Sidetracked Charley

I was in my senior year of high school when Russia parked missiles in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis also known as the Crisis de Octobre  or just the Missile Scare was 13 days in October of 1962, the 16th through the 28th. Thirteen months later the President who stared down the Russians would be dead in Dallas. Shot by a man connected with Russia. My first conspiracy theory was that Russia was responsible because of those missiles President Kennedy made them take out of Cuba. The building of a personal bomb shelter was a big conversation topic on Bellamah Street in Albuquerque in 1962 and 1963. The city nobody could spell was on the top ten hit list for missiles from Russia. We had two Air Force Bases and a mountain in the Manzano mountains to the immediate east which was hallowed out to stockpile our nuclear arsenal. And air raid sirens were tested every day. Duck and Cover made a return into my life. I was in the second grade in Roswell, NM going to a Walker Air Forc...

Duck and Cover of My Youth I am the generation of the atomic bomb so when people talk of the innocence of children and the efforts to keep them safe I really cannot relate. I was in the first grade when Dad, his crew and his bomber were reported missing in action over Korea. Mother cried herself to sleep every night and I had to be brave for her and my little brother. At recess I would go out behind the school and do my crying there. I thought my teacher looked like the Wicked Witch of the West (the Wizard of Oz I saw as a horror film), and I feared being locked in the supply closet (early onset claustrophobia). So Duck and Cover was merely another torture especially since my father, who dropped bombs for a living, told me to add "Kiss your ass goodbye" to the drill. After Dad was returned to the living (just mostly a military administrative paperwork issue) we moved to Roswell, NM land of aliens and SAC. Dad was constantly being called out in the middle of the night t...