In the early 1950’s the Atomic Energy Commission decided that parts of Utah and Nevada would be the sight of a continental proving ground for nuclear weapons. It became the first American Ground Zero. “Accidents Will Happen- By The Bombs Early Light.”Collage of appropriated images by Sally Edelstein

Rivaling the Grimm Brothers, one of the greatest stories told by the U.S. Government to its citizens  was the safety of the nuclear testing done in Nevada in the 1950’s.

Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Collage of appropriated images

Our government insisted that the spate of nuclear atmospheric testings in the American West were no more a danger than the new fangled TV transmissions racing through the sky. The Atomic Energy Commission  had decided that Utah and Nevada these “virtually uninhabited territory” would be the perfect site for Nuclear testing.

Most shrugged off the potential hazards of atmospheric testing especially the long-term danger.

In fact the danger lay in not doing the tests.

Most Americans agreed that the ultimate benefit of peace and security that only nuclear bombs would bring us was more than enough for the potential risk.

Alarmists

Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

Of course there were outlandish allegations from some alarmists who attributed everything from rising cost of living to climate change, birth defects even throwing the very earth off its axis, to the tests.

The government debunked each of these fears.

Carefully crafted “friendly atom propaganda” appeared covering over much evidence of bombs harmful effects on human health.

It was, Uncle Sam said with a shrug, the same nervous Nellies who thought we should be concerned about the safety of DDT! Radiation was like taxes, not pleasant but you learned to live with it.

This was the most prodigiously reckless program of scientific experimentation in US history. Over the next 12 years, the governments nuclear cold warriors detonated 126 Atom Bombs into the atmosphere at the Nevada test sites. “There is no danger” Atomic Energy Commission assured the public. Like most Americans citizens most of the residents in the area just didn’t think their government could do any wrong. Years later when the cancers and leukemia appeared, their unquestioned faith in their government was shattered. These were American citizens referred to by their government as “low use segment of the population.” Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

Our government had guaranteed us the safety of the testings and if you couldn’t trust the USA who could you trust?

Every school kid knew the father of our country George Washington would never tell a lie, and so a trusting public believed that our Uncle Sam’s word was as trustworthy as a boy scout.

With a ringing endorsement from the AEC confirming that Uncle Sam had taken all the necessary precautions to ensure our safety, the Nevada Test Site only 65 miles from Las Vegs became quite the attraction. Why some folks even made a family trip of it, catching Frank Sinatra at the Sands Hotel while they took in the sights at the Nevada Test Site.

Folks were encouraged to pack their Brownies and Coppertone and head west for a rip roarin’ good time. And if you forgot your Brownie Hawkeye at home not to worry; the experience would give you long lasting memories to relive again and again.

Nevada Test Site

Minutes before the first light of dawn on Jan 27, 1951 an Air Force B 50 Bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the desert west of Las Vegas. The flash of light awakened ranchers in northern Utah, the concussion shattered windows in Arizona; radiation swept across America contaminating as far as northern NY.  Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

Thousands were flocking to Nevada to witness these bombs bursting in air.

Capturing the rugged flavor of the old west where the sky is not cloudy all day- except of course when the bomb goes off- the desert landscape became littered with lawn chairs and luncheon meat. Insulated tartan plaid coolers dotted the desert as sight seekers in pedal pushers and sunny summer separates made themselves comfortable for the countdown.

Before the first light of dawn, dazzled tourists, their hearts thumping in their newly purchased wash n wear resort wear, sleepy kids in their pajamas and Roy Rogers hats, gathered with ex-GI’s in Bermuda shorts wearing WWII issued anti-glare Ray Bans.

Rockets Red Glare

As the pink clouds drifted across the flat mesas, the shock waves booming against the chests a veil of radioactive particles floated over the test site. With the rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, the heat from the blast stimulated a healthy radiant blush on the visitors, leaving them with an envied sunburned vacation glow.

Downwinders

We were still fairly innocent about Atomic Power in the early part of the decade. Few knew that by the late 1950s radioactive elements released in above ground bomb tests had traveled invisibly thousands of miles to land on grass American cows ate and so entered the milk American children drank. Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

And for those folks who couldn’t make any of the 126 test detonated over 12 years, no worries.

The wind would carry the mushroom cloud downwind, dispersing radioactive elements over the purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plains, making you feel just like you had actually been there.

Accidents Will Happen

Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

In 1961 Physicians for Social responsibility was founded by doctors concerned about the public health dangers associated with the testing and use of nuclear weapons.

Despite the government protestations of I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing, several serous health affects such as increased incidences of cancers, leukemia, thyroid diseases and congenital malformations have now been well documented to those citizens known as downwinders- individuals and communities exposed to radioactive contamination from nuclear weapon testing.

The irony of the Atmospheric testings is that the only victim of the US nuclear arms since WWII have been our own citizens.

 Accidents Will Happen – By the Bombs Early Light Collage will Be On View:

Embedded Messages, Debating the Dream: Truth, Justice & the American Way

University Art  Gallery at the University of Redlands. 1200 E Colton Ave, Redlands, CA 92373.

October 18 –November 12, 2016

Gallery hours: 1-5 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2-5 pm Saturdays and Sundays, Gallery is closed on Mondays.

Opening Reception:  Wednesday October 19, University  Art Gallery, 4:30-6:30 pm, Gallery Talk by the exhibiting artists at 5:15 pm

Prints are available: Sally Edelstein Collage

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Collage by © Sally Edelstein “Bedime Stories: Sweet Dreams” Appropriated images. Currently on view at “Embedded Messages, Debating the Dream : Truth Justice and the American Way”, University Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Ca.

As Donald Trump himself continues to go nuclear, the very thought of a President Trump’s tiny fingers anywhere near the button for the nuclear codes sends shivers down my spine.

Anytime the words Donald Trump and nuclear weapons appear in the same sentence, a mushroom cloud of anxiety blossoms over me.

The  nuclear nightmares I had as a child are now replaced with a Trump Nuclear nightmare.

Detail of “Bedtimes Stories: Sweet Dreams “ collage of appropriated images © Sally Edelstein

Decades earlier I had caught a cold war chill I could never shake. For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s the fear of a cold war turning hot was the subtext of our childhood.

It was a time when most Americans assumed the US and the Soviets stood continually on the brink of nuclear war. Baby boomers  never forgot the lesson that our world could someday end in a flash of light and heat while we were crouched helplessly under our desks, our tucked safely in our beds.

No boundaries were safe in the cold war culture run rampant with nuclear fear; it was a childhood filled with intrusive thoughts and night terrors.

Sweet Dreams

Detail of “Bedtimes Stories- Sweet Dreams “ collage of appropriated images © Sally Edelstein

Like most parents my mother and father lulled me to sleep with stories from my collection of Little Golden Books. But sweet bedtime stories did little to counter the frightening stories that ran rampant about nuclear attacks creating unceasing fears  that ran through my cold war childhood .

I knew a nuclear attack could happen any moment any hour. The reality was I would lie in bed, feeling helpless and count slowly to 25 as each plane passed over afraid to miss the flash of light that would be my only warning.

Instead of  Poky Little Puppies  and Sweet Little Kittens finding their mittens, my terror filled dreams were filled with the impending doom of a nuclear attack. Tootles the Train would explode in a flash, Scuffy the Tugboat would be blown out of the water.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Detail of “Bedtimes Stories- Sweet Dreams “ collage of appropriated images Sally Edelstein ©

Now the terrifying prospect of Trump with nuclear weapons is unthinkable.  His glib talk about nuclear weapons obscures a greater danger. To glibly talk about using hydrogen bombs to settle a problem is unthinkable.

With a single phone call, the commander-in-chief has virtually unlimited powers to rain down nuclear weapons on any “ perceived”adversarial regime and country at any time.

The scary thing is there are no checks and balances.

The President has absolute control. There is no advice and consent by the Senate. No second guessing by the Supreme Court. If he were president, Trump who likes to say he doesn’t spend a lot of time conferring with others ( “my primary consultant is myself.” he boasted in March) –would be free to launch a civilization ending nuclear war on his own any time he chose.

With his temperament, Donald Trump is an object of mass destruction.

As he is fond of saying, it would be a “disaster!”

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Art Show

Bedtime Stories: Sweet Dreams is currently on view at:

Embedded Messages, Debating the Dream: Truth Justice and the American Way

University Art  Gallery at the University of Redlands. 1200 E Colton Ave, Redlands, CA 92373.

October 18 –November 12, 2016

Gallery hours: 1-5 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2-5 pm Saturdays and Sundays, Gallery is closed on Mondays.

Prints are available: Sally Edelstein Collage

When it came to 1960’s spies, James Bond may have ruled the big screen, but on television The Man From U.N.C.L.E. won hands down.

The best part was every week starting in 1964 we got to see good versus evil play out from the comfort of our own living rooms.

Sure every girl had a crush on his Russian sidekick Illya Kuriakin, the “cute one,” but I much preferred the dashing Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn.

They were the good guys agents of U.N.C.L.E. and each week they battled the bad guys –agents of THRUSH a shady criminal organization bent on world domination.

Gold Key Comics The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

If it seemed a little like James Bond well it could be because the shows creator was Ian Fleming the man responsible for James Bond.

He and U.N.C.L.E.’s producer Sam Rolfe, got together to do a tongue in cheek  version of the spy thriller. Fleming wanted to call it “Solo” after a character in one of his James Bond books, Goldfinger.  But when Fleming had to withdraw from the project because of a heart attack, the owners of the Bond films told Rolfe they owned the name. The show was changed to U.N.C.L.E. and the main character became Napoleon Solo.

In the cold war spy vs spy world of the 1960’s, suburbia was filled with untold small fry wanna-be spies and manufacturers were more than happy to lend a hand offering up all sorts of Man From U.N.C.L.E. merchandise to help out  the kiddies in their undercover adventures.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Napoleon Solo Action Figure by Gilbert. U.N.C.L.E. stood for United Network Command for Law Enforcement

A low tech View-Master version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. David McCallum as Illya Kuriakin and Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo

1966 Official Man From U.N.C.L.E. Counterspy Outfit by Ideal

Corgi Toys Man From UNCLE Car

My cold war childhood filled with cold war warriors could easily have turned hot if not for MAD… oh, and our nuclear policy of Mutually Assured Destruction too. Mad Magazine covers (L) Fidel Castro October 1963 (R) JFK October 1961

Though a half a century apart, November now marks the death of two Cold War icons.

Just four days after the anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy, his nemesis Cuba’s Communist leader Fidel Castro has died at age 90.

Both loomed large in my cold war childhood.

Any Communist foothold in our Hemisphere seemed an affront. Life Magazine June 2, 1961 Fidel Castro

It is hard to imagine today the dark shadow cast by Castro extended all the way to a suburban N.Y. child.

That the fear of communism represented by the bearded bombastic Fidel Castro on a small island 90 miles from Florida could so menace an entire hemisphere seems today almost inconceivable.

But panicked Americans were convinced Castro and his Communist cohorts were aiming to undermine the influence of the US and break ties with Latin America which was in the United States sphere of influence.

Communist control in Cuba it was feared would trigger similar uprisings throughout Latin America and so extend Soviet Influence.

More importantly, not only did Castro bring the cold war  to our hemisphere, he brought it right into our homes,

No more so than during the Cuban Missile Crisis, those harrowing 13 days in October 1962 when Castro and Khrushchev  nearly brought us to the brink of thermonuclear war.

It is a story I have never forgotten and it is worth remembering again.

Measle’s Crisis of October

There was a time when measles was all but wiped out

I didn’t know until years later that they called it the Cuban Missile Crisis. In my mind it would always be remembered as the “German Measles Crisis.”

It was late October, and trick or treating  was just a few short weeks away.

For that years Halloween my parents had picked out our Halloween costumes for my older brother Andy and I. There would be no glittering fairy princess with a magic wand for me. No ghosts or goblins for my brother.  No, my parents had something more ghoulish in mind.

Vintage Halloween mask Fidel Castro

Mom and Dad thought it a hoot to costume their children as Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and Cuba’s very own Fidel Castro.What better way to keep a cold war chill in the air than to dress my brother and I as those 2 lovable cold war communist cut ups.

But as luck would have it, I came down with a nasty case of the measles.

The itchy red spots were spreading from my face to my body as quickly as Communist aggression was visualized on maps and films at school.

Those scary red splotches of Communism shown slithering around the globe, oozing over continents, a ready reminder that the Russians were hell-bent on world conquest, were a familiar feature in My Weekly Reader.

Now the measles red rash was on its own expansionist path with me.

German Measles

German Measles were goose-stepping across my ravaged body. (R) Vintage German Nazi Stamp “Victory at Any Price”

To make matters worse, I learned it wasn’t just plain old measles.

They were German Measles; Nazi measles goose-stepping across my ravaged body.

Despite having been born a full decade after the end of WWII, which in a child’s mind is an eternity, I was tormented by the very thought of Nazis.

I used to have nightmares that men in brown shirts, black jack boots, and wide Sam Browne belts, rank and file members of the Nazi Party would storm into my suburban ranch house, lustily humming the Nazi anthem Hort Wessel Song, brutally taking me away.

Now the Germans and their horrors fused with the Russians and their nuclear bombs, and there was nothing to stop the fiery red rash that was charging across my 7-year-old body.

Monday

House Calls

Monday, October 22 began as sunny clear day. A burnish of autumn on the sycamore trees that lined my suburban block made everything look peaceful and predictable.

But all was not quite on the Western Park Drive front.

Inside my house things were anything but peaceful; I awoke with a fever, sore throat, blotchy skin and the streaming morning light burned my watery, red-rimmed eyes.

My body was clearly sending out distress signals. With a sinking feeling about the telltale rash, Mom called the doctor.

Within the hour my pediatrician came to the house and confirmed the diagnosis.

The spots had Deutschland written all over them – German Measles – Rubella.

Solemnly my pediatrician Dr. King informed me that to prevent the spread of the very contagious disease, I would have to be quarantined.

Like a heat seeking missile, a careless sneeze, or an explosive cough could shoot troublesome germs in your direction at a mile a minute speed. In case they invaded the tissues of your throat, you could be in for a cold, or…worse.

I was to get back to bed mach schnell. And stay there.

Think Pink

Besides bed-rest, baby aspirin and fluids there was no cure. A big brown bottle of soothing Calamine lotion along with a suggestion to clip my fingernails to stop me from the inevitable scratching were the doctors best suggestions.

Not even the venerable Ben Casey could come to my rescue.

There was no debate about the merits of a vaccine because there were none. A vaccine would become available for measles in 1963, a rubella vaccine wouldn’t exist until the end of the decade.

The Longest Day

Mom had already had her longest day dealing with the measles crisis when the Cuban Missile Crisis was announced. (R) Headline of NY Daily News announcing the Cuban blockade

October 22 was also my parent’s 12th wedding anniversary.

They had planned on going to the movies that evening to see “The Longest Day”, that star-studded spectacle about D Day the Normandy invasion.

But now that our normally germ-proof home had itself been invaded with a contagious disease, plans were promptly cancelled.

John Wayne would have to wait.

Besides which my parents were anxious to watch President Kennedy’s live broadcast on television that evening.

Panic Goes Viral

President John Kennedy addressed the nation of the Cuban Missile Crisis on television

At noon while Mom was preparing lunch, JFK’s press secretary Pierre Salinger had made a dramatic announcement that the president would speak that night “on a matter of the highest national urgency.”

The crisis that was brewing in Cuba that had begun a week earlier had been kept top-secret. Now with rumors circulating, there was a nearly unbearable sense of foreboding and tension.

Across the country while American’s eyes would be fixed on their TV sets gripped in the most intense moment of recent history, I was confined to my bedroom without a TV. At a loss, I trained my ears to tune in to the console playing in the living room.

We Interrupt This Program…

At 7:00, I could hear the TV announcer from the popular game show based on the game charades saying: “Stump the Stars will not be seen tonight so that we can bring you this special broadcast….”

Along with 50 million other Americans my parents listened in pin-drop silence as President Kennedy spoke about Cuba.

Sitting behind his desk, a solemn President Kennedy got right to the point. This was no time to play charades.

He grimly announced to a shocked nation that Russia had sneaked missiles into Cuba just 90 miles from Florida. Along with the Offensive Missiles, Khrushchev had deployed bombs and 40,000 Soviet troops.

Fidel Castro welcomed them with open arms.

The alarming evidence from photographs showed that nearly every city from Lima, Peru to Hudson Bay, Canada would lie within push button range of thermonuclear bombs in Cuba.

Panic was about to go viral

Every major US city would lie within push button range of thermonuclear bombs in Cuba.

“To halt this offensive build up,” a determined Kennedy said, “a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment to Cuba is being initiated.” The Navy’s mission was to block the flow of Russian weapons to Cuba.

Like me, the Russians would have a quarantine imposed on them but Dad wasn’t convinced this was the best tactic. It might work for preventing the spread of the measles but not for the missiles. If Russians didn’t withdraw the missiles as demanded, a U.S. pre-emptive strike against the launch site was inevitable.

The United States would not shrink from the threat of nuclear war to preserve the peace and freedom of Western Hemisphere, Kennedy said firmly.

The President’s voice faded away as my parents grimly turned to another channel to watch “I’ve Got a Secret.”

Struggling with the ramifications of what they just heard, the longest day was about to get a lot longer.

A Rash Decision

Temperatures were rising as the Cold War heated up. (R) JFK clashed with some military advisers about invading Cuba. After criticizing Kennedy’s call to blockade Cuba as too weak a response, General Curtis LeMay Air Force Chief of Staff (seated closest to JFK in photo) told the President that his refusal to invade Cuba was a mistake and would encourage the Soviets to move on Berlin. Photo by Abbie Rowe National Archives

As the cold war heated up so did my fever, and I was wracked with chills.

Despite being doused with great blotches of pink calamine lotion I was struggling not to scratch the angry rash that was invading my body.

