NUCLEAR BOMB SCARE

What we won’t do to protect our children. It sounds silly now, but in the 1950’s, the infamous cold war between Russia and the United States had us believing Russia might drop a nuclear bomb. Clayton and I had two little boys and a baby girl. The Civil Defense League recommended we all build bomb shelters in our backyard. I begged Clayton to do it, but he said our basement walls were three-feet-thick limestone, so we’d be protected.

Up the street was Jerry’s Grocery Store, a small place that carried just about anything you’d ever need. The kids and I walked there often. We’d shop, meet the neighbors, and chat with Jerry who handed out copious amounts of free advice. Our daughter learned you don’t remove things off the shelves when she had to return a candy bar to Jerry and apologize for taking it. (She must have thought it was free, too.)

One day, I asked him what we’d eat when the hydrogen bomb hit. (The government assured us it would happen and we should be prepared.) Of course, Jerry had just the thing—a gallon-sized paint-can-looking container filled with a ‘nutritious’ powder and the reassuring words, General Mills, on the side—the same Kansas City based General Mills we all knew and trusted. The directions said to mix the powder, a scoopful per person, into a glass of water, stir, and drink. Done three times a day, it would keep each of us alive for a month. General Mills should know. Right? I bought five cans.

It’s hard to believe our schoolchildren were taught to “duck and cover,” duck under their desks and cover their heads. Even General Eisenhower went to Washington’s hydrogen bomb-safe tent city when the sirens went off.

Jerry’s grocery store is long gone and so are the paint-can size containers of life-giving powder, but not the eternal desire to protect our children. It never goes away.

This is what people in Buffalo saw on July 2o, 1954.