I slipped quietly out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs of our townhouse apartment. I was supposed to be sleeping. But there were nights that followed days filled with stories of a cold war and nuclear fallout when I would crave the words I’d grown to depend on for my security. I didn’t know who Nikita Kruschev was - only that he hated me, as he hated all Americans, and he planned to someday blow us all up with nuclear bombs.
We practiced huddling under our desks at school to protect ourselves from the impact. It didn’t seem quite sufficient when total global destruction was the anticipated outcome, but our teachers seemed convinced, so to humor them, we huddled anyway. Some families we knew had built bomb shelters instead of homes to live in until the devastation was over.
I remember visiting a family with three children, whose home was an underground three room basement dwelling. It may have been an unpleasant way to live, but they would be safe when the attack took place. My father talked about building a shelter, but found it too expensive or time consuming. I envied the family in the basement-house. In a shelter like that you could surely huddle under the dining room table and be completely safe.
Our day to day lives were typical of the ‘50s; happy, uneventful and relatively stress-free, except for the sense that any moment could bring the scream of air raid sirens and an explosion that would change the world forever.
My mother worked in a men’s clothing store downtown. On the floor above the clothing store was the local pop radio station that played the best music of the day: Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Patty Paige. My mother had become friends with one of the disc jockeys and he would give her the long-playing 78 RPM records they had played on the air throughout that week. The day she brought the new records home each week was an exciting day for us. Not only did we have the latest tunes before they were available in record stores, but there was a small measure of security that came as a bonus.
I turned the volume low and placed the needle gently on the record, three-quarters through the recording. I curled up, pulling my knees to my chest under my long, flannel nightgown, and wrapped my arms around them. Resting my head against my knees I listened to the last few ballads on the record - ballads of falling stars, romantic places and love relationships with happy endings. As the music came to an end, I straightened up and leaned closer to the hi-fi to hear the words I had been waiting for.
A deep, soothing voice, as comforting as the voice of God, ended the broadcast with a message of absolute assurance – “Sleep well tonight, your National Guard is awake.” And then, the National Anthem played as I closed my eyes and pictured the multitudes of brave young men, watching the skies intently for signs of enemy intruders - their only goal to keep me safe.
Today, our children face monsters much too close to home; the neighbor down the street who’s registered as a child molester, and the gang they see hanging around the convenience store as we drive by. Their monsters are on the TV news every night and then recreated in the movies they watch. Their monsters could be lurking in the public restroom or even sitting next to them in their sixth grade classroom. And who is there to banish their fears and let them know that they are completely, unquestionably safe?
Yes, we had our own monsters when I was a child. But they were faceless monsters – monsters we didn’t really understand. They threatened us in ways that seemed unreal. We never saw them up close or thought for a moment that theirs would be an attack on us personally. And even in the dark of night, when our monsters became more vivid and real, we knew we could sleep well – our National Guard was awake.
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