Hot and bothered, the US military were having the same problem.

Just itching to go to war, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to restrain themselves from scratching that very dangerous itch.

The Soviets had crossed the line. They had come into our Hemisphere, their nuclear warheads aimed directly at us and we had to make sure they didn’t strike first. The time had come for a direct military showdown with the Soviet Union.

Luckily cooler heads prevailed.

We Can Work it Out?

JFK and Khrushchev arm wrestling for power as they sit astride nuclear weapons in this Oct 29, 1962 cartoon.

On Wednesday, when Soviet ships changed course rather than make contact with the naval blockade, there was some relief.

No new weapons were being shipped to Cuba. But Hi-ho-hi-ho it was off to work they go as industrious red dwarfs continued to work day and night on the existing missiles which would soon be operational.

The pressure on the President to order an air strike or an invasion was mounting.

As the tension grew, many atomic armchair strategists felt strongly that the best defense was offense – get ‘em before they hit us. “If the Russian offensive build up continued, Kennedy would have no choice but to unleash the mighty US force,” Dad remarked  gravely.

Russian nuclear retaliation would be inevitable.

Going on the Defensive

Short of building a fallout shelter, there was little anyone could do about the missile crisis, but it was all out war on the measles at my home. (L) Vintage booklet “Fallout Protection Kit” for your shelter

An air of crisis hung over the country.

Short of building a fallout shelter, there was little anyone could do about the missile crisis, but it was all out war on the measles at my home.

Prepared to do battle, Mom took the offensive with the pre-emptive striking power of Lysol, Lestoil and Listerine, to immobilize and incapacitate any rogue germs. There was a full frontal attack on dirt – every counter every surface in the house was scoured and sanitized, hands were washed and rewashed until skin wrinkled and puckered.

School Daze

A Page out of history (L) Vintage illustration from “Our Country Historical Color Book” 1958 depicting the Atomic Blast at Hiroshima

With the containment policy strictly enforced, the days passed slowly for me but I busied myself with Colorforms, Crayolas and coloring books.What better way to pass the crisis than coloring in a picture of the Atomic Blast at Hiroshima in my American History Coloring Book.

Barricaded in my bedroom, I could still hear the ominous sound of the air raid drill alarm ringing every few hours at West Hempstead High School a few blocks away. I could picture all the frightened school kids jumping out of their desks as I had done countless times, kneeling underneath desks, hands clasped behind necks, eyes closed waiting for that imminent flash.

I had little sense how school officials were currently scurrying to make all sorts of contingency plans for what seemed like the possibility of a real attack.

Several years earlier, my school district had developed a plan for evacuating elementary school kids in the event of a threatened enemy air raid upon N.Y.C. We had been issued plastic dog tags with our picture and address on it that we were to wear in case of an attack.

School Day drills (R) In a photograph published in Colliers Magazine June 1952, schoolchildren in Nevada practice what they have been told to do in case of an Atomic attack:lie flat on the ground, shield their eyes with one arm and protect their head with the other arm

On Thursday my fifth grade brother brought home a printed permission slip for my parents to sign, allowing students to participate in a practice walk-home air raid drill.

In case of emergency it was thought better to be incinerated at home rather than at school.

Irritable and impatient as only a sick 7-year-old could be, I was deeply disappointed that I would miss out on the fun of the walk home drill. Pleading with Mom to let me out of my sick room long enough to view the march, I wistfully watched from the living room window as my classmates, lined up in size order, earnestly paraded down my deserted block.

The loud roar of an overhead jet temporarily distracted me.

Anxiously I scanned the blue skies from our picture window for an enemy attack, as though it were WWII and I were a spotter standing on a rooftop scanning the skies for the sight of a Japanese flag painted on the belly of the aircraft.

I was too young to comprehend the total annihilation of nuclear war. All I knew was, we were to be prepared. I knew a nuclear attack could occur any time anyplace any day. Would this be the day?

My parents would shake their heads, as they watched me but neither of them had the heart to tell me what they already knew – that now, by the time you eyed the enemy…it was already too late.

Tossin’ and Turnin’

By Saturday I had taken all the orange flavored St. Joseph aspirin that I could, yet my fever had still not broken. Along with the shivering and shaking, there was a whole lot of tossin and turnin’ as the red splotches of German Measles continued their assault goose-stepping across my body.

A vaporizer had been brought in to help with the breathing and between the fog and my feverish delirium, disparate sounds and thoughts merged in my mind, as I drifted between states of fractured foggy wakefulness and fitful sleep.

Have Gun Will Travel

Blending with the hushed anxious tones of my parents, the shrill, ear-piercing, buzzing signals on the radio during the CONELRAD broadcasting system tests and the ominous news bulletins, were the incessant commercials constantly blaring on TV…

“…..And now a word from our sponsor… This is only a test…In a world threatened by thermonuclear holocaust…. it’s new…. its different….it….gives the surest protection-the new Missiles with Gardol, wonderful new Anti-Russian fighter forms an invisible shield of radioactivity around them….They can’t feel it – taste it – see it – but its protection won’t rinse off or wear off all day, just like New Pepsodent…..

“…Don’t settle for wishy -washy conventional weapons….New deep penetrating Thermonuclear Bombs bring speedy relief from Reds…. Goes in-goes in fast….help restore restful democracy, relieves pesky Russian interference…

“Yes, fast acting Ajax the white tornado…. Ajax missiles kill millions of people associated with Communism, ..Reaches all infected areas in minutes….shrinks populations, restores free way of life. An exclusive anti communist Ingredient….That’s all there is to it…

“…This is not a test…we now return to Have Gun Will Travel…If this had been an actual emergency ….. take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning…”

As hot as I was with fever I knew things were only going to get a lot hotter once this thermonuclear war began.

On Sunday morning my fever broke and Moscow announced their decision to dismantle the missiles and return to sender. I wouldn’t understand until years later that the Russians backed off or as Dean Rusk was to famously say “We were eyeball to eyeball and they blinked first.”

Though my fever and measles eventually healed, the cold war chill I caught that week would never leave me.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Putin’s Puppet? The rampant distrust and the recent Russian election bombshell has caused my cold war chill to get a lost frostier.

Is the Cold War being taken out of deep freeze?

The accusations of Russia’s interference in our presidential election has sent a big chill down my spine, as childhood memories of the Cold War are quickly defrosted.  As distrust and accusations run rampant, the terror of the Red Menace infiltrating our country,  is bone chillingly familiar.

The CIA has recently concluded that Russia and Vladimir Putin have  interfered with the US election in order to help Donald Trump become president.

It is a familiar cold war doomsday scenario brought into the 21st century.

Red Menace

The fear of Russian intervention, not only militarily but politically was a common thread throughout my mid-century childhood. American’s were convinced hidden communists were lurking everywhere, secretly infiltrating our government, including our very own state department.

Like those two scheming cartoon villains Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale those no goodnick spies carrying out Fearless Leaders secret evil plots, Russians were sinister, sneaky plotters carrying out covert actions  just waiting to overthrow a government…including our own.

Russian Menace

Now the possibility that the  Russians have stolen the White House  for Donald Trump, the candidate handpicked by comrade Putin, is a scenario eerily straight out of the any number of post war cautionary tales.

Even the techniques they used, misinformation and manipulation of the press, creating divisiveness while pitting citizens against each other to weaken us,  are the exact same devices we were warned  were favored by  the Soviets  to undermine us:

“His aim is to make you hate your fellow-man and keep you blind to the important things in life. He wants to make you forget the importance of your right to vote as you please—to say what you please—to go where you please.”

Is This Tomorrow?

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

One famous 1947 comic book entitled “Is This Tomorrow – America Under Communism” was an over the top tale typical of the time  alerting us of the dangers of a Russian takeover. Over 48 colorful pages it illustrated   just how easy it would be for the Reds to take over the U.S.

It Can’t Happen Here:

The comic opens with a dire warning to the young reader:

IS THIS TOMORROW is published for the one purpose – TO MAKE YOU THINK! To make you more alert to the menace of Communism. “Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

Taking their orders directly from Moscow, the story revolves around a group of American Communists led by  a man named “Jones” and his propaganda advisor “Brown” a sinister Steve Banyon character who explains how they will manipulate the American media as a precursor to their Kremlin approved takeover of the U.S.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

They manipulate strike leaders, and stoke racial, class and religious hatred to help weaken America for the Communists eventual takeover.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

Race baiting and taking advantage of the things that divided this country worked to their advantage.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

After the plot to assassinate the president and vice president is successful, the party operatives  have successfully infiltrated the  government  and Jones controls the Speaker of the House (who now is the new president ). Behind the scenes Jones  becomes the”Chief Advisor” and expands the Executive Powers.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

Destabilizing journalism as a check on the power of government is quickly implemented. Anyone critical is swiftly punished and unfavorable newspapers are denied newsprint until they agree with the party line. Telephone system and radio network are now nationalized.

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

“Is This Tomorrow” published by Catechetical Guild Educational Society 1947

INCREDIBLE?

“Did our story seem incredible? It is unbelievable—that such a small group could ever dream of enforcing its will upon the majority. But remember that a group for smaller than the number of Communists living and working in America today seized control of Russia in 1917.

No one can refuse to believe what he knows to be true. And we do know that every method shown in this presentation has been used by the Communists in their rise to power in other countries. Starvation, murder, slavery, force—those are the tools the Communists use to carry out the doctrine of Communism.

The Communists are preparing to seize control of America in any crisis. This crisis, real or contrived—will be there signal to move in… and make their bid for power.

This crisis might begin with a flood in Pennsylvania—a drought in the Middle West. Or it might begin with a general strike in some of our large industrial cities—New York—Detroit—Chicago—San Francisco.

It happened in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and country after country, the world over.

WHERE DO YOU COME IN?

You are the one with whom the Communist is struggling right now. His aim is to make you hate your fellow man and keep you blind to the important things in life. He wants to make you forget the importance of your right to vote as you please—to say what you please—to go where you please—to worship as you please. The Communist really wants you to forget all your rights to individual freedom and liberty.

But you cannot assume your individual rights without assuming individual responsibility.

If you want to keep on living, you must know who the Communists are—and their methods of working. You must recognize the Communist Party line in action and separate Communist propaganda from the factual news of the day.

You are on the defensive in this battle. You owe it to yourself to know all about the invader. He knows more about you than you suspect.

Laughable  for its inplausibility, it’s not quite so funny now.

Are the Russians coming? It look like they are already here.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“Defrosting the Cold War” collage by Sally Edelstein

Is the Cold War coming out of the deep freeze?

Having caught a Cold War chill I never could quite shake, the current frosty relations between President Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin send a shiver down my spine, as childhood memories of the Cold War are quickly defrosted.

The deepening mistrust and accusations of lying between the US and Russia feels like deja vu all over again.

During the Cold War, Uncle Sam was certain that the Soviets were not only concealing the truth but waging a campaign of hatred against us and our peaceful motives and quickly embarked on his own campaign to dispel the evil lies and promote the American Way of life.

The American media was more than happy to oblige and lend a hand in propagating the facts.

(L) Freedom Foundation Ad 1961 “Freedom Foundation was founded in 1949 to help maintain the American way and pass it on intact to each generation. You can strike an effective blow against Communism by joining Freedom Foundations For Americanism program”
(R) How Communists Implement the Party Line illustration from “What is Communism” edited by Richard Ketchum 1955

“The poor people behind the iron curtain,” Americans were warned in public service ads, “have seen such political wickedness and cold-blooded betrayal, such Godless depravity in government that they find it harder to believe in our own good intentions.”

“To destroy human liberty and to control the world the communists use every conceivable weapon subversion, bribery corruption, even…  military attack!

“Of all these, the ad said sternly, “none is more insidious than propaganda!”

Crusade For Freedom

(L) Vintage Radio Free Europe Ad 1950’s (R) vintage children’s school book illustration from ” Working Together” by Alta McIntire & Wilhelmina Hill 1954

Counter attacking these malicious falsehood and spreading the American Way of Life were the Cold War crusaders of truth from  “The Crusade for Freedom” the privately funded donation drive that raised “truth dollars” to support Radio Free Europe.

The radio station broadcast news and current affairs to the enslaved people behind the Iron Curtain, broadcasting  over 29 transmitters to reach Poles, Czechoslovakia, Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians.

Supported by the voluntary cooperative action of millions of Americans who were, the RFE declared, “engaged in this fight of good versus evil.”

“Truth Dollars,” they explained in one of their many ads,”send words of truth and hope to 70 million freedom loving people behind the Iron curtain.”

“This powerful privately operated organization continually challenge the barrage of Communist misstatements and false truth,” they continued proudly. “RFE is constantly on the offensive against the Red campaign to annihilate right, reason and national pride.”

By both promoting the American way of Life and exposing the calculated lies that Communists were spreading every hour, every day through Soviet controlled broadcast and newspaper Radio Free Europe became a vital strategy in winning the Cold War.

Cold War Crusaders of Truth

(L) Vintage American Legion Magazine Aug. 1948 featuring helpful article “The Way You can Fight Communism” (R) Vintage Radio Free Europe Poster Crusade For Freedom 1950’s

For my very first July Fourth in 1956, I would get to hear the cold war truth from them directly.

All across Long island, residents were a buzz over the fact that our towns July 4^th parade was being co-sponsored  by those Cold war crusaders of truth from “The Crusade For Freedom.”  The highlight of the day was the much-anticipated rally that would follow.

A heavy fog had blanketed out town that Independence Day but did not put a damper on the festivities.

As my family and I waited for the speeches to begin, we squeezed in between other newly transplanted families. Indistinguishable from one another but for the different fun to wear easy to care California inspired geometric patterns on their Robert hall no iron Dacron clothes, the wives were a chatty gaggle of amber waves of trouble-free Toni home permanents that had not unfurled in the humidity.

Their you-don’t- know-how -lucky- you-are-to-live-in-the country-children, romped in the fog that hovered over them. A colorful bunch of boisterous backyard buckaroos with  cap firing pistols and sputtering sparklers, their purple lick-em- ade stained tongues and lips stood in contrast to their little bodies dotted with pink splotches of dried calamine lotion, that would be the only hint of pink in this all American crowd.

Freedom Needs You

The fog like a veil of secrecy swirled around the large glistening “Freedom Bell” proudly on display near the Legion Halls flag pole. On loan from The Crusade for Freedom, the bell was authentic in every detail and was cast at a foundry very near the original Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

A public Service Ad by The Advertising Council 1951 “How would you like to roll out of bed some dark morning and have a big palooka tell you where you’re going to work that week, what your wife’s going to wear, and what your kids have to do?” That’s life under Communism which is lurking right around the corner, if we don’t take care of our freedoms, the ad warns the reader.

On the draped podium the featured speaker for the Crusade rose to speak.

A trim, plain-spoken man with protruding, tobacco stained teeth, a regular yankee doodle dandy in a Panama hat and Hawaiian shirt, he methodically fired up a king sized Old Gold cigarette before he spoke, licked his dry, sun parched lips, and briskly smoothed down his army regulation brush cut hair.

“We must make the greatest possible contribution to the defense of our way of life, the American way of life. Freedom …can live only where there is access to the truth,” he began clearly and confidently.

“Communists,” he stated gravely, “teach that America is a vicious enemy of humanity.”

“This slander against our noble purposes, is one example of the campaign of hatred that is being waged against America and freedom around the globe,” he went on his anger clearly rising.”

“We face not only ruthless men but lies and misconceptions intended to rob us of our faith within and of our friends throughout the world. “

“Millions of people will hear no other version but a hissing, hating tirade against America!” he said clearly outraged. “We think it is incredible that such poison be swallowed!”

The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.

Vintage Ad to Support Radio Free Europe and their Truth Dollars Campaign 1951

“How do Truth Dollars fight Communism you ask? ” Anticipating the question on everyone’s mind, he answered.

Breaking into a lopsided grin he continued, “By exposing Red lies…revealing news suppressed by Moscow and by unmasking Communist collaborators. The broadcasts are by exiles in the native tongues of the people to whom they are beamed.”

Squinting against the bright afternoon sun that broke through the fog, the speaker mopped the sweat from his brow, took a long pull on an ice-cold Coke and searched for familiar faces.

“Radio Free Europe has pierced the iron curtain with truth, answers the lies of the Kremlin and brings messages of hope, but it needs your help. ……. This is your chance to play a personal part to resist Communist aggression…..”

“Children’s Crusade Against Communism” trading Cards, published by the Bowman Gum Company who also published baseball cards 1951

“Powerful Communist radio stations,” he said pointing his jaw at us contemptuously, “incessantly tell the world that we Americans are physically soft and mentally corrupt that we are disunited and confused that we are selfish and cowardly that we have nothing to offer the world but imperialism and exploitation.”

Mopping the copious sweat from his brow, he continued: “Weaving a fantastic pattern of lies and twisted facts they confound the listener into believing that we are war mongers and that the secret police and slave camps of Communism offer brighter hope for the future than do self-government and free enterprise…”

(l) Vintage Tide ad 1949 (R) Classic Cold War Comic Book 1947 “Is This Tomorrow? America under Communism” a 48 page cautionary tale of how EZ it would be for Communists to take over the US. It was published “”To make you more alert to the menace of Communism.”

As he spoke, volunteer crusaders were circulating around the crowd collecting donations.

A pretty, trim woman with curly strawberry blonde hair and fashionable Mamie Eisenhower bangs, her heart-shaped face aglow with dewy fresh dimples, approached us: “Give truth dollars and get in the fight,” she said with pure sugar-coated goodness.

Her creamy, Jergen’s- soft- hands gripped the “Truth Dollars” collection can tightly as her arm extended in Dads direction. “Every dollar buys 100 words of truth. That’s how hard ‘Truth Dollars’ work. Your dollar will help 70 million people resist the Kremlin!”

