Boys named Sue

[MikeH]

A serious thread over in G&G about procuring ID tags for natural disasters such as NO got me to reminiscing. Are there any other old farts here who remember back during the late 50's/early 60's in grade school and high school when the schools gave us dog tags for ID in case of nuclear attack?

In our school it immediately became the "in" thing for sweethearts to wear one another's dog tags. If the big one had been dropped, the streets would have been littered with "girls" and "boys" with the wrong parts.

 

[ronsec]

I can tell you they didn't do it in the NYC schools. Interesting idea, though.

 

[mwerner]

I was around then and we did the "duck and cover" drills and all, but no ID tags.
Maybe because it was a parochial school.

 

[Mike Hull]

I never heard of it in SoCal during that period, and I was in school there then.

 

[Thomason]

No dog tags but we had duck and cover drills. In grade school we lived near an Air Force base. Lots of planes overhead. I would see them and worry that it may be a Soviet bomber that got through and was going to drop an atomic bomb. Scary times for a little kid.

 

[Matches]

No dog tags either but I do recall air raid sirens in town tested every Friday at 3pm.The threat of nuclear war made an impression on me during the Cuban Missle Crisis when my parents stocked up on canned goods and designated a corner of the basement as our shelter. Scary times? I'm glad I didnt know then just how close we came

 

[Doug C]

I thought this was gonna' be a Johnny Cash thread.In'68 I was in 5th or 6th grade and we were instructed to curl into the fetal position and wedge ourself under our desks,that was in Ft.Lauderdale.Scary times indeed.No worse than now though.Or maybe I'm just older and scarier.

 

[mete]

Ronsec, they certainly did do it in the NYC schools during the height of the cold war .This was in the early 50s. I wish I had kept mine ....The subject now has come up in discussions of emergencies like Katrina in case kids get separated.

 

[ronsec]

Ronsec, they certainly did do it in the NYC schools during the height of the cold war .This was in the early 50s. I wish I had kept mine ....The subject now has come up in discussions of emergencies like Katrina in case kids get separated.

They didn't do it in my grade school (PS180) or my Jr High (Shallow). I do remember having the "duck & cover" drills in grade school.

 

[Blue Jays]

Hi All-

"...I thought this was gonna' be a Johnny Cash thread..."

~ Blue Jays ~​

 

[mycroftt]

I remember the duck and cover drills too.

In the early 1980's I was cleaning out some old civil defense shelters under the old post offices and we came upon lots of tins for drinking water (all empty) and lots of tins of biscuit. Even after 30 years in the tin the biscuit tasted pretty much the same as the day it went in there (sort of like cardboard).

 

[FullerH]

When I was at St. Albans School, which is affiliated with the Washington National Cathederal (Episcopalian), we used to all troop over to the crypts under the Cathederal for air raid practice. Since we all knew that Washington, DC, would be a prime target for any Soviet attack, we figured that we would have an expensive tombstone.

My father once asked me what it was that my generation wanted and I responded, "Security." This made him angry as all Hell as he thought that I meant that we expected our parents to support us throughout our lives. It wasn't until after he had died and after the fall of the Soviet Bloc that I realized what I meant by that response. What I meant was that we wanted to know that there would be a tomorrow, that the world would still be there the next day. When you grow up under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, as those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s did, that was a very real concern, but one about which nobody talked very much as it was considered too horrible to raise the subject. What broke the dam loose for me was watching the film, "Dr. Strangelove" with my son and his friend in the Spring of 1991. I was finally at a distance sufficient to talk about the fears and paranoia of growing up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.