Air Raid!

In the 1950s school children like me, who would later become labeled “Baby Boomers” ( as if we had been shot out of cannons at birth), hid under our desks at school during regular air raid drills that began with a brief warning from the teacher, followed by the blast from a chrome whistle.

Like this “safety precaution” would have actually helped us in the event of a nuclear attack. Like desks and puny arms clasped over our innocent heads would keep a 50–megaton atomic bomb from turning us into vapor in a split second. Like all grownups from Russia were devils from hell and our parents and grandparents were all darling angels straight out of Heaven. Later, in high school, we put two and two together and thought this was a pretty stressful and hyped-up time to be alive.

And they wondered why a lot of us wanted to be stoned out of our skulls when we grew up.