire life. These drills’ lasting impact on students’ well-being was never well understood. I suffered from nightmares and still do, just as I’m certain children do today.
At the sound of the alarm, like Pavlovian dogs, we would all jump out of our wooden oak desks, kneel underneath them, tiny hands clasped behind our necks, eyes closed, waiting for that imminent flash. Or at other times at the sound of the alarm, we would line up in size order, and walk silently out of the classroom to crouch in the hallways. In the silence as I crouched, I’d listen and wait for the sound of the Soviet plane overhead that would drop the bomb, with the same fear as a child today waits in fear of a gunshot. With my eyes shut tightly in fear, my plastic tag dangling from my neck, the feel of the cold celadon green tiles would be my last memory before the bomb hit.
Barbie, Ken , and Midge all needed to learn civil defense if they were to survive a nuclear attack.
I took my civil defense lessons seriously and so playtime at home now included educating all my dolls on the risks of an atomic attack and the best ways to protect themselves.
A nuclear attack could happen any place and any hour and Barbie and Ken needed to be prepared. Their Friday night date at the soda fountain could turn dangerous at the sound of a siren, that pre-game rally and dance could turn deadly at the flash of light unless they knew just what to do. Hide under a table, bury your face in your arms, or drop flat against a curb. If an atomic attack occurred and Barbie’s clothes were exposed to radioactive material it could be dangerous and manly Ken would have to bury her fashionable clothes immediately regardless if she was wearing her solo in the spotlight taffeta gown, or her nightly negligees.
A homey fallout shelter for the nuclear family in case of a nuclear attack.
As the Cold War was heating up at the dawn of the 1960s I was a frightened seven-year-old who pestered and pleaded with my parents about the urgency of building a bomb shelter in our ranch house basement. The Cuban Missile Crisis was brewing. A solemn President Kennedy had gone on TV grimly announcing to a shocked nation that Russia had snuck missiles into Cuba just 90 miles from Florida. Along with the Offensive Missiles, Khrushchev had deployed bombs and 40,000 Soviet troops. Every major U.S. city would lie within push-button range of thermonuclear bombs in Cuba. Including my home town West Hempstead, New York.
But even the dozens of illustrations in Life Magazine of happy nuclear families waiting out the nuclear bomb in their cozy canned-lined fall-out shelters, failed to convince my parents of the need to build one.
It was always a great disappointment that instead of a fall-out shelter in our wood-paneled finished basement, a large walk-in clothes closet was built in its stead. Clearly, the safety of protecting the life of a scratchy Woolrich woolen sweater from ravenous moths was more valuable than my own from a potential nuclear holocaust.
I never forgot the lesson that our world could someday end in a flash of light and heat while I was crouched helplessly under my desk or tucked safely in my bed. Though I never did get that home fall-out shelter or Barbie’s Dream House for that matter, playtime with Barbie and Ken would always include having them duck and cover.
Civil defense is common sense.
Postscript
The more important question now is whether I will survive the onslaught of hype about the Barbie Movie and Oppenheimer?
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.