Sirens in the Njght

The 50s were a very stressful time for adults and children. The cold war was in full bloom . McCarthy's witch hunting was at its height culminating in the famous Senate hearings of 1954.

On the positive side, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 eliminated racial and ethnic barriers for citizenship. In 1954 the Supreme Court had declared Racial Segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, and the active civil rights movement was sparked in 1955 by Rosa Parks in Montgomery , Alabama. The decade ended in 1959 with Alaska and Hawaii becoming states.

With the Soviet Union becoming an atomic power with intercontinental missiles, there was an abnormal fear of nuclear attack. People were encourage to build their own bomb shelters and to have stocks of canned food and water. Anti-missile batteries were in place surrounding the metropolitan areas, including a battery off Stelton Road, adjacent to the Hadley Airport.

Besides, occasional civilian "air raid drills", in the public schools frequent "bomb drills" were held. The children were taught to hide under their desks or along a wall in an inside corridor. All children developed fears of hearing the air raid siren.

In Plainfield besides the siren at the main firehouse their were some smaller sirens located on telephone poles through out the city. Part of their function was to supplement the blowing of the main siren when there was a fire big enough to require calling in the off duty firemen. One such siren was on Kenyon Ave. about three houses north of us.

Naturally if it blew during the night the children would wake up in a panic. Were we were going to be attacked? To reassure ours I would call "Answerphone" and find out where the fire was. We would then bundle the kids in warm clothes, get in the car and go to sight see the fire. There were several spectacular ones in Plainfield during those years. For the children the knowledge that the sound of the siren did not mean that it was to them the end of the world , was psychologically important.

For more than 4 decades although we lived under a threat of nuclear war, cooler heads ultimately prevailed at crisis times. Often it was close like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Today after almost a decade and half of no major power threatening the use of Nuclear weapons we are again faced with aggressive adventurers in various parts of the world. Perhaps the dangerous an resurgent energy rich Russia who has resumed its aggressive policies against weaker neighbors. A Russia that will not hesitate to use surrogate nations to embarrass America.

Let us hope that no child in the upcoming decades will have to fear a siren and duck under a desk.