Growing Up in the '50s

I'm not considered a baby boomer, because I was born in 1945. Even though the fighting ended in '45, to be a boomer you had to be born in '46 or later. I guess soldiers and civilians had to wait until '46 to start having babies again? Apparently my parents didn't get the message, as they were having babies before the war, during the war and after the war.

Growing up in the '50s was an interesting time. Things seemed to be changing fast. It felt like a happy time in America for most. People had jobs and the future seemed bright. Although we still had to worry about the Russians dropping the A-bomb on us. I remember every Friday the air sirens would scream their wailing sound. The teacher would tell us to get up from our desks and form a single line and we would march out to the parking lot. There waiting for us would be parents, not necessarily our own, with cars. We'd all pile into the vehicles and off we'd go, not knowing our destination.

They took us about forty miles out of town, to the farmlands of south Alabama. I always wondered what would happen to all of us if they really did drop a bomb. Where would we go then? What about our parents? Would they be killed? Would they try to find us? As we stood in the fields some kids would cry and want to go home. It caused tremendous anxiety for us,  But back then no one cared what affect it might have the children involved. We didn't have child psychologists to warn that this might cause mental harm. We had nun's, and you did whatever they told you to do. But we somehow survived this mental torture, and for the most part we were pretty normal happy kids.

Remember, television was only just starting to make its entrance into the American homes at that time. So kids played with other kids and most of the play time was done outdoors. We made up games, but most boys would play Cowboys and Indians or Soldiers. Sometimes our games would lead to real fighting.  And everything was fair: rocks, slingshots and even BB guns. For some reason, I have always been a good shot. If I aimed, 99 times out of a 100, I would hit my target. My older brother,  Tony, and I would build forts and stock them with homemade spears, arrows, rocks, firecrackers and, of course, our trusty Daisy Red Rider BB guns.

We seem to have had constant battles with our neighbor, John M., and his cousin. We would attack them and they would attack us. We would stage ambushes on them. One time, I climbed up on a garage next to our enemies' house. Then my brother went out and began taunting them until they started chasing him. He led them past the garage, where I opened fire on them with my BB gun. It worked like a charm. 

Another time, John made himself a suit of armour to protect himself from the BB hits. He used a metal garbage can lid as a shield. It worked pretty good, and he shot at us with his BB gun. Then I realized he had not protected his knees. As John attempted to move toward us, I took dead aim on his knee cap and pulled the trigger. The garbage can lid went flying into the air as John grabbed his wounded knee. As he turned to retreat, I realized he had not protected his backside, and I fired at his butt and back as fast as I could cock my gun. Victory was ours that day, we had defeated the body armour.

We all survived our battles, except for some blood blisters from the BB hits. We all still had our eyes and were no worse for the wear. Later, John became best friends with my brother and I, and we joined forces against the other neighborhood kids. Our parents were totally oblivious to what was going on. We never complained and apparently neither did John or his cousin.

The most serious injury I sustained was running a screw diver into the side of my head,  which got me a ride in an ambulance. Luckily, I have a hard head and the screw driver glanced off my skull and stuck under my scalp. My older brother, Tony, never got any injuries, just the standard scrapes and bruises. But our younger brother, Ricky, took a fall while swinging on our Tarzan rope, which was attached to a tree limb.

When Ricky landed on the ground, he apparently extended this arm out in font of him to break his fall. Instead, it fractured his arm in two places, causing the bone to protrude through the skin. For days it was a toss up by the doctors as to whether they might have to amputate his forearm and hand. But, fortunately, he pulled through. I'm not sure how our parents survived all this. But they were both from pretty tough people who had survived deaths and tragedies. I guess they'd learned to expect these things and to live with whatever happened.