Santa Barbara, Fall 1961
Running from the Reds

From reading Jack and Jill magazine, I knew that Baba Yaga, the evil witch, lived in Russia.  From reading the Santa Barbara News-Press, our daily paper, I came to understand that Baba Yaga's nasty ways were very likely just a typical expression of the Russian national character.  

By "Russia", what was actually meant was the U.S.S.R. or "the Soviet Union."   This political body consisted not only of Russia itself: it included today's Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia,  Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhistan, Kirghizistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, countries which had formerly been neighbors of Russia, but which had been taken over and swallowed up into the U.S.S.R.  China, to the east of Soviet Union, was also Communist but the U.S. had no diplomatic relationships with it and it was never mentioned in the press; the country might as well have been located on Mars.  The governments of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania, situated along the western border of the Soviet Union, were nominally independent, but in practice were controlled by the U.S.S.R. The countries' governments were Communist and boasted red national flags, so collectively, they were known as  'the Reds' or 'the Commies'.   They favored world domination to make all countries just like them; we advocated freedom for everyone so they could be just like us.

It was well known that the Russians did not play fair!

We invented the atom bomb. 

The Russians stole our plans and built one too. 

The News-Press called theirs "The Bomb."

Ours was called "a nuclear device."

The Russians built lots of missiles to deliver The Bomb to us.

We built lots of missiles so we could deliver nuclear devices to them, but of course we would not do so unless they deserved it.

Some evenings, we could see test missiles being shot off from the proving grounds in Santa Maria to the north.  The brave glow of their contrails in the sunset sky made me feel proud.

All the kids knew that they hated freedom, democracy and probably each of us individually and personally.   They could hardly wait to drop The Bomb and take over the world, or at least our part of it. The kids talked about it, the grown-ups talked about it, the newspaper talked about it and the magazines did too.  It was even in books: many of the science fiction books in our school library were written around the theme of apocalyptic nuclear war, the post-nuclear-war society, mutants and other cheerful topics reflective of current events.  

The two governments routinely held "Summit Talks" between the leaders of the two countries, but it didn't seem that much progress was being made.   There was some hope that matters could be resolved through the United Nations, but the Russian dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, infamous for banging on his desk at the U.N. with his shoe, made it seem very improbable when he announced "We will bury you."  And, in the middle of the year, everyone was shocked when the Commies built a wall through Berlin, complete with guard towers and soldiers who were ordered, we were told, to kill anyone who tried to leave the Communist portion of the city.  Things seemed to be going from bad to worse.

At school, we started practicing what to do in case of a nuclear attack: we'd crouch on our knees under our desks, head to the floor and cover the back of our necks for the duration of "the blast".  After that, we'd run or walk quickly home so we'd be with our families when the radioactive fallout arrived.  No one questioned whether this procedure would REALLY do a lot of good when the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station, 50 miles to the south, was flattened by the forces of evil; like fires and earthquakes, nuclear attack was just another possible disaster that we had to practice for.

In public buildings, protected areas were stocked with drums of water and rations of various sorts and designated with little yellow and black signs that indicated that they could be used as civil defense shelters.  

The PTA passed out literature on family preparedness that suggested what kinds and amounts of food and water should be stocked by each household.  They helpfully included plans showing how each household could build a bomb shelter in their garage.  The plans were illustrated with a happy picture of a mom wearing heels, pearls and a nice dress beckoning the kids to join her safely in the family shelter while a mushroom cloud rose in the background.

Our supposedly-two-car garage was much too full of skates, scooters, bicycles, garden tools, woodworking equipment and other peaceful impedimenta to even hold the one car we had, much less a bomb shelter, so the family plan was that we would take shelter in our only windowless room – the pink bathroom in the middle of the house.

Figure it out.

Two adults. 

Four kids. 

Two cats. 

Everyone sitting together in the dark in the bathtub, on the john or on the floor.

And we're all supposed to stay under cover for at least a week after the "event?"

Nuclear annihilation might well have been preferable!

