American survival tactics of the '50's and '60's

[chexbres]

Is anyone else this old?

Our family never felt compelled to dig up the yard to build a shelter or prepare for anything worse than a hurricane, and my father resented having to spend money on expensive cans of Metrecal, which we children were ordered to bring to supply the school's shelters - and which was supposed to keep us alive for as long as the Apocalypse lasted (fat chance!  ).

But I don't really remember anything else, except for the weekly surprise air raid drills - and the fact that some of us had trouble fitting into a neat package under our desks, and so were subjected to surprise attacks by irate nuns wielding wooden yardsticks, which in my opinion was worse than what the government was trying to shield us from.

I've never met anyone whose family built a shelter, or really prepared in any way for impending nuclear disaster - even though it seemed very important in the news, and apparently some people were taking the threat seriously - at least on TV.  And now that I take a good look at them, the interiors of these shelters strongly resemble a typical Parisian studio apartment - except there's much more food in the shelters...

www.atlasobscura.com/articles/surviving-a-nuclear-attack-with-spam-and-other-images-from-cold-war-fallout-shelters?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=a21328d170-Newsletter_10_27_201510_26_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-a21328d170-59903725&ct=t(Newsletter_10_27_201510_26_2015)&mc_cid=a21328d170&mc_eid=fbc8c2ea8e

The best part about this period in my life included "Famous Monsters" magazine and the truly wonderful sci-fi-horror films that we went to see most Saturdays.  A double-feature cost the enormous sum of 99 cents, and you could make yourself really sick on as much candy as you wanted for less than half that amount. The one movie that scared me more than a nuclear attack was this one, even though I knew that Forrest Tucker would make everything come out OK, because he always did:

[Deleted]

We were almost certainly watching the same television station in those days, with Morgus the Magnificent. My brother and I would scrunch up against our mother on Saturday night to watch the movie that Morgus was showing. The Crawling Eye was one of the movies that scared the absolute shit out of me - the fog! the mountain! And of course I also remember "Attack of the Crab Monsters."



Usually I would fall asleep before the end since my mother's presence comforted me. I don't know about my brother (3 years older). But I did see a lot of these movies through to their terrifying end. We were perhaps not a traditional family because instead of popcorn or trash like that, we would have a big bowl of chicken gizzards or turkey necks to keep us busy.

Naturally, I also remember "Night of the Living Dead" but Morgus must have shown it more than once because I feel as though I know it by heart.

As for Morgus himself, obviously he was silly almost all of the time, but I remember one night where he put his arm in some sort of transformation machine (not sure exactly why) and ground beef came out the other end. On top of that (believe it or not), for those of us in the New Orleans area, he actually did a weather report on the evening news.

[chexbres]

Yep, we were definitely on the same wavelength - Channel 4!
The worst part about the Crab Monster are those hideous, human eyelids!!! That, plus it was snoring back there in that cave...Never saw this film, but am going to watch it before I go to bed, just for old times' sake.

I always wanted to appear on an episode of "Morgus", and would have let him turn my entire head into hamburger, if he wanted to. I even had a plastic copy of Eric in my room. Chopsley really creeped me out, though.

But probably the worst thing I ever saw was this:

[mossie]

We didn't have a shelter during most of the war. In the event something got serious my father told us to lie down in our hall, that being central in our little bungalow. The only time I attempted to run there the cannon shells had already blown holes in the first of the skins of brickwork, but luckily did not penetrate the second. The village had already been bombed when my father gave us the shelter instructions, on that occasion my parents were in the kitchen washing up after lunch and we boys were playing in the living room. We heard the bombs whistling as they passed over us, followed by the rumble of the bomber and immediately by the explosions, the nearest bomb was about 100 yards away but we were at a lower level than the field it had fallen in and so not harmed. I know I was sitting on the floor and the place shook and I fell back. It all happens so quickly one doesn't really have time to think. the rest of the stick of bombs fell further along the road. My grandmother lived further along and a bomb landed in the back gardens of the houses on either side of hers and she lost some windows and ceilings. As a result she moved out of the village to live with her eldest daughter near Birmingham and my fathers youngest brother came to live with us. The second bomb of the stick landed in the foxhounds kennels, killing a few and releasing the rest who raced howling through the village. The last bomb bomb did the real damage, landing in the main road where it entered the village and cutting the water main and the electricity supply. That was in 1940 at the start of the Battle of Britain.

We were not issued with a shelter until the V1 Flying Bomb attack in June 1944. This was the indoor "Morrison" shelter, like a table with sturdy angle iron legs and a steel plate top, with coarse steel mesh sides. Intended to stay up when the house collapsed so keeping the occupants unhurt. It had to go in the bedroom where us three boys slept with the rest that my youngest brother had to sleep in it.

[chexbres]

And we Americans thought we had it rough...

Those memories must have brought up painful memories, Mossie. Thank you for putting things in perspective.

[Deleted]

My mother, even though she was a refugee a number of times during "39-45" (as the French call it) had a number of stories about that period. One of them was about her aunt and uncle in Paris, whose flat was destroyed by the American bombs in Courbevoie. Since they found another place to live, it did not seem to disturb her. As a child, I stayed at their place a number of times, since they lived there for more than 30 years until my great aunt died in 1972. Oddly enough, in recent years when I drove my mother to Courbevoie to show her the second apartment which has not changed one iota since my childhood, she recognised absolutely nothing. Her only memory was of "avenue de la Liberté" where the original apartment was.

She had a "fun" memory of the war when she was a university student in Nancy. She and her friends would run up to the roof of their building when the air raid sirens sounded to see the bombing instead of going down to the cellar where they were supposed to go. Obviously the bombs were never close enough to scare them, because she still bragged about it when I was a little boy.

I suppose that's why she enjoyed all of those stupid horror movies with my brother and me rather than being repelled by them.

[questa]

One of my earliest memories of wartime Australia was going with my mother to the "upstairs" section of a department store which had been given over for the women to make camouflage netting. I recall how the women wearing high heeled shoes were having trouble walking around as their heels were catching in the loops of netting. I would have been about 2 1/2 years old then.

The small country town where we lived was an air force base, so a bomb shelter was built in the park near the main railway line to Sydney. One night the alarm had sounded and the people ran to the shelter. The town was blacked out and I was with my father near the shelter entrance.
Just then a huge steam train lit up like a Christmas tree and blowing clouds of steam chugged slowly through the park and past the shelter.
I recall my father being very angry with some officials there and we never went to the shelter again.

[Deleted]

Since those days, of course it has been revealed to us that this movie was actually about the Communist Threat.