The collection cans were calculated to resemble the ubiquitous March of Dimes canisters, but instead of a heart breaking picture of little girls with steel braces on their legs, pictured was a map showing radio towers with zig zagging radio signals broadcasting across Europe into The Soviet Union.

And the containers wide opening was calculated to accommodate more than a thin dime. Apparently spreading the truth cost a lot more than curing polio.

“The poor people trapped behind the iron curtain know nothing except that which their government says they should know” the woman somberly explained to us.

Speaking directly to my brother and me the lady leaned in close.

Her snowy white  Clorox clean clothes were as sweet and honest- to –goodness- fresh smelling as her minty fresh no-tell- tale mouth breath as she continued: “The communists are weaving fantastic stories and twisted facts about America, unlike in our country where our government tells us the truth.”

L) Vintage Book The Soviet Image of the United States A Study in Distortion by Frederick C. Barghoorn Co. 1950 Harcourt, Brace & Company
The book claims that “Soviet propaganda against the United States is one of the main instruments of the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy Moscow, building the worlds greatest war machine, is seeking to turn world opinion against the US by accusing America of crimes against humanity of which itself is guilty.”

Sidling up to us was another faithful crusader, a clean-cut, level eyed, forthright and fact- filled  champion of truth who nodded in agreement,  “Truth as clear and undistorted as the perfect picture you were promised on your new RCA television set”.

True picture, no blur no distortion that was the American way

The wind picked up and the fog slowly lifted as a cold front moved in. Dad placed a hand over his heart as he looked up towards the bunting draped American Legion Post.

With a gleam in his eye, he gently placed my own little hand over my heart.

I would promise to preserve and protect The American Way of Life taking an oath of loyalty to adhere to the directives from a contingent of Generals- General Mills, General Electric and five-star billion dollar grossing General Motors.

My own military industrial complex.

The Truth, The whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth..

“Keep Your Fingers Crossed” Collage by Sally Edelstein

After finishing his hot dog, dad fished in his pocket for his wallet.  Putting the crumpled bills in my little hand I deposited the money in the donation cans.

We would fight the big lie with the big truth

Of course the truth of  Radio Free Europe being a CIA funded front was something we kept behind our own Made-in the USA curtains for over 20 years.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Critical Care

As the halls of Congress morph into a Critical Care Unit, the GOP’s prescription “to preserve our freedom” appears to be to pull the plug on Obamacare- STAT!

Although some Republicans overt hysterics appear to have gone into temporary remission, the bilious rage against the Affordable Care Act escalates.

Festering for 4 years, the scorn Republicans have felt for Obamacare  has blown up into an ugly, raging boil. The repeal fights are bound to be bloody as the GOP are doing their best to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

Repeal without replacement is just plain bad medicine. Snatching away health care from as many as 30 million people is poor prescription for good health.

A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Health Insurance Heartburn (L) Vintage Pepto Bismol Ad 1957 (R) Vintage illustration from 1955 Insurance Ad

The health care crisis in America has a long troubling history, the bitter debate about Federally Funded Insurance, persistent.

For decades, Republicans have suffered from Chronic Obstructive Healthcare Syndrome, a debilitating disease characterized by acute agitation, myopic vision, paranoid delusions, ultimately devolving into a state of delirium.

The seemingly incurable disease first presented itself during the health care debate in the late 1940’s when President Harry Truman, a staunch supporter of  National Health Insurance, argued before Congress that the federal government should play a role in health care.

Cries of “socialism” reverberated in the halls of Congress, and the histrionics we now associate with  Chronic Obstructive Healthcare Syndrome began to appear like a bad rash.

Socialized Medicine

Vintage illustration from 1944 Advertisement

In the chilly climate of the Cold War lawmakers wanted to make sure that the US would not catch a bad case of socialized medicine.

Because America was on red alert, opponents  to Compulsory Health Insurance were able to make socialized medicine a symbolic issue in the growing crusade against Communist influence in America

The revered leader of the Republican party in domestic affairs, Senator Robert Taft was dead set against National Health Insurance.

In his cool, Ohio twang Taft declared gravely, “I consider it socialism. It is to my mind the most socialistic measure this Congress has ever had before it.” Taft suggested that Compulsory Health Insurance, like the Full Unemployment Act, came right out of the Soviet Constitution and promptly walked out of the Congressional hearings.

It’s a Medical Fact

But no one was more vehemently opposed to National Health Insurance than the American Medical Association.

The idea of compulsory National Health Insurance ran afoul of the AMA one of the most powerful lobbies in the country. The AMA hired public relations firm Whitaker & Baxter to organize it’s opposition, running ads like this one in all the major magazines. The headline in this 1950 ad ask “Who runs America? The Congress? The President? Or You the man next door?” Painting a lurid picture of life under Socialism they concluded that “In the American manner, the people studied the case for socialized medicine and the case against it and they found that the government domination of the peoples medical affairs under Compulsory Health Insurance means a lower standard of medical care, higher taxes, damage to research, penalties for the provider, rewards for the improvident.”

Determined the NHI would be DOA, the AMA poured millions of dollars successfully lobbying congress, and waging a massive slanderous public relations campaign forever entangling compulsory health insurance with that cold war boogeyman Communism.

Your Doctor Knows Best

Vintage illustration of the Family Doctor by Norman Rockwell from Upjohn Advertisement 1943

Mid Century doctors were at the pinnacle of authority figures, riding the tide of unquestioning devotion.

So in 1948 when 32-year-old Frank Goodfellow went for his annual checkup,  he took the expert advise of his genial family doctor  Richard “Dick” Lawson very seriously. Nodding in agreement when Dr Lawson advised him to beef up his daily intake of heart-healthy, AMA-approved rich red meat, Frank listened implicitly as the good doctor spoke about health care and freedom in America.

Health Care Crisis Giving You a Headache? Vintage photo from Anacin Advertisement 1962

Though Frank was in the pink of health, a gnawing, debilitating tension ate at him.

Like many Americans in the 1948 presidential election year, Frank was confused about the battle brewing in between the 2 parties concerning Presidents Truman’s proposed National Health Insurance.

After more than a decade of New Deal Democrats, in 1946 the Republicans had finally taken control of Congress and had no interest in enacting Compulsory Health Insurance charging it was a socialist scheme. Now that Truman was up for reelection, the President  was pushing hard for the health care bill, his opponents fighting back even harder charging the possibility of its passage would result in dire consequences to the health of the nation.

Perplexed, Mr Goodfellow  turned to his trusted family doctor  for some help.

.After listening to Frank’s account of his concerns, Dr Dick-as he was affectionately known-leaned back in his comfortable cordovan leather chair, put a fresh match to the pipe he was smoking and grew thoughtful. Removing his glasses he came right to the point:

Compulsory health insurance was, simply put…un-American!

The Voluntary Way is the American Way

Could it Happen Here? Threat of socialized medicine instilled fear of lost freedoms
(L) Vintage Ad Wyeth Drugs 1944 (R) Vintage Cold War propaganda comic “Is This Tomorrow? America Under Communism” a 48 page cautionary tale of how easy it would be for Communists to take over the US. It was published to “make you more alert to the menace of Communism”

Socialized medicine or anything that even looked or smelled like socialized medicine gave Dr. Richard Lawson the chills and fever.

Reaching across his big oak desk, Dr. Dick handed  Frank a pamphlet put out by the AMA entitled “A threat to health – a threat to freedom!”

The good doctor put on his reading glasses and read aloud from the brochure:

“Freedom is coming under attack,” he began solemnly. “In much of the world today the people have resigned from running their own countries. Others have been quick to step in- first with the promises of security and then with whips and guns- to run things their way. The evidence is on every front page in the world everyday.”

Frank grimaced in agreement as he took a long drag from his cigarette.

“The reality of war has made every American think hard about the things he’s willing to work and fight for- and freedom leads the list.”

The doctor looked up from his reading, giving former Private First Class Goodfellow time to absorb what he had been saying.

L) Vintage illustration from 1948 Park Davis &Co. advertisement (R) Illustration from Boys Life Magazine 1963

“But that freedom has been attacked here recently just as it has been attacked in other parts of the world.” To emphasize the point, the doctor read slowly: “One of the moist serious threats to individual freedom has been the threat of Government dominated Compulsory Health Insurance, falsely presented as a new guarantee of health “security” for everybody.”

Leaning in close, his face flushed with determination, Dr Dick, somberly explained the grave consequences of such an act as spelled out by the AMA..

“Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”

Putting the down the brochure, Dr Lawson appeared to brush a tear from his eye.

Like all good standing members of the AMA,Dr. Dick  believed that compulsory health care would limit physician autonomy and income and cause doctors to “become clock watchers and slaves of a system.”

“It is my business to keep you healthy Frank,” he said sadly, the plume of pipe smoke forming a blue haze around him, “but with this alien way of life, of socialism doctors would be mere slaves.”

Diagnosis: Disaster

Is There a doctor in the House? Unable to resuscitate the badly bruised National Health Insurance bill, it died an unremarkable death in the Congressional committee. Vintage Illustration by Phil Dormont Saturday Evening Post 1944

With the same agility and shrewdness he had diagnosed Franks bursitis, Dr Dick went on to dissect the cancer that would be striking at the very heart of American freedom- Compulsory Health Insurance, the first step towards Communism.

“Communism,” he stated firmly, “was invading our shores.”

Communists were like cancer cells Dr Lawson skillfully explained to Frank, “a monster gone berserk. Relentlessly increasing their numbers, cancerous Communists proceed to crowd out healthy societies and begin to steal from the normal countries around them.”

Driving home the point the dedicated doctor continued. “Communists, like germs lived amongst us undetected and could attack and infiltrate anytime. If you were invaded by germs you could end up in an iron lung- if you were infiltrated y Communism you could end up behind the iron curtain. If we had socialized medicine we were one step closer to being enslaved.

Squirming uneasily in his chair, his legs sticking uncomfortably to the seat covered in plastic Fabrilite, Frank Goodfellow shook his head. “It sounds awful,” he said slowly breathing hard. There was more perspiration on his forehead and the color of his glowing pink skin seemed pale and drained of color.

Leaning forward in his chair, Dr Lawson concluded.“Keeping thing as they were was the only cure for a healthy America.”

“The American health system,” Dr Lawson diagnosed conclusively “didn’t need any curing.”

A country consumed with anti communist sentiment, shrouded in suspicion apparently agreed. Unable to resuscitate the badly bruised National Health Insurance bill, it died an unremarkable death in the Congressional committee.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Steeped in fear, Trump has cast an entire people as pre-disposed to disloyalty. Was this little refugee boy on the left any more of a threat to cold war America than the Syrian child on the right is today? After WWII,  my future husband and his family of Holocaust survivors lingered in an overcrowded Displaced Persons Camp in Germany waiting for a country that would accept them as politicians and a fear mongering media debated the loyalty of Eastern Europeans and the fear of Communist infiltration.  (L) My 3-year-old husband in a DP Camp 1948 photo family collection (R) Syrian child refugee

I married a refugee who as a little boy was perceived as a threat to Cold War America and not as a survivor of the Holocaust.

While my childhood was a sugar frosted world of frost-free fun living out the post war suburban dream, my husband would spend the first four years of his life in a displaced persons camp, while Congress bickered unwilling to change existing restrictive immigration laws that severely limited the number of Eastern European allowed.

Was he any more of a threat to our country than a Syrian refugee child is today?

Steeped in fear, some Americans have a habit of marking an entire people as predisposed to disloyalty.

Tragically one sits in the oval office today, wielding a mighty presidential pen issuing out executive orders grossly affecting the lives of millions and tarnishing Americas moral authority. Part of Trumps executive order indefinitely blocking Syrian refugees from entering our country, puts a freeze on Americas Syrian Refugee re-settlement program at a time when the crisis is worsening by the day.

When it comes to American paranoia, Donald Trump’s extreme vetting feels eerily familiar.

A Threat to America

Fear mongering media and xenophobic politicians cry out in protest at the possible influx of refugees seeking a safe haven.

Squawking like Chicken Little, they ominously warn of the dire consequences and threat to America if we allow “these tired, these poor, these huddled masses” of refugees ‘yearning to breathe free” into our homeland.

The Other

These particular refugees they assert “are supporters of terrorism, violence and the abrogation of American laws and ideals…they will take over the country and subvert our constitution.”

“Taking in these refugees would be suicide for the US because anti-American terrorists may be disguising themselves as refugees.”

A lawmaker opposing these immigrants claims they are “imbued with political ideologies wholly at variance with our constitutional system!”

Testimony before Congress offered grave warnings that these refugees were “important carriers of the kind of ideological germs with which it is their aim to infect the public opinion of the US.”

Now that certainly sounds like a diagnosis from the good doctor, Ben Carson.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

“Is this Tomorrow?” A panel from the 1947 anti communist comic book designed to teach people about the subversive nature of communism.

Only the speaker here was not directing his paranoia at the fear of a Muslim terrorist sneaking into the U.S. along with the Syrian refugees.

These remarks were uttered over 65 years ago about another group of refugees seeking asylum, East European refugees.

This fear mongering claiming national security that sounds straight out of the Trump playbook on Anti-Muslim refugees is actually a page from the cold war anti-communist rhetoric directed at the displaced persons of WWII.

The current freeze to the millions of Syrian refugees fleeing a violent homeland desperate to seek a safe haven, mirrors the deep freeze experienced by displaced placed Eastern European Jews  during the cold war whose efforts to get to a safe haven were met by a cold shoulder.

The cold war cast a particularly chilly response to the desperate plight of the displaced person of Europe due to our heightened fear of Communist infiltration.

Thanks to the peddling of irrational fears to a panicked and paranoid public, many post war Americans were resistant to the idea of welcoming these poor souls to our shores.

Displaced Fears

Displaced Persons in a DP Camp, Germany 1947The conventional wisdom that we immediately opened our shores with outstretched arms to these displaced persons has become a more romanticized version of the truth; the harsh edges of their struggle to enter the land of the free have softened over the past 70 years.

Liberated Jews suffering from illness and exhaustion emerged from concentration camps and hiding places to discover a world which had no place for them.

Well into the post war years, thousands of European Jews remained locked in displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. Without a home, many were afraid to be repatriated because their countries were now police states under Soviet occupation.

For these ¼ million stateless, homeless Jewish survivors, prospects for resettlement in free democratic lands appeared uncertain.

These huddled masses yearning to be free had nowhere to go.

It is a story that hits close to home.

My future in-laws were Holocaust survivors.

1945 No Where to Go

Strong national prejudices, procrastination in Congress and some less than dynamic leadership in White House combined to prolong the miseries of Jews who survived the Holocaust.

All over Europe after the war ended in May of 1945,  like a great backwash to the tidal wave of war, almost 10,000,000 confused, depleted and hungry human beings were wandering from place to place amidst the rubble of war. Some were newly liberated labor slaves, some concentration camp survivors,  some civilians, some prisoners of war.

Trudging on foot, hitching rides on bicycles,  looted German cars, trucks, and hay wagons this stumbling mass of humanity moved steadily on urged on the idea to get home.

For many there was no longer a home.

Many survivors who went home faced hostility from their neighbors and found their homes, possessions and jobs gone.

These huddled masses yearning to be free had nowhere to go.

It is a story that hits close to home.

My future in-laws were Holocaust survivors.

Displaced Persons

Displaced persons camp Germany 1946. My future mother in law and her son, my future husband who would spend the first 4 years of his life in a DP camp. Photo: family collection

Braving the incertitude among history’s most jumbled mass of migration was a courageous young Jewish woman grown older than her 23 years through the unspeakable horrors that no one should ever bear witness to.

Her entire family lost at the hands of the Nazis, separated from her husband, she trudged on with her meager belongings tightly clutching her most valued possession, her precious newborn baby.

Lost Family 1937 Photo: family collection

This tiny baby boy, born without a home, who would never know what it was to grow up with grandparents, uncles or aunts would one day grow up to be my future all-American husband.

Bereft of home and family, tattered photos were the few remaining mementos many had. Polish Jews 1930s. Vintage photo from family collection

Unable to return to her now vanished hometown in Poland, reunited with her husband, they found their way to a displaced persons camp in Germany.

DP camps were made from abandoned German army barracks, factories and even concentration camps. Most of these camps were crowded and unsanitary with shortages of food and clothing

Before the end of 1945, more than 6 million of those uprooted by the war found a home leaving 1.5 to 2 million displaced persons. Most Jewish survivors were unable or unwilling to return home because of persistent anti-Semitism and the destruction of their communities during the Holocaust. Many of those who did return feared for their lives. In postwar Poland, for example, there were a number of violent riots that claimed scores of Jewish lives.

The big question was where to put the people who could not be repatriated?

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor

“You’re a Cheap Bunch of Soreheads and You Can’t Land Here,” says a bloated Uncle Sam in cartoonist Art Young’s protest against discriminatory immigration laws. This editorial cartoon appeared in “The Masses” the radical, socialist magazine that attacked the status quo.

Restrictive immigration policies were still in effects in the U.S. and legislation to expedite the admission of Jewish DPs was slow. These constricting immigration policies had at least a partial basis in anti-Semitism and racist theories, thanks to immigration laws passed between 1882 and 1929 that were among the most discriminatory in the world, regulating immigration by race.

Despite loosening of some quota restrictions, by the end of the year opportunities for legal immigration to the United States remained extremely limited.

Congressional action was needed before existing immigration quotas could be increased, so while Congress procrastinated and bickered, my husband would spend the first four of his life in a DP camp looking for a country that would accept him.

A Tarnished Golden Door

These Jews did not receive the welcome promised in the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty “I lift my lamp beside the Golden door.” In the years following the end of the war, the lamp was dimmed, the door too often closed.

A Cold War Chill

Many were convinced that Communists had infiltrated DP camps posing as refugees in order to enter the country where they would soon overthrow the government. All were suspect including this homeless little boy on the left who would one day grow up to be my husband. Did I marry a communist ? Not in the least. (L) My 3-year-old husband in a DP Camp 1948 photo family collection (R) 1949 movie poster “I Married a Communist”

Cast in a cold war light, these refugees became even less desirable.

