Remembering the days of duck and cover
The world had become a scary place. Air raid sirens and Geiger counters were commonplace but children, in their innocence, accepted it all in stride. After all, the late 1950s was a period of prosperity where the United States had emerged as a first rate world power after World War II and everyone “Liked Ike.” But, with the very real possibility of the entire country being incinerated in a nuclear attack, was there ever really a plan for what would have come next?
For Baby Boomers, “Duck and Cover” was the mantra of the day and the threat of an atomic bomb being detonated, whether intentionally or accidentally, during the Cold War was real. Duck and Cover drills, where school kids would duck under their desks and cover the back of their heads with their hands on the command of their teacher, air raid sirens, Geiger counters to measure the nuclear debris, and backyard bomb shelters kept the threat on the surface.
Thousands of bright yellow Civil Defense air raid sirens were placed in cities. Periodically, they would be tested and you would hear the low, growling sound begin as the sirens wound up eventually reaching a high-pitched screeching sound. Had it been for real, this would have been the Doomsday sound. One of these sirens, now an aging symbol of the Cold War era, can be seen in front of the Senior Citizen Center on North Monroe St. It no longer shouts out with a bright yellow warning but is now painted a subtle, calming brown trimmed with birds perched on branches. Another part of the warning system involved the Conelrad band on AM radios. If you can locate an AM radio manufactured in the ‘50s or ‘60s you will notice two small Civil Defense triangles at the 640 kHz and 1240 kHz positions. These would have been the stations that broadcast civil defense information during a nuclear attack. Just imagine trying to get something like that accomplished today; it would be stalled in Congress for years. However, there was never any viable plan for what to do after the attack.
Black and yellow Civil Defense Fallout Shelter signs were placed strategically around the city; mostly on the bottom floor of large state buildings. These were designated as places for citizens to go in the event of a nuclear blast; or, at least for whoever would have been left. Even I, as a child, couldn’t help but think that the large buildings would probably have been at ground zero anyway because there was no other target worthwhile to bomb in Tallahassee. Ed Borneman, a long-time resident, worked summers during high school in the late ‘60s for the City of Tallahassee Civil Defense Department. His job was to fill plastic lined cardboard drums with water, carefully adding a determined amount of bleach, and placing them in the designated public Fallout Shelters. The water, along with crackers, high-protein candy, and limited medical supplies comprised the minimum requirements to sustain life during the weeks that the occupants would remain inside the shelters. Some folks, who were probably the forerunners of what we now call Doomsday-Preppers, built home fallout shelters. These were mostly bare-bones concrete block structures buried underground in backyards. A simple, hand crank ventilator system pumped in fresh air from the outside. It had a filter, that was supposed to eliminate “most” of the nuclear fallout debris, but no one really knew if it would work or not. A few of these fallout shelters can still be found; long since turned into root cellars and little boys’ forts.
Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, when President Kennedy faced down Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over inter-continental ballistic missiles being placed in Cuba; a mere 90 miles from the shore of Florida. The threat in Tallahassee reached near critical mass as convoys of soldiers from U.S. Army forts in Georgia and Alabama drove through the city on their way to the Florida Keys to marshal. Historians generally agree that this was the closest that we came to a nuclear war.
And so, when I begin to think about the economy, the dysfunctional Congress, and so many other issues with no apparent plan for resolution, all I have to do is reflect back on the Duck and Cover drills and they pale to insignificance.
David Brand is a retired police officer who currently works for a nonprofit that represents the interests of law enforcement. He lives at St. Teresa Beach.