One family in our neighborhood bought a pre-fabricated, self-contained bomb shelter that they installed in a huge hole that was dug in their back yard.   After it was completed, the owners announced that they had also bought a gun and were planning on shooting everyone who tried to get into their shelter when the bomb was dropped.  This statement permanently alienated the rest of the neighborhood.  I don't know if it was only because their social popularity had waned so significantly, but they ended up moving not long afterwards.  The next owner made the shelter into a wine cellar, which is what it remains today.

We never did know exactly what Pop did for G.E. Tempo other than that it was secret and had something to do with defense and nuclear weapons.  In 1958, he had taken two fairly long business trips to Johnston Island and to Hawai'i.   While he was gone, the News-Press announced that the U.S. was testing nuclear devices in the Pacific. I was sure that was where Pop was.  Although I kept it to myself, I worried all the time he was gone that he would get all blown up or be covered with fallout and never be able to come home again, dying a lonely radioactive death on some secret government island.

I was right about where he was but happily wrong about what might happen. 

On his return, we found that he had, indeed, witnessed the tests.   But he was not close at the time the devices were detonated: he described sitting in the dark and cold on one of the Hawaiian volcanoes early in the morning, waiting to see the device go off on the island far, far away.  He seemed to take it very casually and brought grass skirts for all of us as a souvenir of his trip: we used them for dress-up for many years afterwards and thought only occasionally of how they'd been acquired.

In October, the school passed out special milk cartons that we could use to trick or treat for UNICEF at Halloween instead of asking for candy.  Most parents would give a bit of small change for UNICEF and some, who truly approved of the organization, might give candy, too, so prudent trick-or-treaters took a sack as well, just in case.  After Halloween, we would turn our little boxes in to the school office for counting and listen proudly to the summary of how the money would help unfortunate children elsewhere.  One year, I made almost fifteen dollars: enough to pay for 1,500 polio shots -- happily for other children than me! 

Our new house was in a neighborhood of similar houses most of which had been bought by other young families.  When we moved in, the lots across the street were vacant, but within a few years houses were built there.   It was not uncommon to have three or four kids per family.  By the time I was in third grade, there were 41 children among the fourteen houses on our street.   The politics of the neighborhood were complicated with so many kids, but everyone agreed on two points: all the Fennerns were bad news and Ricky Worrell’s mom was a witch.

Mrs. Worrell belonged to the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative right-wing political organization. The society’s objective was ostensibly to fight Communism; in practice they opposed the summit meetings, hated the United Nations, feared a strong U.S. central government and despised the Supreme Court.  The more radical faction of the society advocated an "Attack First" philosophy whereby we would be the ones to drop The Bomb first on them, start the war and annihilate them all before they could do it to us.   Mrs. Worrell believed it all.  Sneaky Ricky stooged for her, letting her know who'd gotten Kennedy campaign buttons and bumper stickers.  She had quite a mouth on her and let us know the errors of our ways when we went to invite him to play.

Baba Yaga, meet Mrs. Worrell.  

She gives lessons!

When trick-or-treated for UNICEF, Mrs. Worrell's contribution to well-being of the world's children was a long anti-UN rant plus the gift of a cheap pine ruler with the words ‘Impeach Earl Warren’ imprinted on it. The word of this passed quickly around the neighborhood and most kids were savvy enough not to waste their time there.

One year, in the conjoined interests of political activism and mischief, Roy and I decided that we would see if we could run her out of rulers. We had quite a lot of dress-up clothes to use for costumes, so we put on something, trick-or-treated for UNICEF, got the lecture plus one ruler each, came home, changed costumes and returned with our UNICEF cartons to trick-or-treat again. At some point in the evening, she ran down and turned off her porch light – perhaps her ruler inventory was depleted, maybe she was getting laryngitis or possibly she just figured out that she was futilely haranguing the same two kids. But before she did, we’d snagged a good dozen or more of her rulers, which, in a fine demonstration of liberal tolerance, we burned the next day in the barbeque.