The Cuban Missile Crisis

 

I was in the sixth grade and every morning our family would sit down to breakfast in the dining room.  In retrospect, I have no idea how my mother managed this, drove to Burbank where she was a music teacher and then came home and repeated the scene for dinner. With the exception of Tater Tots she never used frozen food.

But in October of 1962 I had no appetite for breakfast.  I was scared. 

Even an eleven year old could pick up the tension of the nation.  Mr. L talked about Cuba in class, the TV had pictures of families building bomb shelters and people were stocking up on food and water.

One of the kids I walked to school with even went so far as telling us that the huge white paint stain spilled on the roof by her inebriated father was actually a signal to the Russians to bomb her house as a sacrifice to others.  It was indeed a crazy time.

I, of course, had the confidence of knowing that we had practiced “drop drills” and “red alerts” at school.  Surely my fake wood Formica school desk would protect me from a nuclear blast.  And in our garage was a strange, tiny room that had once been used as a darkroom and smelled of the chemicals.  This was to be our bomb shelter. Better than nothing.

But the most frightening part of those days in October was the fact that when I walked to school each morning I never knew if I’d see my parents again.  I had calculated that if the bombs dropped while my mother was is Burbank she MIGHT be able to walk home in a day or so. On “Wagon Train” they covered about ten miles a day. My dad’s job was more flexible, so I figured he’d be okay.

Because I wasn’t eating, my mother grew concerned.  When I told her why, she wrote a note to Mr. L, my teacher.  She asked him to not talk about the crisis as it was too upsetting for me.  Later that day, he told the class that we shouldn’t be concerned by any of the news.  I guess his mom didn’t work in Burbank.