Becoming a Man in the Shadowlands: a Survivor's Story
Copyright© 2019 by Dennis Randall
Chapter 6: Fear Is the New Normal
The fifties and sixties were a strange time in which to grow up. Aside from family turmoil, there was a constant feeling in the background of dread or impending doom, which perfectly conveyed the mood of the period.
I can recall my parents discussing a man named McCarthy and his blacklist. My father was angry because he had friends on that list who were unable to find employment. As a kid, I did not always understand all the finer details but I was able to pick up the national temper without a problem.
One afternoon, I was playing with a boy from next door when I spotted the contrails of a high altitude jet. Back in the early 50s the sight of a jet aircraft was relatively unusual, or at least significant enough that I stopped playing and looked up to watch the passing plane. Commercial jets were virtually unknown and any jet aircraft flying was almost assuredly military in nature.
My friend must have participated in one too many duck-and-cover drills at school. He became hysterical and started crying as he yelled at me, “Don’t look! Don’t look! You’ll go blind when it drops the bomb!”
One Sunday morning bombers did, in fact, fly over the city and drop their payload on Ithaca, New York. It was all as part of a massive Civil Defense drill. The Civil Air Patrol flew over the city and released tens-of-thousands of flyers with the word “BOOM!” printed across the drawing of a bomb.
At the appointed hour, air raid sirens sounded across the city and the air raid began. I would hear the same sirens thirteen years later when my base was under rocket attack in Vietnam. Echoes of massive explosions accompanied the rising and falling wail of the sirens as an Army Reserve unit detonated several hundred pounds of high explosives in the hills around town.
It all seemed quite realistic and terrifying. While our home rattled from the shockwaves of distant explosions, I remember my mother arguing with my dad over the need to join the family and take shelter in the basement.
“I’ve lived through enough real air raids in the war that I’m not going to lose any sleep over bullshit like this,” was my father’s response as he rolled over and went back to sleep.
For the next ten or fifteen minutes, I huddled with my sister and mother in our dusty basement. In the shadows surrounded by cobwebs and spiders, we waited for the all clear to sound.
To read this story you need a
Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In
or Register (Why register?)