My Work

Those Were the Days

I was born in rural Massachusetts just before the beginning of World War II. At the end of the war my father got a job in New York City and my family moved to the bedroom community of Hackensack, New Jersey. Most of the adult men in my neighborhood commuted to work in New York, perhaps a few by car, but most by train or bus. Most of the adult women in my neighborhood were full-time housewives, like my Mom. I went to a school within walking distance, and the friends I made in school had families much like mine.

In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and a few years later both the USA and the USSR began testing hydrogen bombs. By the early 1950's it was clear to everyone I knew that nuclear war between the USA and the USSR was all but inevitable. Senator Joseph McCarthy had convinced the population of the US that our government had been massively infiltrated by Communists and Communist sympathizers who had weakened the armed forces to the point that they would be unable to resist an attack by Russia and its allies. The invasion of South Korea by North Korea in 1950 was seen by many as the beginning of an all-out struggle between the forces of freedom, led by the United States, and the forces of communism, led by Russia and China. This would be World War III. I was 9 years old.

Although an armistice was signed in Korea in 1953 and everyone could pause to give thanks that global nuclear war had not yet happened, it still looked inevitable. In school we practiced hiding under our desks, or hurrying to the school shelter, whenever the air raid sirens sounded. My friends and I began to realize that New York City was a prime target for a nuclear attack, and that if it happened during daytime all our fathers would be instantly killed while we sheltered in school. Soon, the radioactive fallout would drift the few miles from New York City to Hackensack and we would all begin to be poisoned if we didn't get out in a hurry. How would we get away? The roads would be jammed and useless. We all knew that our mothers, as women, would be incapable of protecting us or themselves. Even though we were barely teenagers we would have to take care of ourselves. That required a plan and preparation.

My group of about 8-10 friends decided that the most important thing we would have to do was get away from the fallout zone quickly. If we were lucky we could do it on foot by heading west, away from New York. We built an underground shelter in the middle of a large wooded tract in Paramus NJ, a neighboring town which had not yet been developed for housing. Our shelter was about 3 feet deep. We made a roof out of a semi-abandoned billboard which we dragged from the side of State Highway 4 into the woods. We covered the roof with earth and sand, and planted bushes and tree seedlings on top. Once we had made it as camouflaged as possible, we stocked it with canned food, blankets, maps, home-made black powder pipe guns, and whatever else we thought we would need to increase our chances of getting across the 65 miles of northern New Jersey to the Delaware River and Pennsylvania. We wished we had access to a few real guns.

We agreed that if New York was bombed when our fathers were at work, each of us who was able would go directly to the shelter and together we would set out for Pennsylvania. We would use our supply of topographic maps to plan a route that would let us stay in the woods, out of sight, and avoid towns along the way. It was our hope that elements of the Army would dig in to make a stand against Russian invaders at the Delaware River, and that we could join them. If we didn't find the army in Pennsylvania, we knew of summer homes belonging to family friends, and hoped we could make our way to one of them and figure out a way to survive there. That was about as much planning as we could face.

Fortunately, those plans were never put to the test. The world has drawn back from the threshold of global nuclear war. My children and grandchildren have faced, and will face, many challenges and scary times, but I'm glad that they have not had to face the particular threat that my friends and I felt we had to address back in those “good old days.”

Written as an assignment for the writers' group at The Fountains in December 2016 on this topic.