Nuclear Attack!!!

So the entire 50s decade was under the cloud of the cold war. The US and Russia had reached the point of MAD (mutual assured destruction). In some histories of this period they show kids hiding under their desks in case of a nuclear attack…we did not do that, I think our teachers understood that immediate vaporization would not be prevented by the thickness of a desk top.

There was a civil defense siren mounted on a pole at the fire station about one block east of the elementary school. It was tested every Monday at noon.

Unfortunately, it would go off at odd times (e. g. 11:34 PM) and scare us all. It wasn’t clear to me what we were to do other than pray.

Dad understood the concept of strategic bombing and he convinced me that if there were a nuclear attack, Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange would be prime targets because of the multiple refineries in the ‘Golden Triangle’.