Part of that opposition was fueled, as it is now, by stereotypes of the refugees as harbingers of a dangerous ideology, in this case Communism.

By the beginning of 1947, the composition of the DP camps had changed.

The camps were very overcrowded due to the daily influx of Jews from Eastern Europe fleeing oppressive Soviet occupation. 250,000 Eastern European Jews including large numbers of families and children from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Soviet Union joined the other displaced persons of the Holocaust.

As my husband and his family lingered in an overcrowded DP camp waiting for a country that would accept them, politicians and a fear mongering media debated the loyalty of Eastern Europeans and the fear of communist infiltration.

Warning! Danger Ahead

An ant-communist comic book warning young readers of the dangers ahead should Uncle Sam steer clear of the Rd Iceberg

By 1947 relations between the Soviet Union and U.S. were in the deep freeze; the cold war was frozen solid.

In the black and white cold war world war of good vs evil, America was certain that the communists were waging an aggressive campaign of hatred against us embarking upon an aggressive campaign to destroy free government and the American Way of life.

from the 1947 anti communist comic book “Is This Tomorrow?” warning people of the subversive nature of Communist infiltration

Uncle Sam was convinced that Russia was hell-bent on destroying the traditional American way of Life and had their cunning communist eyes set on infiltrating America with whatever means they could.

Germ War Fare

American feared being infected with a good case of communism. (R) Is This Tomorrow a 1947 comic book designed to teach people about the subversive nature of communist infiltration.

The very health of democracy was at stake, unless these morally corrupting influences were wiped out and banned from our shores.

More frightening than polio was the spread of that ideological virus communism.

And the displaced persons camps were prime breeding grounds for this subversive cunning germ.

The president of the National Economic Council testified in Congress that the DPs were “important carriers of the kind of ideological germs with which it is their aim to infect the public opinion of the U.S. ”

It was a virulent strain of ideology that once exposed, there was no cure. We needed to quarantine the public from the spread of this dangerous virus.

Crafty subversive plotters training for their roles as peddlers of Soviet propaganda, skillfully disguise themselves as refugees in a DP camp 1947 . Photo family collection

Just as germs entered the bloodstream undetected so Communists could infiltrate and attack. “Skillfully disguising themselves as refugees,” one article warned, “carrying out their mission these communists spend years in training for their subversive roles, poised to slip in a neat hypodermic needle full of Moscow virus.”

In a DP camp in Germany a group of Junior revolutionaries plotting for seizure and power in the USA. Photo- family collection

Many were convinced Communists had infiltrated the DP camps, posing as refugees in order to enter the country where they would soon overthrow the government.

People testified in Congress that the Soviets had placed “trained terrorists’ ( trained at terrorists institutions in Moscow) in the DP camps .

Is that a concealed weapon in that snow ball? A 2 year old displaced child in DP camp Germany. Photo Family collection

It was  therefore likely that many DP camps admitted from Europe would include a number of these terrorists. Alarmists feared that DPs were Soviet “Trojan Horses bent on the nations destruction.”

Natural Tendencies

As a reflection of their “natural tendencies” the perceived politics of the displaced person’s thus posed a threat to American nation.

Many Congressmen opposed DP immigration equating these “New Immigrants” with anarchism, communism and Bolshevism, recklessly claiming the DPs were “imbued with political ideologies wholly at variance with our constitutional system of government.”

Who Can You Trust

What it boiled down to was loyalty and trust calling in to question the loyalty of immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Marking an entire people as pre disposed to disloyalty is a familiar refrain.

Once here, the DP’s ( from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe) would be “peculiarly susceptible to the absorption of socialistic propaganda” and naturally gravitate into “left wing unions” and the immigrant slums which were “mothers of revolution.”

Opponents of DP immigration often spoke of how the DPs and the “ideological germs” that they carried would weaken the nation from within, echoing fears of “race suicide” that had been so prevalent in debates about immigration earlier in the century.

1948 Displaced Persons Act

However as time went on President Harry Truman stood up against the public opinion and Congress in his battle to open the door of the U.S. to Jewish DPs. He urged Congress to enact legislation that would admit thousands of homeless and suffering refugees of all faiths to the U.S.

After pressure, Congress passed the less than magnanimous 1948 Displaced Person Act ( an act to authorize for a limited time the admission into the U.S. 200,00 of certain European displaced persons) which was highly selective using date restrictions designed to limit the number of Jewish refugees eligible for entry.

President Truman when he signed it, grudgingly admitted it was better than nothing, but called it “flagrantly discriminatory” against Jews and Catholics. 1

Change of Heart

Many began seeing the propaganda potential of DPs that could be exploited and that they be touted through the U.S. as “Victims of Communism.”

As more refuges were being admitted, a cold war re-branding of the DPs began to take hold. In the war against communism they could use their plight to our advantage.

One document  suggested a technique for fighting Communism in the USA strongly recommending “that the propaganda potential of DPs be exploited and that they be touted through the U.S. as Victims of Communism.”

The obvious fact that the DP’s who might technically be able to return to their East European homelands refused to do so because of feared Communist rule, had somehow previously eluded them.

Many folks began to realize that far from destroying the nation from within, the politics of the DPs especially their anti-communist feelings could strengthen the nation in its conflict with the Soviet Union.

For many of the proponents of DP immigration, the DPs did not represent the communist contagion but rather the anti-communism inoculation.

They would be living proof of the terrors and horrors of Communist rule.

In its final report the USDPC urged the resettlement of refugees from communist tyranny should become part of Cold War U.S. Strategy.

These displaced persons served to remind us of the dangers of totalitarian communism!

Post Script

Coming to America 1949 Photo family collection

In the fall of 1949 a few months before a relatively unknown senator from Wisconsin began his 4 year witch hunt for Communists, my future husband and what remained of his family arrived in the states from their DP camp in Germany.

After a ten-day crossing from Bremerhaven, Germany, the ship steamed into NY Harbor. On board were other displaced persons some were survivors of concentration camps others refugees from Russian persecution.

Some were so old that they had little to look forward to except burial at last in American earth; others like my husband, so young that soon they would have no recollection at all of Europe. But all of them felt grateful to the country that had finally given them a safe haven.

Only 4 years old, Hersh who had spent almost all his life behind barbed wire was able to adjust quickly, learning phrases that would take his parents months to learn.

His first experience here was watching Hop Along Cassidy on TV. This little 4 year boy who could only speak Yiddish donned a cowboy hat and learned the language watching good old American westerns.

As his parents watched him change from a displaced person with a number into an American, they beamed with happiness.

Today this former unwanted refugee is an attorney defending those most in need of help, whose eloquence owed a lot to those 1950s cowboy and the generosity of America for welcoming him.

1. Note: So much criticism was heaped on the 1948 Act that Congress later passed amendments extending allotment of US immigration visas for DPs to approximately 500,000.
The 1950 revision succeeded including treating all European refugees “equally as members of the human race” as the NY Times said in an editorial at the time.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Off to the Arms races! Supersizing the Superpower collage of appropriated images by Sally Edelstein

Well, we’re off to the arms races again as the supersizing of the superpowers begins anew.

Donald Trump wants to ramp up America’s nuclear arsenal. Fearing we’ve fallen behind, he boasts  he wanted to make the U.S. the top of the pack when it comes to nukes.

Trump’s nuclear arsenal ambition is déjà vu.

Supersizing the Superpower

For those of us who grew up during the 1950’s and 1960’s the cold war culture of  an arms race  was a subtext of our lives. It was a time when most Americans assumed the Unites States and the Soviets stood continually on the brink of nuclear war.

With the threat of  nuclear attack breathing down our necks, and our misguided fear of a gaping missile gap, we needed to build up our arsenal of nuclear  weapons, pronto.

When it came to Super Powers, American’s have long  believed in supersizing.

Land of Good and Plenty

(Detail) Supersizing the Superpower collage of appropriated images by Sally Edelstein

After all, mid century American’s  were the most envied people on the planet. You couldn’t help but stand and admire us and our technological know how and might.

Running rings around all others, no other country so accented the march of new ideas. Big trends begin in America. The USA stood ever ready with a more confident answer to all the demands of modern living.

Whether bombs, breasts or Buicks, bigger was better.

The magicians of Madison Avenue were working their magic in tandem with the MAD  men of the Military Industrial Complex working double time fusing a double set of desires for the nuclear family for more weapons of mass destruction and more ease of living-  Mutually Assured Destruction and Mutually Assured Consumption.

How Do You Rate?

With more bounce and zoom in every step, we could run faster, jump higher and win more often.

And in the dawn of the space age, it was to be America, naturally, who would steer us into space braving the dangers of the cosmic frontiers, safeguarding the cause of universal peace and freedom.

Off to the Arms Race

(Detail) Supersizing the Superpower collage of appropriated images by Sally Edelstein

However, in 1957 when the Russians successfully launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite into space, we were shaken to the core. The very thought of Soviet technological supremacy in missile supremacy sent off a chain reaction of panic, ring fear levels and soaring defense spending. We would pay any price, bear any burden to fill any Missile gap.

Play Your Hunch

In the age of post war plenty, we had plenty to fear.

At a push of a button, a turn of a dial… Presto…it could all disappear if we didn’t defend them properly. It was critical to deter a nuclear war by keeping nuclear superiority. To live in peace, the cold war credo went we must have power.

Beat the Clock

( Detail) Supersizing the Superpower collage of appropriated images by Sally Edelstein

Like  contestants on the Game Show “Beat the Clock” we were thrust into an arms race with the Russians. By successfully launching a man made satellite into space, the Soviets had won the first lighting round and moved into the bonus stunts winning that challenge with the development of the ICBM.

Win Lose or Draw

Smugly the Soviets boasted: “Maybe next time will be your time to “Beat The Clock.”

Now like two contestants with fingers on the buzzer the first hot headed cold warrior to push the button- ding-ding-ding, would be “Winner Take All!” Of course in order to beat the clock we would first be playing “Break the Bank.”

Nuclear weapons both to protect and threaten became  the icons of the Cold War.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017.

In Kellyanne Conway’s alternative universe cold war housewives benefited  from a whole range of  home spy surveillance equipment like blenders, mixers, percolators and dishwashers all at her fingertips, all helping to turn a housewife into a first class cold war spy. (L) Vintage 1960s MAD Magazine cartoon Spy Vs Spy

From the Kellyanne Conway Cold War Kitchen Collection of spyware just right for around the house and around the clock surveillance. Perfect for that mid-century miss intent on keeping her eyes peeled for a Ruskie spy posing as the milkman.

Obama may have watched Trump by turning his microwave into a camera, but long before the advent of microwaves, the James Bond era cold war housewife could rely on a whole range of small kitchen appliances to not only make her cooking faster, easier, and cleaner, but provide much-needed surveillance of cheating husbands, misbehaving children or the rogue KGB neighbor snooping around the kaffee klatch.

At least in the Kellyanne Conway alternative universe.

I Spy

1960’s spy surveillance equipment. (L) A CIA camera hidden in a shoe heel and a housewife turned spy “basting” her roast in her wall oven installed with a hidden surveillance device, from the Kellyanne Conway Collection of Kitchen Spyware.

This was the golden age of spying and housewives weren’t exempt.

Mid century Mad Men with their three  martini lunches may have looked skeptically at that olive in their martinis ( a favorite bugging device) but they’d be smarter to pay attention to that wall oven in their suburban kitchen or that electric skillet.

Care for some surveillance with your sunny side eggs?

Uber secret agent 007 James Bond (L) and Life Magazine cover on Electronic Spying 1966

By the spy vs spy 1960’s our government had been electronically spying on its citizens for years. “Bugging is so shockingly widespread.” went an article in Life Magazine in 1966, “and so increasingly insidious that no one can be certain any longer that his home is his castle–free of intrusion.”

Technology allowed smaller and smaller eavesdropping devices, some even sugar cube sized we were told with astonishment. The CIA made use of them all- microphones in wristwatches and cuff-links, hidden transmitters in pens, key chains and cigarette lighters.

Why not an Oster blender with a tracking device that would also  transmit even a whisper from 35 feet away.

What cold war housewife wouldn’t want to turn into Agent 99?

Kellyanne Conway’s Cold War Childhood- Alternative Facts

It’s no wonder that Kellyanne got the idea of microwaving as spy surveillance. She learned it right at home.

The Avengers Diana Rigg played secret Agent Emma Peel

When little Kellyanne Fitzpatrick’s Mom wanted  to check in on her daughter she merely had to open her GE Electric Rotisserie and presto, a black and white photo of the little girls activities would  appear. The table top Rotisserie as accurate as the finest oven for cooking or surveillance. Just push the button…set the timer…and forget it.

Records all activity. Broiled meats turn out juicier…as juicy as the surveillance pictures you capture.

With the Presto Control Master a housewife could control her electric fry pan, griddle or skillet. And record every conversation from the hand held device. Vintage ad Presto Control Master

Surrounded by waffle irons with built-in cameras that monitor anyone from anywhere, percolators that transmit  highly sensitive information and the ever popular Presto Control Master that never forgets…because it records every conversation…Espionage was all around her.

Kellyanne’s Mom clearly imagined herself to be a secret agent like intelligent, stylish and assertive Emma Peel of the Avengers.

Kenner’s Easy Bake Oven in the original turquoise. Kellyanne most likely got the updated model available in avocado green.

When it came time for Christmas, was it any wonder then that when  little Kelly who had her heart set on a camera was delighted with that most wished for present – a Kenner Easy Bake Oven.

With the Easy Bake Oven Spyware she didn’t need a Polaroid Swinger Camera to take pictures. She knew it was not only first-rate for EZ cooking but could ingeniously, secretly monitor her playmates too.

(L) a 1965 dress based on a design for Avengers Emma Peel -intelligent, stylish and assertive. (R) KellyanneConay

An alternatives fact Avenger was born!

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Who’s Afraid of the Stork? asks this 1951 vintage ad for Lederle a Division of American Cyanamid Company. “The stork is now as tame as a household pet,” it boasts, explaining how safe childbirth has become thanks to new drugs.

Like today, a mid-century gal’s maternity cares were best placed in the hands of knowledgeable men. When it came to birthin’ babies,  a testosterone driven doctor and his pharmaceutical pals knew best.

In the cold war world of convenience, the idea of painful natural childbirth was a thing of the past.

When it came time for my own March 28th birth, my mid-century Mother  like millions of other pregnant gals, would never have dreamed of giving birth without the help of pain-eliminating, memory erasing -miracle drugs.

The American Way of Birth- (L) collage by Sally Edelstein (R) illustration of a baby’s birth from the pamphlet “The Story About You” 1966 American Medical Association

Every lady-in-waiting circa 1955 knew that they would have an easier time than other mothers before them. Having a baby in that push-button- age of jet propulsion was a snap! No Fuss No Muss! “This is going to be fun” – the baby experts cheered. “As of now, the whole business of having babies was taking on an exhilarating new atmosphere.”

A simple, take-it easy atmosphere; a modern atmosphere.

But Birthin’ Babies was serious business and my mother Betty made sure she was prepared for “Operation-Baby.”

If ever there was a time for optimism it was now.

The days of painful deliveries were as old as yesterday’s horse and buggy. Modern childbirth was a miracle of conveniences. This was the modern atomic age and the idea of an agonizing delivery was blown to smithereens.

Though there was some talk about “natural childbirth” promoted by French physician Dr Ferdinand Lamaze, for most gals that was a foreign concept. “The patient,” reasonable American doctors were quick to point out, “who was interested in ”participating in her own childbirth experience was probably infantile neurotic and downright delusional.”

A “progressive” neighbor had lent Mom a copy of the book, “Childbirth Without Fear” that explained the benefits of a natural, drug free childbirth. Not for my Mom. “I want my doctor putting me to sleep before I feel my first pain. That’s what I call “without fear” – to know nothing!”

In post war America, natural childbirth was almost un-American. (L) Vintage Magazine Ladies Home Journal 1948 women and children of Soviet Union (R) Illustration from “The Story About You” 1966 pamphlet by American Medical Association to help in assisting parents of children in grades 4,5,& 6 in explaining sex education

A Cold War Pregnancy

Betty considered natural childbirth downright dangerous, primitive and frankly un-American.

Maybe for some poor unfortunate Soviet woman shackled by communism, who had spent her pregnancy lifting great chunks of rubble and iron, laying bricks, hoisting timbers, swinging picks and sledge hammers who probably had to give birth in a potato field and then head back to her job in the factory, it was okay, but why would anyone go back to those pre-chloroform days?

The combination of drugs – one to deaden pain, the other an eraser of memory, promised to end the drudgery of childbirth. It was half the effort half the time.

“Designed for ease of living, it was a leisure giving convenience.”

But whose ease, whose convenience? Golf- enthusiast obstetricians welcomed it because it gave them more control over the screaming, laboring woman, and more control of teeing off on time. Mama has no knowledge of what occurs between the time she is given the injection and several hours later when its effect wears off. “And once you try it, Doctors smiled, “we think you’ll say “How did I ever manage without it?”

Vintage ad Upjohn for pain-free birth

 Post War Pharmaceuticals

Since Mom had no memory of my older brothers’ birth, the obstetrician gave her a booklet that described the miracle of birth: It was like magic, she thought-pull a baby out of your hat-presto!

In successful cases, the patient soon falls into a deep quiet sleep. When the patient wakes up the obstetrician is rewarded by hearing her ask: “Doctor, when am I going to have my baby?” The quickest way I know to prove that the child is already born is to guide the patients hand to her own abdomen. Puzzled she seeks for the familiar mountainous lump; when she finds it gone, the silliest happiest grin steals across her face.

