Reply #88: That's the problem...

[pipi_k]

for me, anyway...the mixed feelings.

The times seemed so innocent...probably because I was a kid and didn't know a lot about the painful social issues going on...all I knew was hula hoops and Howdy Doody and Betty Boop, etc.

But I did know about the "threat" of Communism.

Anyone living in that era knows the "duck and cover" routine.

I was scared shitless all the time, waiting for the nuclear blast that would probably come while I was in school (protected, as if by magic, by ducking and covering in the school basement) while my entire family, not being protected that way, would be vaporized and I would be an orphan.

The weekly testing of the air raid sirens (Fridays at noon) made me physically ill. And it was a very long time before I stopped having nightmares and day terrors involving nuclear apocalypse. It seemed like a very real threat back then, and people building those ridiculous polyhedron (or whatever) shaped "shelters" in their backyards only made it all the more real for me.

Sometimes I wonder if other people my age ever suffered the same way I did over that stuff...