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Growing Up During the Cold War

© Christina Coruth

The Cold War era was grim and it didn't always bring out the best in people. Here's my tongue-in-cheek, sometimes sardonic, recounting of what it was like for me (and many others) to grow up during those times.

As a child, the Russians were the stuff of my nightmares. Commies were out to destroy America. I saw Premier Khrushchev on television, banging his shoe on a table, as those ominous words appeared on the screen, "We will bury you." Of course, after hearing my parents talk, I understood that he meant to bury us with an atomic bomb.

Fortunately, even though I was only a grade school kid, I knew how to protect myself from fallout. Duck and cover. My parents and television PSAs admonished, "Hide your eyes or you might go blind!" At school the teachers told us that in the event of an atomic bomb attack we should get under our desks and, yes, you guessed it, cover our eyes to prevent blindness. That was reassuring until I had another worrisome thought. What if the Russians drop the bomb while I was at school? What about my family? Should I try to run home? After all, according to the news stories, we would have a 10 or 20 minute warning before the missile would reach us. My mother had the answer. In case of an attack, just stay at school and follow the teacher's instructions. After the dust settled, she and my father would come to school and get me. What a relief! As scary as it was, at least we were prepared. We would survive an atomic attack.

While the "we will bury" you speech presided over my childhood nightmares, the follow-up, in which Khrushchev said that our undoing would come from within, put a crimp in my teenage years. He just couldn't leave well enough alone. He just had to get the older folks thinking about how the country would collapse from within.

Those were terrible times for folks like my parents as they came to the realization that the country was under siege from within -- homegrown commies! The technical term was pinkos and they were everywhere, out to destroy the morals of the country, to undermine our values, and crush our way of life. One variety of pinko was the bleeding heart liberal. They had taken over the colleges and schools poisoning the minds of young people. My mother raised a ruckus when she walked into my sister's junior high school classroom and saw subversive posters adorning the walls. If you can imagine it, they preached love and the brotherhood of man. (You did know that the Civil Rights movement was a commie plot, didn't you?) Each poster sported an image of the communist logo. No, not the hammer and sickle, the peace sign.

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