 After all the Doctor reassures her, she is very likely to spend a half a century with her child, and missing the first few hours of their association is a very brief fragment of the whole. For her, the temporary separation from reality at such a time through the boon of safe analgesia and anesthesia, is a welcome goal. Certainly if you tell your teenage daughter 15 years hence that you had her with medicated childbirth, she could not care less!’

Moments to Remember

(R) Vintage Book “The Wonderful Story of How You Were Born” 1952 Doubleday by Sidonie Gruenberg illustrations by Hildegarde Woodward(L) Photo of minutes old Baby Life Magazine 1953

 My All American Mom had an all American delivery. Thoroughly up to date, she was thoroughly sedated, and fastidiously prepped for “the operation.”

Lying flat on her back on the surgical table, they strapped her feet in stirrups to make sure that she wasn’t going anywhere in case she changed her mind, while her wrists were securely tied to the sides of the table to prevent her from touching the sterile drapes when they were applied.

Naturally she was continually drugged. It was all within the bounds of the Geneva Convention, she was assured.

My very last meal while still in the womb, the one meant to carry me through my big break out to freedom was a healthy dose of -“I don’t know what I’d do without it – Demerol” and “I don’t remember nuthin’ bout birthin’ no babies – Scopolamine,” the preferred aperitif for the boomer baby.

And where is Dad in all this?

My father, like all the other fathers-to-be is nowhere near any of this.

Togetherness was terminated at the delivery door.

But unlike most of the other nervous, expectant fathers who were sent to the waiting room to pace and hand out cigars, my father retreated back home and went back to sleep. But that was okay because my mother was sleeping soundly herself.

Unlike today when a baby’s birth is Instagramed ’round the world, no one but me would remember my birth.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Hand on Dad

The Greatest Generation loses one more….

Memorial day this year takes on a different significance than other years for me.

This year as the number of WWII veterans continue to dwindle, another former G.I. of the Greatest Generation has recently died.

My dad.

Through the years I have shared with you countless stories of my mid-century suburban family many of them featuring my father. Though often tongue in cheek,  they were always from the heart.

Now I am heartbroken.

For many Memorial Day posts I fondly recalled my suburban childhood backyard barbecues when my dad would break out the Weber charcoal grill for the first Bar-B-Q of the season. A king size cigarette dangling from his lips, barbecue apron round his regulation Bermuda shorts, Dad’s grease-stained apron with its “Big Daddy” type splashed in lurid colors,  distinguished this ex GI as a commander-in-chief of the barbecue brigade.

Strategically wielding the Big Boy barbecue tongs my dad was ready for any barbecue maneuver.

This year the bag of Kingdford Briquettes remain unopened, the dented, metal, grill untouched.

As I did with my mother, I helped  my 96-year-old father on his final journey. For the past 6 weeks work ceased, emails remained unanswered, and my garden lay fallow, as I tended to something more important and fundamental.

I understood the symmetry that my parents gave me life and entrusted me with helping in transition towards ending their own, but emotionally the weight bore down on me.

Barely two weeks ago, that journey ended.

Befitting a once-upon-a-time-soldier, Dad received a military burial.

After  the countless stories I have shared with you, it seems only fitting that I share this final tribute that I wrote to my father, Marvin Edelstein.

My Tribute to My Father – May 15, 2017

An early Marathon runner, my father ran in the NYC Marathon several times. 1979

My father was a long distance runner and so it is fitting that his life ran as long as it did.

This lifelong marathon man chose to make his final journey in the same manner. The past two weeks had been a marathon for all of us, my brother Andy and I included, as we accompanied him on this last treacherous course, one filled with twists and turns, that we maneuvered with him, breathlessly   running up our own Heartbreak Hill more than a couple of times. But each step of the way when we thought we had no more stamina, my father persevered as he did in life valiantly, pushing through, often against all odds and with amazing tenacity.

And it was he who chose when to cross the finish line.

Like many of us, my father was a complex man, often filled with apparent contradictions.

A man who was decades ahead of his time in matters of gender equality, he turned our 1960’s Maxwell House Haggadah into a gender neutral reading for our Seders. He was a man who just this past January beamed with enormous pride at my participation in the Women’s March in Washington. Yet this was the same man who good-naturedly could still refer to women as dames and broads with not a PC care in the world and wasn’t shy about exclaiming that his granddaughter Jessie was “some good looking tomato.”

My father was a secular Jew who was somewhat suspect of the dogma of religion yet rose to be the president of our synagogue Nassau Community Temple where he regularly participated in Torah study classes, and whose favorite shower song was “Ein K’ Eloheinu,” his boisterous off-key voice bellowing out this Friday night closing hymn at the top of his lungs reverberating throughout the house.

This lifelong Republican, a county committeeman, who not only founded a local Republican club becoming their  president, working tirelessly for them, yet he  was in fact the first phone call I got the morning after this recent presidential election,  bemoaning Trump’s victory, his first words to me were: “I’m sitting Shiva.”

The son of a Damon Runyon-esque character if ever there was one, who dropped out of school in the 6th grade and whose reading was limited to the Daily Mirror, my father went on to law school and would often mentioned reading Proust in the sweltering jungles of New Guinea during the war…that is when he wasn’t chasing island girls!

A Twentieth Century Man

(L) A baby of the roaring twenties, (R) my father Marvin and his brother Sandy grew up in Astoria Queens, 1930’s

The year he was born 1921, the hit song was “Aint We Got Fun” and in retrospect that would be an apt description of my eternally upbeat, optimistic, fun-loving father.

His life spanned nearly a century.

Remarkable, considering that when my father was born in 1921 the population over 65 was only 4%. That he lived to 96 is amazing. That 95 ½ of those years were physically active, mentally engaged is downright astounding.

He loved history which he passed on to me because, well, he lived through so darn much of it.

This was a man who saw Charles Lindbergh welcomed home as a hero at the greatest ticker tape parade NYC had ever seen after Lucky Lindy’s historic flight to Paris. This little 6-year-old boy would himself grow to crisscross the Atlantic dozens of times with the casual ease allowed by jet planes in the many travels he enjoyed with my mother.

Born at the inception of radio and before talkies in the movies, he lived to see the computer age though despite our nudging, he sadly never took a ride on the internet highway though he  marveled indeed  at having face time with his granddaughter.

My father (R) at the University of Virginia 1941

FDR gave the commencement speech when my father graduated the University of Virginia and though not a New Dealer himself, my father was  very proud of the fact that the President of the United States,  that most magnificent orator, spoke so eloquently at his graduation.  Oh, how times have changed.

Greatest Generation

Corporal Marvin Edelstein 1943

Like most men of his generation he served in WWII, stationed  in New Guinea where as part of the Army Air Corps trained as a weatherman.

I recently came across a letter he wrote while in the service exactly 74 years ago in April 1943 that was published in his home town synagogue paper The Astoria Center of Israel Bulletin:

“Here is a letter from one of our boys,” it begins, “which we are happy to bring to your attention:

For the past few weeks,” my father’s letter  begins,”I have been receiving the Bulletin. Needless to say, it came at first as a great surprise – however, an extremely pleasant surprise. Now I find myself looking forward eagerly to the next issue. You have no conception how much this means to us who are so far from home. It is only now that I have begun to appreciate the phrase concerning ‘the ties that bind.’

While I was writing this, they delivered a package to me from the Ladies Guild. I can scarcely say much more than “Thank You, ladies.’ It is not merely the material contents of the box that is impressive- rather the hopes and prayers that one feels fills the package.

Being in the Army has given me a chance to fully consider and appreciate the life we all once knew and to which we will, we pray, shortly return. Your work of trying to fill in that gap certainly means a lot to us wherever we may be. We want things to be as we left them until we come back and you are helping to serve notice that they will be.

Let me thank you again and hasten to assure you that by Purim 1944 our contemporary Haman will have met the same fate as his predecessor.”

My father of course did return and began living out those post war possibilities that were promised to the returning vets.

Post War Promises

My family 1957

I would grow up living my parents post war dreams.

And nothing personified that dream more than his suburban home which he lived in for 62 years. That suburban dream that sprung up in a field of potatoes was their Promised Land that beckoned millions of post war pioneers including my parents.

Siblings, Sally (L) and her brother Andy at their new house 1955.

Last week Andy and I had the sad task of going to his house on Western Park Drive to pick out a suit for his burial.

As I stood forlornly in his bedroom closet, one I had been in countless times, I felt the enormous trajectory of his adult life, of life lived in this house. Standing in that place that late afternoon, entrusted with this somber duty,  I felt myself  transported back to 1955 when  a 30 something ex GI and his wife pregnant with me, a 2-year-old little boy  in tow,  first looked at this brand new house that would be their home for the rest of their lives.

(L) Deposit for their new house a whopping $10 down!

Like thousands of other young married apartment dwellers, they began house hunting as their family expanded. Every weekend they’d trudge out to LI. Just as all the houses from the development seemed to look the same so the other house hunting couple all seemed to mirror their experience.

Now as I stood inside that large walk in closet he had viewed decades earlier, I imagined the thrill  this young man who had shared a small Astoria apartment bedroom with his younger brother Sandy must have experienced with the prospect of a large master bedroom and the luxury of a genuine walk in closet.

Settling into their new suburban house, my father, baby sally and brother Andy 1955

Walking from room to room, I could imagine my mother  mentally installing furniture and decorating its rooms. This  new house on Western Park Drive that would the beginning of the fulfillment of those post war dreams allowing them to envision the life they would lead with their family they were just beginning.

Now this same closet that spanned 62 years that held my Dads worsted wool suits and polyester leisure suits, EZ care wash and wear and velour running suits, was looked through for the last time as  his grown children were tasked with picking out one last, final suit.

It’s So Nice To Have A Man Around the House

The classic Handymans Book 1957

My father took to suburban living with a zeal.

It was a time of the do-it-yourselfer craze and he dug right in. My father willed himself to be handy around the house. This former apartment dwelling fellow taught himself to a home owner.

The pinnacle of that was the suburban finished basement that mid-century homage to family fun and good modern living. So in the mid-1960’s my devoted dad took on the challenge.

Every night after dinner and on weekends he’d descend to the unfinished basement busying himself in this project building a frame where he would attach the faux knotty pine paneling, the waft of the toxic glue he used to install the tiles rising to the rest of the house. It was a testament to his stick to-it-tiveness and tenacity to accomplish something he had never done before. This willingness to try new things out of his comfort zone extended to many areas in his life.

This same house that Andy and I were raised in took on another chapter with the addition of my niece and nephew Jessie and Sam filling it with laughter and light. Thus began our nearly 2 decades long Sunday ritual of visiting our parents just as we had done with our own grandparents for decades. The light that Jessie and Sam brought into my father’s life was reflected in the sheer glow he emanated at the sight of them.

It was hard to miss. And now, sadly, I will….

Last Chapter

Marvin Edelstein 2012

And then there was this last chapter that began for my father in his late 80’s.

This man, who had never lived alone, had to carve out a life for himself when my dear mother passed away. Always the anchor of the family, without my mother he felt adrift, but his tenacity and positive outlook continued to pay off. He immediately signed up for college courses and joined a gym.

I was always amused that my father,  a man of his times who’s previous culinary skills involved scrambling eggs and salami and perhaps tossing a manly Caesar salad, whose only forays into food shopping might have been to drive through a Dairy Barn for a quart of milk, now found himself fascinated with supermarkets and delighting in his weekly strolls through farmers markets. Until 4 months ago my father still cooked for himself.

The Age of Mad Man

vintage illustration Fun With Dick and Jane 1951

My father could be imperfect. Like all of us he had his flaws.

A deeply sentimental man he was the product of a time and a generation that taught men to withhold their feelings and keep a stiff upper lip, to keep your own counsel. A master toastmaster with others he could in fact be short on words at home. But his devoted love of family, commitment and loyalty were values instilled in us without words being necessary gleaned  by example, and it was burnished deeply in my own soul.

In the last few months and weeks of his life as he became physically frail, he felt deeply betrayed by his body, but never once would he worry he would be left alone. As his once sharp and quick-witted mind began to deteriorate till that mind had all but disappeared what was left was his pure essence… of sweetness and gentleness. And it allowed he and I to connect in a way that in other times had sometimes eluded us.

Wherever his mind went I followed happily, without reserve or judgement.

A once clever, intelligent man’s mind was ravaged but what was left was his inner goodness, his true self distilled to its purest form of unadulterated sweetness and love. His adoring, loving gazes and endearing smiles are forever etched in my heart, knowing I was connecting with the best of him.

As he got the best of me.

When I was in second grade we were asked to write a piece about our fathers. The title of my paper  was “My Daddy Fixes Everything.” Not unlike today, spelling was not my forte so I naturally spelled it Fises with an S instead of an X and that phrase clearly tickled him as he would recite that line My Daddy Fises Everything,  for decades, always with a smile

In a child’s mind my daddy could fix anything. Wielding a tube of Duco cement he could miraculously repair a broken doll, a busted toy truck, a cracked, beloved serving dish.

But alas he is not here now, but I fear even if he were, he could not fis my broken heart.

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 © Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

I confess. I rarely talk on the phone.

Some might even call me a phone-a-phobe. When it comes to telephone exchanges I rarely make a connection.  Once fun, a phone call now feels like, well, a nuisance. In an age of texting, email, and Skype …why phone?

But there was one phone number that for decades I dialed on a daily basis

A few months ago, I started to call my father as I did every day, my fingers automatically dialing with ease that familiar number. I had just finished dialing IV3- **** as I have done the entirety of my life, when there was the sinking realization that the time might soon be approaching when I will never dial these numbers again.

Now that my parents are both gone, that time indeed has come.

A Long Extension Cord

Vintage greeting cards over the years often featured telephones

That telephone number followed the trajectory of my life and is as tangled as a coiled phone cord with memories.

It is the first phone number I ever learned and I have dialed it on a rotary phone, a pay phone, push buttons and keypads. I have called that number homesick from summer camp and hung over from college.

It was the number I called to have my mother pick me up from grade school when I fell from the monkey bars and the number I called to speak to her home aides about her declining care. I dialed it heartbroken from some romance and heart full with my first book contract. A lifetime of birth announcements, deaths, tears and joys were shared on that line.

Call Waiting

Vintage Bell Telephone ad 1956

Now that number is rendered useless, a memory without function.

I belonged to that rare club of adult children whose parents didn’t join the flock of retirees who headed south to Florida or enjoyed senior living in a community residence. They  still lived in the original mid-century suburban home of my childhood, retaining the same phone number for over half a century.

Sure the phone itself morphed from basic black to avocado green, from rotary to touch tone to remote but the number was as constant in my life as my parents were.

Sorry, Wrong Number

The telephone company offered a free booklet to their customers to record their many phone numbers. It was simply known as “The Blue Book.”

The truth is it was one of only few phone number I still retained

I admit I don’t know my brother’s phone number. Or my cousins or most of my friends for that matter.

I’m not bad with numbers. Trust me.

Number, Please, Number Please!

My mind is overloaded, with a numbingly long list of passwords, an endless stream of digits and letters and words, the sequences shifting and shuffling with regularity crowding out any more numerical data. In this crowded mess, contemporary phone numbers can’t compete. Besides, pre-programmed numbers on my smart phone make it unnecessary.

But one number remains unaltered, comfortably sharing space in this cloud of ever-changing digital numbers. My childhood phone number

And for good reason. The longest running sequence of numbers in my head has been on active duty for 62 years and imprinted in my DNA for nearly as long. And now it is time to  decommission it.

Until a friend gently reminded me that some new family might indeed inherit the phone number, it had never occurred to me. As if it were a baseball jersey of a great player, I just assumed they would retire the number.

Remembrances of Telephone Calls Past

Vintage Bell Telephone Ad

I first learned that phone number in the summer of 1960.

Headed to kindergarten that fall, my parents felt it essential I know my home phone number. All the women’s magazines that year made it clear this was essential information for any school age child to know. Conventional cold war wisdom went that in case of a nuclear attack, schoolchildren of all ages should be able to phone home to inform their parents of their safety.

*Note:Learning my phone number would prove to be a moot point that year, as schoolchildren were issued plastic ID dog tags with our pictures and phone numbers on the back that we were instructed to wear at all times

Telephone Training

(L) Part of the Bonnie Book series for children was Joan on The Telephone published 1955 (R) 1952 Toy telephone from the Gong Bell Manufacturer a toy company from my parents generation that made phones of metal. When the dial is turned, the striker vibrates between bells.

Telephone training had begun for me as a toddler. I had already mastered the all important rotary dial thanks to the toys and books that came to the mid-century tech challenged tots aid.

Learning how to use a Rotary Dial. From Bell Telephone System Instruction Booklet for grade school children “The Telephone and How We Use It.” Published in 1950 they were still using it through the 60’s.

Though younger cousins would benefit from the tutelage of  Fisher Price’s Chatter Phone, that classic plastic pull toy telephone  with its smiling face and rolling eyes, it appeared too late for me. I would benefit from an assortment of plastic and metal phones that rang and clang when the rotary dial was turned properly. Some even came equipped with a hidden recording bleeping “Number Please, Number please!”

The toys were not only educational but made phoning fun.

Which was the point.

AT&T made sure Mr. And Mrs. America knew that telephoning was a good time for all.  Far from the future burden it might become, mid-century phoning was darn fun!   “Routine gets a poke in the ribs; the day gets an unexpected sparkle.” the copy read in one 1958 ad. “So dust off your morning, pick up the phone, and just for fun call someone.”

Frequent telephone breaks led to a happier day. Especially for the housewife.

“Try it today when the dishes are done, beds made, clothes in the washer. You’ve earned a break. So relax a little and pick up the telephone. Enjoy a cheerful visit with a friend or loved one.” Vintage ad Bell Telephone 1958 Part of their “It’s Fun to Phone” campaign

Ma Bell wanted all her children to use the phone…and use it often. AT&T ran series of advertisements touting “It’s Fun To Phone”  rhapsodizing on the sheer enjoyment of phoning, taking telephone breaks and the connections with family and friends near and especially far away.

There’s a lot of pleasure in that happy impulse.

Take right now for instance. Isn’t there someone you’d like to call? And someone who would like to hear from you? A friend?Brother or sister? Mother or Dad?

There’s always news to share. And fum in the sharing at both ends of the line.

So don’t let friendships lag when it’s so easy to keep in touch. day and night, in town or out-of-town, you are never far away by telephone.

Phone Exchange – A Connection to the Past

Using Phone Exchange with Dial Phone. From Bell Telephone System Instruction Booklet for grade school children ” The Telephone and How We Use It” Published in 1950 they were still using it through the 60’s.

Now when it came time to familiarize myself with my phone number I was prepared.

Lucky for me I had learned how to count all the way up to 10 but more importantly I could recite my ABC’s. That part was crucial in learning my phone number because of alphanumeric phone exchanges.

Today that may seem as foreign as a rotary phone.

Long before Sesame Street helped children learn words and letters, alphanumeric phone exchanges helped with spelling and even vocabulary.

A concept that may seem as foreign today as a rotary phone, phone exchanges were simple devices to help remember a phone number.

Phone subscribers were given a unique 5 digit number. They were preceded by two digit identification of your geographic location. AT&T gave out specific words to identify the two letter codes.

(L) This Classics Illustrated Comic from 1964 featured an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s classic Ivanhoe, also immortalized in my phone exchange making it a favorite comic. (R) By 1960 we had ditched our old black fashioned phone for a Tempo Turquoise model in Mom’s bedroom and a canary yellow wall phone in the kitchen.

Phone exchanges were distinctive and even romantic.

There was a literary charm to the numbers like NIghtingale, or  KNickerbocker, but none more so than my very own exchange – IVanhoe. Immortalized in the classic Sir Walter Scott Novel of the same name, the exchange conjured up the romantic world of kings and knights of long ago.

Sure Long Island suburbs had its sophisticated  PErshing  and EDgewood exchanges, but it was in the city that romance abounded with its TRafalgar, RHinelander and ALgonquin. The exchanges are long gone  but the mnemonic names still linger.

Phone Exchanges…. Lost Connections

Vintage greeting card

Exchanges told you something about the neighborhood you were dialing.

I would always know MOnument 2 meant my grandmother Sadie in her hi-rise in Manhattan, and  RAvenswood 8 my other grandmother across the bridge in Astoria, Queens.

Just as my urban dwelling Great Aunts and Uncles were all distinct so  of course were their exchanges. If we wanted to dial up my Uncle Harry who lived a stone’s throw from the Museum of Natural History it was ENdicott 2 while my three bachelorette Aunts further uptown on Central Park West were SChulyer 7.

We would never confuse my East Side Ladies Who Lunch Great Aunt Pearl with her grand limestone building  and her  ATwater 9 exchange  with her beatnik daughter’s lilting  SPring 7, who dwelt  in a 5 story walk up on eighth street down in  Greenwich Village.

Exchanges gave a sense of history too. If you wanted a ticket to catch Mary Martin in Broadway’s Sound of Music, you would dial the theater box office whose exchange likely began with  LOngacre which was the name  given to the triangular path of land at 42 Street and Broadway before it became Times Square.

Connections Lost and Found

Phone exchanges became extinct by the 1970’s but they were a way to connect with my past. It still is.

By the end of the decade phone systems began switching to all number calling which didn’t rely on old telephone exchanges.

Though my IVanhoe 3  exchange was eventually changed to boring 483, the phone number would forever be IV3 to me.

Phone exchanges are long gone but they remain a connection to my past that is not lost.

Copyright (©) 20017 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

A summer staple at my 1960’s family barbecues was the ritual hot dog competition not in competitive eating but dissecting who made the best toothsome well turned frank.

The mouth-watering aroma of grilling franks wafting through the suburban air sparked the inevitable debate about who made the best hot dog.

There was fierce loyalty and intense competition.

A Hot Dog Makes Them Love Control!
Vintage advertisements (L) Del Monte Catsup 1961 (R) Gleam Toothpaste 1950s

The faithful kosher deli coalition whose Hebrew National dogs were grilled flat on a gas griddle to a crispy puckering finish, scoffed at the sacrilege of the  “dirty water dogs” languishing in a warm water bath sold by the city street vendors, whose devotees swore by the steamed Sabretts, heaped high with rich day-glo orange-colored sweet-tart onion sauce.

Loyalists to N.Y.C.’s  West Side Gray’s Papaya formed an unlikely alliance with their East Side rival Papaya King, both of which thought it blasphemous to  wash down a frank with anything but papaya juice, certainly never an orange drink, even if the frank dressed with mustard relish and nestled in a buttered toasted bun was “Good…like Nediks!”

For some the pontificating took on the seriousness of a rabbinic argument, though in actuality it more closely resembled a bunch of kids arguing over which were the best baseball cards, Topps in the nickel wax pack  or Bazookas cut from panels on the gum boxes, and like both discourses, no one ever won the dispute.

But on one point they agreed.

Vintage Photo Nathans Hot Dog Stand, Coney Island, NY

No one dared tamper with that most sacrosanct of hot dogs the one consumed on Coney Island on Surf and Stillwell Avenues – Nathans.

It’s the Wurst

 With the dexterity and skills of a fencer, Dad nimbly poked and prodded the franks on the grill. Normally the only dogs to sizzle on our Weber were those approved by a Higher Authority, Hebrew National, but as a surprise my grandfather had brought us cartons of gen-u-ine New York Yankee- approved-Stahl Meyer hot dogs direct from their Ridgewood Queens factory.

The boxes of pork and beef frankfurters were more than likely a token of thanks to my pawnbroker grandfather from a Stahl Meyer delivery truck driver with a penchant for poker who had pawned his Timex for the umpteenth time.To show his appreciation for my grandfathers leniency, he had made an unscheduled “delivery” to Edelstein Brothers Pawnshop on his regular route supplying dogs to Yankee stadium

The very mention of a Stahl Meyer hot dog brought boyish grins across generations of Dodger and Giants fans, instantly transporting my curmudgeon great Uncles and their broad beamed sons from the comfort of their webbed aluminum lawn chairs to the hard, gray painted, wood slatted seats of the bleachers of the old Polo Grounds and Ebbitt’s Field.

Even those observant Jews like my Great Uncle Leo who would never dream of eating a hot dog that wasn’t kosher, crossed a sacred boundary with ease at a baseball game.

Like eating at a Chinese Restaurant, age-old prohibitions were suspended for the day, as he willingly succumbed to the enticing aroma of a steamy Stahl Meyer dog fished out of rapidly cooling water by vendors dressed in white lugging around iron trays shouting “They’re skinless and boneless and harmless  and homeless”  as they bounded up and down the narrow aisles.

Not everyone was so enthralled.

For some members of my family any hot dog that wasn’t a kosher Hebrew
National, might well have been the same as barbecuing bacon.

As Dad casually nudged the plump Hebrew Nationals to one side of the grill, my  great Aunt Rena watched like a hawk making certain that a rogue Stahl Meyer frank did not accidentally defect over to the other side of the barbecue. It wasn’t just that these franks were not sanctified by rabbinic law, no it was far worse.

These dogs had Deutschland written all over them.

As if the factory was on the Rhine and not Ridgewood Queens, Aunt Rena shuddered at the thought of some former Bund Deutscher Madel blue-eyed blonde, meat-packing Fräulein fondling the Fuher’s frankfurters in their natural casings, while lustily humming the Nazi anthem “Horst Wessel song.”

Vintage Ad (L) Skinless Franks 1948 (R) Vintage Saturday Evening Post Cover 7/31/43 illustration Kenneth Stuart

Ridgewood, where the hot dogs were manufactured was a notoriously German neighborhood.

Not surprisingly, Aunt Rena was not the only family member who was convinced its many multi family row houses built-in the 1920s by Germans for Germans , brick by golden-colored Kreischer brick, was still populated by men in brown shirts, black Jack boots and wide Sam Browne Belts, rank and file members of the German American Volksbund who 25 years earlier, believed in Nazi power and strength to conqueror the world who still refused to embrace Aus der traum.

As the Stahl Meyer dogs rolled perilously close to the Hebrew Nationals, a shiver of terror went through some of my relatives, as if Joseph Goebbels himself had cheerfully stuffed those plump terra-cotta tubes with not only pork and spices, but a hefty serving of Nazi propaganda for good measure.

When it came to Germany, a wall had already been built by my family, beating the Russians by a full decade.

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The many voices of the late, great June Foray

June Foray’s memorable voice was the sound of my cold war childhood.

Not only was hers the voice I heard when I pulled the string on my Chatty Cathy doll, a childish sweet voice saying “Let’s play house” but she was also the pre-feminist melodramatic voice of that perennially distressed damsel Nell Fenwick the long-suffering girl friend of that Saturday morning TV staple Dudley Do Right, the lantern-jawed Canadian Mountie.

June Foray played both sides of the cold war in that classic cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle, voicing both Rocky and the “Russian” spy Natasha

Disney, Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera could all claim June’s distinctive voice in countless roles, but it was the high-pitched tone of Rocky the plucky flying squirrel with the broad smile, one half of that fearless duo out to save Western civilization, and the throaty Eastern European rasp of that sinister spy Natasha out to sabotage all things American, that were my favorites.

Without taking sides June Foray played both sides of the cold war in that classic cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Rocky and Friends provided years of entertainment for boomer kids trying to shake the duck and cover reality of their lives. The shows constant barrage of cultural references spoke to the paranoia of mid-century Americans.

Hokey smoke, what would my cold war childhood be without Rocket J. Squirrel and his irascible companion Bullwinkle J. Moose rescuing  the American Way of Life on a weekly basis from the clutches of the evil empire of Pottsylvania by defeating the wicked schemes of Mr. Big and his accomplices in crime that hapless duo of Slavic spies Boris Badenov  and Natasha Fatalay.

For better or worse the cold war never seem to defrost in Rocky’s home town of Frost Bite Falls, Minnesota, providing years of entertainment  for boomer kids trying to shake the duck and cover reality of their lives. Like MAD Magazine, Rocky and Bullwinkle with their irreverent satire, helped kids navigate through a pretty perilous world, as they entered the uncertainty of a new cold war decade, the 1960’s.

The Big Chill

Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev vowed he would “bury us!”

The last year of the 1950’s was a chilly time for the cold war.

The arms race and the space race were going full throttle between the two Superpowers. Still stinging from Sputnik and trying to play catch up with the Russians, Americans were spooked when Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev boasted of Soviet military supremacy.  At home Congressmen groused about the growing dangers of a gaping missile gap, including a young man with his eye on the presidency, the senator from Massachusetts John Kennedy.

In back yards from coast to coast Americans were busy building home fallout shelters after Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb, commented that spring that: “it was necessary to provide every person in the U.S. with a shelter.”

There wasn’t much to laugh at.

Rocky and His Friends 1959

The formula for “Rocky and His Friends” would rarely change even as the name of the show itself changed – Rocky the plucky squirrel teamed up with the dim-witted but good-hearted partner Bullwinkle,  a duo of fearless adventurers who wandered the globe saving western civilization, stumbling into one absurd situation after another while battling”Russian” spies.

In the fall of 1959, against the backdrop of the cold war and the end of the Eisenhower years the cold war came to the cartoons in the form of “Rocky and His Friends.”

Set the Waybac Machine for Thursday, November 19, 1959.

It’s 5:30, mom’s meatloaf was tucked in the oven nearly ready for our 6pm dinner. With a half hour free before supper my brother and I were glued to the TV. We quickly turned the dial on our Admiral TV to ABC tuning in to the premier of a new animated show, “Rocky and His Friends,” the latest offering from animator Jay Ward.

Crusader Rabbit was televisions first cartoon character produced for the new medium airing in 1950

Like most kids, I had been a fan of Ward’s first creation “Crusader Rabbit,” which was the first ever animated cartoon created especially for television.

In the earliest days of TV, cartoons for the kiddies were purchased from motion picture overstock. Saturday matinée cartoons from my movie going parents’ generation would find a new home in TV audiences. Krazy Kat clawed her way to TV, Out of the Inkwell’s  Koko the Clown invited laughter and a WWII  Bugs Bunny hopped over to the new medium.

But with the appearance of Crusader Rabbit and his sidekick “Rags” the Tiger, TV cartoons were born.

First appearing in 1950 this do-good duo were a precursor to Rocky and Bullwinkle, embarking on adventures to exotic locale, stumbling into one absurd situation after another, always foiled by an evil character  named Dudley Night Shade, an early incarnation of Snidley Whiplash. The show, composed of cliffhanger shorts that emulated early radio series, was a formula Rocky would continue.

By 1959 when ads for the debut  of the flying squirrel who sported a pilots helmet and his dimwitted but brave moose sidekick appeared, two  pawed, four-footed anthropomorphic cartoon creatures crusading for good was old hat to me.

Saturday morning TV villains had little chance whenever Hanna-Barbera’s spunky pooch Reddy and his feline partner Ruff were around. And Television already had a talking flying rodent named Mighty Mouse who was pretty good at saving the day. And he could sing to boot.

But Now Here’s Something You’ll Really Like

But Rocky and Bullwinkle offered something none of the others did.  What made the show different was its sly and not so sly cultural references to the cold war.

That very first episode I watched entitled Jet Fuel Formula made clear its cold war allusions.  The themes of the arms race, the space race, international technological competition, and espionage mirrored the cold war paranoia between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.  perfectly. And five  years before Dr Strangelove, Jet Fuel Formula was satirizing the American Military and government.

Suddenly the cold war was a barrel of laughs.

Like Boris, Natasha takes orders from the nation’s leader Fearless Leader and rarely seen Mr Big. Boris’s accomplice Natasha’s main catch phrase is referring everyone as “dollink” spoken with her thick Pottsylvania accent courtesy of June Foray. No helpless heroine, Natasha was clearly the smarter of the two constantly pointing out Boris’s flaws to his plans and expressing contempt for his bungling failures. Inevitably Boris would shout at her “SHARRUP YOU MOUTH” when his schemes failed.

Who wouldn’t laugh at those Soviet-stand ins Boris and Natasha, a couple of no good-niks. Fiendish, but always inept these two cold war spies from Eastern Europe were forever scheming to control the world, topple its economy  and destroy the American Way of life.

It was like laughing at Khrushchev himself.

Fearless Leader was the dictator of Pottsylvania and employer of the inept spies and could be found in his underground hideout “Central Control.” But he did answer to one man, the small Mr. Big.

These were not the cartoon staple of villains decked out in top hats and capes with twirling handle bar mustaches but instead Slavic speaking buffoons.

Boris Badenov (Long on Bad)  the pasty white, pencil mustached, black hatted villain and his seductive, comely side kick Natasha Fataly (Long for Fatal)  were spies for the sinister fictional nation of Pottsylvania,  a closed repressive nation populated entirely by spies, secret agents, and saboteurs. Ruled by Fearless Leader a  man sporting a monocle and German cross with an improbable German accent, fed my fear of Nazis and Communists in one clean swoop.

Because Truth, Justice and the American Way always prevailed, the “Soviet’s” misdeeds were continually thwarted by Rocky and Bullwinkle. In the end Boris and Natasha always failed in their missions to bring America to its knees.

In Frost Bite Falls at least, we were winning the cold war.

And that my friends, is a true Fractured Fairy Tale!

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

You don’t have to tour a battlefield to understand the Civil War. Look at today’s headlines. We’re still fighting the same issues that fueled the Civil War. The author and her brother at Gettysburg during the Centennial 1963

My Mad Men era childhood vacations were often spent visiting the past.

On weekends and school holidays I traipsed through countless creaky old historical houses of men who helped make America great, curiously observed colonial cobblers and blacksmiths hard at work and listened attentively to genteel suburbanites dressed in period costumes explain history.

Through the years I saw more than my share of the thousands of granite, bronze and marble monuments and statues that dotted the American landscape that helped shape popular perspectives of the past.

Loaded with assumptions and silences, the often sanitized, selective, historical narrative presented at all these places permeated the country, the classroom, and historic sites during mid-century America.

When it came to American history no place was loaded with more excitement or education than my visits to Gettysburg Pennsylvania. Certainly no National Park offered more bang for your buck per square foot when it came to monuments and statues  honoring our soldiers and generals. And too, no place had a more romanticized cast swept over it than Gettysburg did during the Centennial of the Civil War celebration.

Centennial Fever

Civil War Centennial postcard, top and Civil War Trading Card

In 1961 Americans caught Centennial fever and so did my family. Even as Americans raced forward into the New Frontier, we took time out to travel back and celebrate our past.

I Wish I Were In Dixie

States rights had a very special meaning in 1863 and 1963. Celebrating the historic moment when the southern states seceded from the Union dove tailed nicely for segregationists. What better way to encourage  opposition to court ordered public schools desegregation and black civil rights activism than to remind southerners of their ancestor’s uncompromising resistance to federal tyranny and unlawful assaults on southern institutions. Top illustration from vintage School Book “This is America’s Story” 1963. Governor George Wallace blocking the entrance of black students to University of Alabama 1963

For southerners, the 100th anniversary of the Civil War was a chance to unfurl the Confederate battle flags, wax poetically over the heroism of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and romanticize the resistance to Federal power.

Southern Hospitality. Part of the Southern myth making was the notion that many black slaves had been loyal to the pro slavery Confederacy, therefore happily accepted Jim Crow laws.

The “Lost Cause” was still the dominant story, and in this Gone with the Wind version, the southern gentlemen fought valiantly against a stronger (and less scrupulous) northern army and their noble aim was to protect states’ rights and a gracious way of life. Slaves were portrayed as contented and loyal, if discussed at all.

That peculiar institution had seamlessly been replaced by Jim Crow.

Reunited and It Feels So Good

1913 Sheet Music emphasized the attempts at National reconciliation between the North and South.

The War that had once been bitterly referred to as “The War of Rebellion” or the “War of Yankee Aggression” had for several generations now been firmly re-branded as the more friendly sounding “War Between Brothers.”

In this more sentimental reconciliatory light of Brother Against Brother, important lessons could be taught about the common bonds of bravery and patriotism on both sides. Treason was barely uttered.  Schoolbooks taught us that the War Between the State’s struggle had allowed the nation to emerge into “the bright sunshine of freedom.”

Of course that sunshine still did not shine for all.

The Selling of The Civil War

Color me happy. Vintage Coloring Book on American History portrayed a happy slave picking cotton opposite a noble and righteous General Robert E. Lee

Reconciliation sold a lot better than racial recrimination and the Civil War Centennial was a hot commodity in the early 1960’s.

Books and toys flooded the market, public service announcements abounded and every newspaper and magazine was flooded with pictures and commemorative stories about the Civil War.

Authentic Action figures to play out your best Gettysburg battle. The real battle was far from fun and games it was bloody and grim. Bottom photo Mathew Brady

Seated in the comfort of your Laz-E Boy recliner you could listen to the stirring history of the War Between the States told in music, sounds and photos and illustration thanks to Columbia Records that produced a special linen bound Centennial collectors’ album. For the mere price of $1.97 you could find yourself “Whistling Dixie” in the midst of a bloody battlefield at Chancellorsville.

Civil War News Bubble Gum Trading Cards portrayed Civil War scenes and could be purchased at your local candy store

Kiddies could ditch their baseball cards and collect a set of Civil War bubble gum trading cards memorializing the great war. Who wanted Mickey Mantle when you could have Ulysses S. Grant?

Gettysburg

Tourism to visit Civil War landmarks was booming, really heating up in the summer. Battlefields replaced beaches as part of easy breezy summer living. No mid-century vacation was complete without a visit to a Civil War battlefield.

Since Gettysburg was ground zero for Civil War Centennial remembrance, early on Monday July 1, my family loaded up our Plymouth and headed down to Gettysburg that summer of 1963 in time for the 100th anniversary of that conflicts  most celebrated and bloodiest battle.

Arriving in Gettysburg on the very day the two armies met and the great battle began, the town was exploding with tourists.

Official Silver Medal Gettysburg Centennial 1963 (L) Souvenir Civil War cup(R)

The Civil War was packaged in easy to understand stories and fun activities.

Pageants, re-enactments and parades filled the week. Souvenirs abounded. I could buy “real” civil war bullets for 30 cents,  stock up on Confederate money which to my disappointment would do me no good on purchasing all  these goodies, all while snacking greedily on pecans purchased at a Stuckeys built on the battlefield where the second day of fighting raged at Peach Orchard, site of a famous civil war battle.

I’m Just Saying

Vintage Brochure to visit Gettysburg

The local shops displayed banners paying tribute to the Blue and Grey Americans “all who were fighting for a just cause they believed in.”

Odes to the “Brothers War” was everywhere to be seen.

Every restaurant place mat had a civil war theme and every packet of Dixie Crystal sugar on the table told a Civil War story on the back. In a nod to Dixie, hominy grits migrated above the Mason Dixon lines and were served at every breakfast, “to make our Dixiecrats feel at home since they didn’t receive such a warm welcome last time.”

Robert E. Lee Trading Card. A series of trading cards produced during the Civil war Centennial could be purchased at your local candy store. Along with your bubble gum you could chew over the romanticized version of the Civil War. General Robert E. Lee, was now recast an honorable man who chose loyalty to VA over command of the Union Army. That he fought bravely to protect the Confederate constitution that enshrined the institution of Negro slavery went unsaid.

Even the local bank commissioned a majestic painting of Generals Meade and Lee standing together united, by conviction. They handed out keepsake postcards of the painting and I eagerly grabbed a few.

“General Lee,” the postcards said was not only “universally revered by friend and foe alike” but “also “a symbol of the true spirit of America. Talented, generous devoted to duty…he belongs to all of us.”

Dad who had spent 6 years at school in Charlottesville, VA couldn’t agree more. Lee was a bone fide American hero.

Make Believe

A visit to Fantasyland, an amusement park located on the edge of the battlefield in the shadow of the Soldiers National Cemetery would have to wait for another another time. The park,  where you were greeted by a 23 foot tall Mother Goose,  complete with magic castles, enchanted forests, man-made lakes, and a chance to have your picture taken with Santa, Red Riding Hood or a real Fairy Princess was the stuff of great make-believe. But I wasn’t disappointed.

The selling of the Civil War was fantasy enough.

Pickett’s Charge- Painting from Gettysburg Museum of History

Souvenirs notwithstanding, the climax of the three-day battle Centennial celebration was on that Wednesday. On July 3 the 100th anniversary of Pickett’s Charge, that bold attack against the Union Army that was a turning point for the war, was dramatically re-created.

At precisely high noon, the silence of the field of grass and gray boulders was filled with shrieks and smoke as 15,000 uniformed Johnny Rebs charged across the field against the Union forces on Cemetary Ridge. A sound system produced cannon and musket fire and a smoke screen produced smoke. With eyes stinging you felt like you were in the heat of battle.

Civil War re-enactors at the Gettysburg Centennial Celebration. Photo courtesy Gettysburg Museum

Unlike in  1863 when the brave charge failed,  with ¾ of the attackers killed or wounded, in 1963 the event concluded with Union soldiers greeting Confederates with firm and friendly handshakes. Finally those in gray and those in blue grasped hands, and all boisterously sang The Star Spangled Banner and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Smoke aside, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

It was the perfect ending to an American story.

Just as many southern survivors of the war and their descendants worked hard to make Black Americans and their story disappear, the state monuments they erected continued their work, glorifying the Southern Cause. When folks expressed concern about the possible upset at the Centennial by African-Americans protesting segregation, Karl Betts, a member of the Centennial commission reassured folks.  “A lot of fine Negro people, he told a journalist from the Nation, “loved life as it was in the Old South.” (L) Mississippi Monument at Gettysburg. (R) The savages of slavery

Noticeably absent in that very white field of grey and blue was the color Black. The Centennial was pretty much an all-white affair. African-Americans avoided the battlefield uninterested in monuments celebrating white supremacy and the Confederacy cause, or in mingling with pasty-faced tourists with their Brownie Hawkeyes, waving souvenir Confederate flags.

If the goal of the Centennial was “keeping peace through understanding” some things were clearly misunderstood.

 American United

Vintage Textbook Illustration “This is America’s Story” 1963.

The Centennial had been planned in the cold war climate of the late 1950’s and the Civil War would be hi-jacked for the current  war between democracy and Communism, painting American democracy in the best light.   The Commission determined that the Civil War Centennial would be a great opportunity for Americans to “highlight our commitment to freedom and liberty.”

Family Feud

1913 Great Reunion at the Gettysburg Jubilee celebration . Photo courtesy Library of Congress

Fifty years earlier at the Jubilee celebration in 1913, the fiftieth anniversary of Gettysburg was a neatly packaged festival of North South reconciliation that had begun in the late 19th century. The celebration was also a segregated affair in which the only role for African-Americans was distributing blankets to the white veterans of what President Wilson a segregationist called “a quarrel forgotten.”

Now this “Quarrel” would be remembered as simply a family feud, brother against brother, the horrors of slavery long forgotten.

One Nation Under God

For school children the Centennial was to be an important history lesson in democracy. “Children will will gain a new conception of the meaning of their priceless heritage of human citizenship.”

In 1960, a year before the centennial, President Eisenhower remarked at the death of the last Civil War soldier: “…the wounds of the deep and bitter dispute which once divided our nation have long since healed and a united America in a divided world now holds up on a larger canvas the cherished traditions of liberty and justice for all.”

The war had been permanently rebranded in national memory as the moment when the US had been reunited and the moral leader of the Free World had been born. The Civil War was one part of American Exceptionalism.

Liberty and Justice For All

Vintage ad Sinclair Oil 1963 included a statement from Civil War historian Bruce Catton

Typical of Centennial  ads at the time that extolled patriotism, Gettysburg, and the American Way (with a touch o’ tourism thrown in) was this ad from Sinclair Oil in honor of the Gettysburg Centennial:

You can stand and sight along the barrels of 233 Union Guns or 182 Confederate cannons, standing just as they stood on those fateful July days in ’63.

More importantly, you will stand in Gettysburg with eyes closed, and you’re your mind will be touched by the hand of history and your spirit will feel the inspiration that gave Lincoln his finest speech. All Americans North and South can take pride in Gettysburg.

Millions of us have forebears who fought on one side or the other, hotly defending their own idea of liberty. This great battlefield so beautifully preserved by our national Park service is a tribute to the men who fought here.

But America, today united from sea to sea, is their monument.

But the reality was we weren’t all so united.

At all.

The Freedom Riders, the sit ins, marches and boycotts told a different story about “defending their own idea of liberty.”

The South Carolina Monument drew on Civil War past to make a statement about the present, Dedicated on July 2, 1963 to the tune of Dixie and Confederate flag flying it was filled by defiant speeches about States rights and the “tyranny of Washington.” The heritage of honor also meant denying Blacks basic civil rights. (Top) South Carolina memorial 1963 (Bottom) Civil Rights sit-ins at Greensboro, North Carolina. Four college students sit in a “whites only” lunch counter at Woolworths in defiance of segregation Feb. 1960

As Americans prepared to celebrate the Civil War, the inconvenient truth was that many of the same passions that divided the nation 100 years earlier divided it still. And still does today. The freedom and equality consecrated by the Civil War still remained elusive.

Even as the civil rights activists in Birmingham made clear that the civil war’s unfinished business was very much in the present, Uncle Sam and planners of the Centennial didn’t want to bring up that pesky problem of slavery into the celebration of the Centennial. How much nicer to embrace the enduring romance, the warm and fuzzy history of a national redemption, brother against brothers war.

It was a good story of democracy in action, important in our anti-communist crusade. The moral of the Civil War story was that only democratic change made social justice possible no matter how gradual.

Freedom Riders. (L) General Longstreet fighting for the “just” Confederate cause (R) Civil Rights Freedom Riders Bus burned near Anniston, Alabama 1961

That pesky problem was a black eye for Uncle Sam as leader of the Free World.  The lynchings, violence and racial segregation marred the image of the U.S. and tarnished our moral superiority.

And that pesky problem couldn’t be whitewashed away.

Sweet Home Alabama

Sweet Home Alabama. Confederate monuments were built to maintain white supremacy and offer an idealized narrative of the Civil War. Monuments all read that Confederate States were fighting for “a righteous cause and the sacred heritage of honor.”  The Alabama State Monument dedicated in 1933 by the  United Daughters of the Confederacy an organization dedicated to glorifying the “Southern Cause.” The monument features a beautiful Romanesque female, the female personification of the “Spirit of Confederacy” flanked by 2 soldiers. Portraying the spirit of the Confederate cause as a beautiful woman distorts a much more sinister historical truth. They fought bravely to protect the Confederate constitution that enshrined the institution of Negro Slavery(R) Birmingham Alabama 1963

The centennial anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg took place in the midst of the tumultuous summer of 1963.

That May, people across the world had been stunned by the images coming out of Birmingham, Alabama: police officers turning high-pressure fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators and ordering dogs to attack children. In June, Medgar Evers was assassinated in his own driveway. That very same month Alabama Governor George “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” Wallace stood defiantly on the steps of the University of Alabama and denied entry to black students seeking an education.

A century after the battle, the issue of racial inequality remained in the foreground and background.

Fighting For a Noble Cause 1863 and 1963. (L) General Robert E Lee Virginia State Monument and (R) Civil Rights March on Washington. One month after the Centennial in August 1963 Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have A Dream Speech” as African Americans marched from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial. Photo by Rowland Scherman for USIA

In the shadow of the Civil Rights movement, the idea of  commemorating a war that ended slavery being reduced to pageantry and not an occasion to reflect on bigger issues of what was won or lost, was a lost opportunity

The unfinished business of the past that was very much in the present. Ours too.

 Copyright (©) 2017 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

It was 60 years ago today that the United States detonated a 1.7 kiloton nuclear weapon in an underground tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. The test, known as Rainier part of a series of nuclear weapons safety tests ,was the first fully contained underground detonation and produced no radioactive fallout. 

However, there was a lot less concern about safety just a few short years earlier.

In the early 1950’s the Atomic Energy Commission decided that parts of Utah and Nevada would be the sight of a continental proving ground for nuclear weapons. It became the first American Ground Zero. “Accidents Will Happen- By The Bombs Early Light.”Collage of appropriated images by Sally Edelstein

Rivaling the Grimm Brothers, one of the greatest stories told by the U.S. Government to its citizens  was the safety of the nuclear testing done in Nevada in the early 1950’s.

Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Collage of appropriated images

Our government insisted that the spate of nuclear atmospheric testings in the American West were no more a danger than the new fangled TV transmissions racing through the sky. The Atomic Energy Commission  had decided that Utah and Nevada these “virtually uninhabited territory” would be the perfect site for Nuclear testing.

Most shrugged off the potential hazards of atmospheric testing especially the long-term danger.

In fact the danger lay in not doing the tests.

Most Americans agreed that the ultimate benefit of peace and security that only nuclear bombs would bring us was more than enough for the potential risk.

Alarmists

Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

Of course there were outlandish allegations from some alarmists who attributed everything from rising cost of living to climate change, birth defects even throwing the very earth off its axis, to the tests.

The government debunked each of these fears.

Carefully crafted “friendly atom propaganda” appeared covering over much evidence of bombs harmful effects on human health.

It was, Uncle Sam said with a shrug, the same nervous Nellies who thought we should be concerned about the safety of DDT! Radiation was like taxes, not pleasant but you learned to live with it.

This was the most prodigiously reckless program of scientific experimentation in US history. Over the next 12 years, the governments nuclear cold warriors detonated 126 Atom Bombs into the atmosphere at the Nevada test sites. “There is no danger” Atomic Energy Commission assured the public. Like most Americans citizens most of the residents in the area just didn’t think their government could do any wrong. Years later when the cancers and leukemia appeared, their unquestioned faith in their government was shattered. These were American citizens referred to by their government as “low use segment of the population.” Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

Our government had guaranteed us the safety of the testings and if you couldn’t trust the USA who could you trust?

Every school kid knew the father of our country George Washington would never tell a lie, and so a trusting public believed that our Uncle Sam’s word was as trustworthy as a boy scout.

With a ringing endorsement from the AEC confirming that Uncle Sam had taken all the necessary precautions to ensure our safety, the Nevada Test Site only 65 miles from Las Vegs became quite the attraction. Why some folks even made a family trip of it, catching Frank Sinatra at the Sands Hotel while they took in the sights at the Nevada Test Site.

Folks were encouraged to pack their Brownies and Coppertone and head west for a rip roarin’ good time. And if you forgot your Brownie Hawkeye at home not to worry; the experience would give you long lasting memories to relive again and again.

Nevada Test Site

Minutes before the first light of dawn on Jan 27, 1951 an Air Force B 50 Bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the desert west of Las Vegas. The flash of light awakened ranchers in northern Utah, the concussion shattered windows in Arizona; radiation swept across America contaminating as far as northern NY.  Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

Thousands were flocking to Nevada to witness these bombs bursting in air.

Capturing the rugged flavor of the old west where the sky is not cloudy all day- except of course when the bomb goes off- the desert landscape became littered with lawn chairs and luncheon meat. Insulated tartan plaid coolers dotted the desert as sight seekers in pedal pushers and sunny summer separates made themselves comfortable for the countdown.

Before the first light of dawn, dazzled tourists, their hearts thumping in their newly purchased wash n wear resort wear, sleepy kids in their pajamas and Roy Rogers hats, gathered with ex-GI’s in Bermuda shorts wearing WWII issued anti-glare Ray Bans.

Rockets Red Glare

As the pink clouds drifted across the flat mesas, the shock waves booming against the chests a veil of radioactive particles floated over the test site. With the rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, the heat from the blast stimulated a healthy radiant blush on the visitors, leaving them with an envied sunburned vacation glow.

Downwinders

We were still fairly innocent about Atomic Power in the early part of the decade. Few knew that by the late 1950s radioactive elements released in above ground bomb tests had traveled invisibly thousands of miles to land on grass American cows ate and so entered the milk American children drank. Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

And for those folks who couldn’t make any of the 126 test detonated over 12 years, no worries.

The wind would carry the mushroom cloud downwind, dispersing radioactive elements over the purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plains, making you feel just like you had actually been there.

Accidents Will Happen

Sally Edelstein “Accidents Will Happen- By the Bombs Early Light” Detail. Collage of appropriated images

In 1961 Physicians for Social responsibility was founded by doctors concerned about the public health dangers associated with the testing and use of nuclear weapons.

Despite the government protestations of I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing, several serous health affects such as increased incidences of cancers, leukemia, thyroid diseases and congenital malformations have now been well documented to those citizens known as downwinders- individuals and communities exposed to radioactive contamination from nuclear weapon testing.

The irony of the Atmospheric testings is that the only victim of the US nuclear arms since WWII have been our own citizens.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017.

With the nuclear sabre rattling mounting in North Korea, its hard for old fears not to be renewed. For those of us who grew up during the 1950’s and 1960’s the fear of nuclear attack was the subtext of our lives. Nothing matched the profound fears that gripped our country’s fear of a cold war turning hot.

It was a time when most Americans assumed the U.S. and the Soviets stood continuously on the brink of nuclear war.

Memories of growing up duck and covering didn’t just flood back – they are always lurking in the recesses of my mind.

Jet Age Jitters

(L) A public service newspaper ad produced by the Advertising Council, advising mothers to be prepared with an assortment of first aid materials should a nuclear bomb attack occur. (R) A government illustration superimposing an Atomic Bomb Test over the NYC skyline to indicate the scale of the blast.

In the post-war world of push-button ease and no more guess-work, it was anyone’s guess when the ultimate button would be pushed and nuclear war begin. “How much time do we have, minutes, days, months, years? We don’t know,” a somber male voice asked on a public service announcement. “But this we do know – Civil Defense is everybody’s business.”

Fueling our prodigious  fears was the emphasis on Civil Defense and the governments zeal in educating the public about the risk of an atomic attack- how you could survive one, and how to plan and pack for the few days you and your family would have to spend in your fall out shelter.

Civil Defense is the  Best Defense

(L) A 1956 comic book entitled “Mr Civil Defense Tells About Natural Disaster” (R) 1951 Civil Defense Manual

Lucky for me my own Dad was well versed in the art of preparedness, a lesson I would learn at the tender age of two.

If it was a Wednesday night  in 1957, it meant Dad would be out for the evening at his weekly Civil Defense meeting. My father was Marshall of Civil Defense for all of western Nassau county – and part of his job was conveying helpful information straight from the Department of Defense to groups of concerned citizens with a good case of atomic jitters.

Preparedness

Standing in for folksy, Uncle “Aw shucks” Sam, the talks were composed of neighborly suggestions on how to protect yourself and plan now for possible emergency action if the moment of Atomic attack came.

These evenings were exciting for Dad and it was flattering to be summoned to speak before groups and large public gatherings, not to mention being courted by The Long Island Press reporters. He gave his speeches in churches, club-rooms, school auditoriums, similar to the hundreds of public meetings that gathered all over the country for the same purpose.

The audience listened intently, a dense cloud of fear enveloping them as they drifted off into the seemingly safety of the quiet suburban night. In reality these talks did nothing to dampen fears, and only underscored how very unprepared we were.

Preparedness

An early 1950s Civil Defense booklet asked the question “Can we survive a grand slam attack on our country? And the answer- “Certainly! If we are prepared on the home front!”

One unusually warm night in May, Dad was off to a local Kiwanis Club in Rockville Center. He was handsomely dressed in his medium gray, sharkskin suit with the harmonizing over-plaid. It was authoritative, style wise. “Planned,” the salesman at Moe Ginsberg who sold him the suit had said, “for men whose clothes must reflect their sound judgment.”

It was, the perfect suit in which to deliver his Civil Defense talk.

Despite the fact that he had gone over his speech all weekend with Mom till her poor eyes glazed over, he still seemed in need of an audience to practice just once more. With Mom indisposed preparing dinner,  mine were the only willing set of ears in the house.

Captive in my crib, Dad delivered his speech to me with the intensity of a campaign stumper.

Learn and Live

(L) The Cover of a 1956 book which emphasizes the immediate necessity of learning survival techniques (R) Vintage children’s book illustration “The Happy Family” Golden Books 1955

Rustling his papers, he began his lectures as he always did, stating the obvious- Civil Defense was Common Sense.

“A few days ago I was talking with the Director of Civil Defense,” he’d begin all sunny and cheerful, “and he told me things that I feel everyone should know.”

Dad was as folksy and breezy as if he were leaning over his neighbors picket fence discussing the best fertilizer for your lawn. “That’s why I’m speaking to you right now.”

With a confident lilt to his voice he would inform his audience: “Did you know, for example, that your chances of surviving an atom bomb are excellent? It’s true, but there’s a big if . You must do everything possible now, to help yourself and your family. Nobody else will help you! Learn and Live through civil defense.”

The government provided him with lots of snappy phrases like, “Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow” that peppered his talks with the persistence of a Pepsi jingle.

In case of an H-bomb blast the Atomic Energy Commission offered some easy advice:

“People in fall out areas can protect themselves by following some simple rules,” they suggested reassuringly. “The news of an H Bomb attack will be announced over the radio and most people will know about it before the veil of stinging dust comes settling down out of a clouded sky over farm, forest and village.”

“So until then, enjoy the freedom to live as you please.”

Civil Defense is Common Sense

At Home with the Nuclear Family (L) A series of images that ran in Life Magazine are from a government film as part of an Atomic Bomb test taken of a house closest to the detonation of the 3/53 Operation Doorstep (R) Vintage children’s schoolbook illustration 1950s “Stories About Linda and Lee”

“Listen, because this is important!” he scolded.  “Keep a closed container of drinking water in your refrigerator, enough for three days. Be sure you have a good fire extinguisher.”

“Take a look around your house right now and pick out the safest spot, away from windows and doors. Make sure every member of your family understands he is to rush to that safe spot when there’s danger. I’m convinced that these precautions are necessary right now and I hope I can convince you. Civil Defense is common sense.”

Slapping the side of the crib  to emphasize his point, startled me and I began to cry.

Spying my Tuggy Turtle pull toy laying on the floor, Dad scooped it up and wiggled it playfully, trying to distract me from crying. Inching the toy turtle around the perimeter of the crib – Tuggy’s little legs lazily shuffled as his tail wagged to a xylophone tune – Dad sang to me in a playful squeaky voice:

“There was a turtle by the name of Bert

And Bert the Turtle was very alert

When danger threatened him he never got hurt

He knew just what to do”

Dad quickly moved the turtle in and out of my sight range and I giggled as he continued:

He’d duck and cover, duck and cover

He’d hide his head and tail and four little feet

He’d duck and cover.”

Bert The Turtle Cartoon Booklet that was part of the Duck n Cover campaign aimed at children 1951

Kissing me gently as he left, he tickled me and whispered “Civil Defense is Common  Sense.” Snug as a bug in my crib, my own private fall out shelter, I clutched Tuggy the Turtle with his unbreakable shell and giggled in delight.

Silly Daddy.

Copyright (©) 2017 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

On most mid-century days, the suburban streets of my childhood were filled by a legion of door to door salesmen trafficking in fantasy.

The pavement belonged to this endless parade of post war peddlers, their sample cases bulging with promises for a brighter, cleaner, more attractive future for you and your family.

But on the last day of October the flock of high brow-invest-in-your-child’s-future encyclopedia hustlers, along with the Fuller Brush Man and the Avon Lady ceded their hard-earned territory to a motley crew of pirates and hobos.

“Here Kiddie Kiddie” Vintage Halloween Ad Milky Way Candy Bars 1955

From afternoon to evening on October 31 the peddler’s turf belonged to the trick or treaters who marched en masse from splanch to ranch in pursuit of Milky Way dreams.

Thanks to the baby boom, the concrete sidewalks of these newly built developments were as congested as rush hour traffic as they morphed into a magical world of make-believe filled with devils, gypsys, and Indian chiefs.

Halloween Costumes

Vintage article for Halloween Costumes by Singer Sewing Centers 1955. From Davy Crockett to Little Red Riding Hood, Moms could create Halloween costumes for the kiddies following EZ directions offered in the women’s magazines.

Costumes were the key to successful trick or treating and mothers were often enlisted in the effort.

Some sewing challenged moms, or those on a budget,  simply cut holes in their freshly laundered percale pillowcases sending Jr. out as Casper the Friendly Ghost. Other moms who were a whiz on their Singer sewing machine could whip up a believable costume from Pinocchio to Peter Pan,

Five and Dime Dreams

Vintage Ad Halloween at Woolworths

But for most kids when it came to Halloween costumes, the wizardry of Woolworths was unsurpassed.

“Only a broomstick ride away” the colorful five and dime store ads beckoned, and for a few dollars an ordinary suburban kid could easily be transformed into a black cat, a scary witch or Bugs Bunny, with the help of some plastic and polyester courtesy of Ben Cooper the king of costumes.

A Ben Cooper Costume for Sleeping Beauty. Early on the company secured the licensing rights to Disney characters

Sure the rubber band in the cheap, easily cracked mask often snapped and the plastic smocks were highly flammable, but for inexpensive costumes from Minnie Mouse to Snow White, the only question every year for my brother and I was which Ben Cooper costume we would choose.

A Cold War Halloween

However for Halloween 1962 my parents took our getups into their own hands.

There would be no glittering fairy princess with a magic wand for me. No ghosts or goblins for my brother.

No, my parents had something more ghoulish in mind.

Halloween 1962 would take on a chillier tone. There would be no glittering fairy princess masks for me. (L) Vintage Fidel Castro Mask (R) Vintage Sleeping Beauty Mask

Less than a week after the crisis that brought the world to the very brink of nuclear destruction, my parents thought it a hoot to masquerade their children as the culprits of that Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and Cuba’s very own Fidel Castro.

What better way to keep a cold war chill in the air than to dress my brother and I as those two  lovable cold war communist cut ups.

Mask Appeal

With the promise that these two true-to-life masks would elicit plenty o’cold war chuckles ( nothing says funny like a pair of ruthless dictators) Andy and I agreed.

My older brother had first dibs on choosing masks and he immediately claimed the swashbuckling, bearded Castro as his own. Because the charismatic Cuban was always dressed in army fatigues, my brother’s choice entitled him to wear my fathers moth ball scented WWII army uniform and a White Owl cigar clenched between his teeth.

Cold War Cowboy

(L) Vintage child’s costume for “Have Gun Will Travel” the popular CBS Western that followed the adventure of Paladin a gentleman gunfighter who traveled the Old West as a mercenary gunfighter (R) Nikita Khruschev

Though disappointed to be relegated to the balding, wrinkled Khrushchev, my parents gave me free rein in how to accessorize the Soviet Premiere.

Best known for his off-the-Russian-racks suits, I decided to opt for the cold war cowboy look.

Because I was still deep in my “gunslinger stage” picking my official “Have Gun Will Travel” togs was an obvious choice. Dressed in black, sanforized cotton from head to toe, my Khrushchev would look quite cunning in his regulation “Paladin” black felt hat.

Strapping on the leatherette holster set with two caps guns was the final touch. Short and pudgy Khrushchev wasn’t coy about his ample arsenal of missiles, nor was I.

Trick or Treat For UNICEF

(L) Vintage paper Halloween trick or treat bag (R) The famous orange UNICEF box would come later, for now we made our own.

After a hurried dinner, I was raring to go trick or treating, so I quickly grabbed my paper shopping bag not forgetting my UNICEF box.

For one day of the year,  schoolkids across the country could proudly show their latent philanthropic side, spurred on by a United Nations filmstrip shown in classrooms explaining that “One little penny for UNICEF buys 5 glasses of milk for hungry children around the world!”

Sure, charitable boxes were a dime a dozen in the suburban landscape.

Literally.

The ubiquitous March of Dimes tin canister with the heart breaking picture of little girls with steel braces on their legs was found on shop counters everywhere from butchers to TV repair shops, and the blue and white Jewish National Fund box with its Hebrew letters and map of Israel, graced most Jewish homes and establishments.

But the UNICEF box was for kids only.

Lovingly hand-made from wax milk cartons decorated with orange construction paper, we were pint-sized door to door UN Ambassadors for one night, proudly shouting in unison Trick or Treat For UNICEF!”

A Haunting We Will Go

Vintage Halloween ad for Necco candy 1951

With my brother illuminating the way with his plastic, light up jack o’ lantern, cleverly lit by an Eveready flashlight we stepped out into the chilly fall night.

Up and down the block as far as the eye could see the narrow sidewalks were filled with a spooky mass of taffeta, rayon, vinyl and cheap flammable plastic, most glowing eerily with “glitter glo” the blue glitter glued to the front of the costumes which would reflect headlights of passing cars, Ben Cooper’s contribution to Halloween safety.

Excitedly we joined the mass of cowboys and clowns, robots and princesses in all shapes and sizes, all of whom were far outnumbered by the  ragged packs of hoboes.

Vintage Halloween Hobo Mask Ben Cooper Costumes INC.

In the midst of post war plenty, suburban kids delighted in dressing up as depression era tramps – those tragic transients who had fallen from the once upon a time security of middle class.

Even without a Ben Cooper certified hoboe costume, the look of a downtrodden vagabond was easily and authentically achieved simply by raiding father’s closets for oversize clothes, smudging dirt on their Ivory fresh faces and carrying a handkerchief tied around the end of a stick.

The fact that many trick or treaters were but one generation removed from the fate of those forlorn, hungry hoboes, could now, in the flush of the soaring sixties,  transform these tragic icons of the 1930’s economic disaster into lovable begging imps, was quite the trick.

The neighborhood homes were all lit up in anticipation of the crowds descending on their stoops, a single carved pumpkin the only holiday decoration save for a stray skeleton scotch taped to the front aluminum door. Holiday decorations were still best left to school bulletin boards.

Vintage Halloween Costumes from Sears Catalog

Traipsing from house to house, we fell in with a coterie of trick or treaters consisting of Zorro, Frankenstein, an army nurse and a Spaceman toting a white pillowcase bulging with candy corn, tootsie pops and pixies, who insisted on ringing the bell on every front door.

Double Trouble

Vintage Halloween ad for Fleers Dubble Bubble Gum 1953

At every house, suburban moms with Jackie Kennedy boufants greeted my brother and I with bemused smiles.

In this mid-century mélange we were the only cold warriors in sight.

After a long parade of repetitious, predictable princesses, witches and creepy skeletons, a pair of suburban socialists begging for money for the UN caused gales of laughter.

As the housewives opened their front door wiping their soapy hands on their flowery aprons, manicured hands still damp from washing the dinner dishes, they tossed in fistfuls of  Mary Janes and  tootsie rolls.

Even unfamiliar, normally unfriendly neighbors winked at my brother and me, making sure to add a few extra shiny pennys for UNICEF.

The more we drew laughter – me in my gun slingin’ black-hatted Khrushchev disguise and my brother camouflaged  as a cigar chompin, khaki Communist – the heavier my UNICEF box seemed to grow.

In this make-believe night I could almost believe in the UN’s hope for friendly relations with all nations. For a few hours on that frosty night in 1962 my brother and I were doing our part in defrosting the cold war.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

As the world teeters closer to the brink of nuclear war,  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention holds a briefing today on how the public can prepare for a nuclear bomb.

It’s duck and cover deja vu all over again.

On the heels of the recent disastrous ballistic missile false alarm in Hawaii where Google searches on “how to survive a nuclear attack” spiked dramatically, the advice couldn’t come any quicker.

The somber announcement by the CDC came coincidentally right after the ominously named “Bomb Cyclone” winter storm hit the East Coast,  assuring the public they wanted to prepare us for a nuclear winter.

The CDC has gotten into the Civil Defense business taking a familiar stance on “preparedness,”  a word all to familiar to baby boomers when it was bandied about in the 1950’s and ’60’s to calm our nuclear jitters.

You would survive if you prepared.

Let’s hope today’s advice is a bit more practical than the one Civil Defense put forth in the Cold War.

Doctors Orders

Not unlike today, the mid-century medical community got involved in offering safety tips to prepare in the event of an atomic attack.

Flipping through a 1950’s medical guide  I noticed an entire chapter was devoted to the subject.

The bulky tome from 1951 entitled  The Pictorial Medical Guide published by Progress Research Corporation was written by a team of esteemed doctors and in those days your doctors word was as good as Uncle Sams. The guide  seemed geared to women readers  offering to “provide the woman of today with sound and authoritative counsel to give her care and cultivation of a healthy body and the conduct of a happy life.”

Including surviving an Atomic Bomb.

Placed logically in the chapter  labeled “Relief From Nervous Tension “ was a photo essay offering simple and easy to follow instruction for beating the Bomb.

Nervousness seemed to plague this age of anxiety and for good reason. Americans had a good case of the nuclear jitters where the prospect of a nuclear war between  Russia and the U.S. seemed inevitable.

The book  points  out “that civilized living breeds nervousness because we live in a state of turmoil often by trying to keep up with the Joneses.” In an age where the arms race was on full tilt with the Soviets we were more likely edgy from keeping up with the Ivanov’s  more than the Joneses.

But by following these sound and simple suggestions, your chances were pretty good on surviving; in fact they were pretty darn good.

Relax and Prepare

The nuclear family’s chances of surviving an nuclear bomb were good… if you learned and prepared

Your chances of escaping alive if you are in the area where an atomic  bomb explodes are better than is commonly believed,” they offer reassuringly.” A person one half to one mile away has a 50 -50 chance. Beyond 2 miles, the explosion will cause almost no deaths.

Much depends on whether or not your shelter is adequate. Concrete buildings with heavy steel frames are much safer than frame houses. Over all half bomb injures are the result of being tossed about or struck by falling and flying objects.”

Surviving an Atomic Attack

 In the Basement– When sirens sounds, turn off all utilities close doors and windows draw curtains and blinds and take shelter in your basement.

Get Under the Table– Hide under a table to protect yourself against falling plaster and flying objects. Bury your face in arms.

Hide in a Doorway -Try to shield yourself if caught unexpectedly out of doors. A deeply recessed doorway gives good protection. Prevent flash burns by shielding your face and eyes.

Against the Curb – By  dropping flat against the curb with the face toward it you are less likely to be tossed about or hit by debris.

Simple Precautions That Save Lives– At the time of an atomic bomb attack if there is no other shelter available crouch behind a tree for protection. Turn away from the blast and cover exposed skin by pulling your coat over your head. (Below) Mother caught out of doors with a baby carriage should dash into doorway, cover herself and baby with blanket.

 

How to Keep out Radioactive Dust– After a blast, you must take precautions to keep out radioactive dust or fog. Doors and windows should be kept closed. Cover over your fireplace.

Care of Injured– unskilled handling of injured persons is dangerous. Remove an injured person from scene of the fire only to save his life. otherwise wait for a physician to arrive.

 

Dust is Dangerous – If you find yourself in a contaminated area where there are clouds of dust or spray ( possibly radioactive) keep your mouth and nostrils covered with a handkerchief until you reach safety.

Scrub After Exposure-After a blast a good scrubbing will remove radioactive particles that may be clinging to the skin. Put on clean uncontaminated clothes.

Bury Clothes– Clothing that you have worn when exposed in a contaminated area may be dangerous. It is best to bury it-taking adequate precautions while you do.

Copyright (©) 2018 Sally Edelstein