August 5th

August 5th was the 64th anniversary of the first hostile use of an atomic weapon. I was almost five but don't remember it. What I do remember is World War II ended soon after, and some men returned to our small town, Lebanon Maine.
I started school, in the first grade, in the fall of 1946 in peacetime. Not long after when the Soviets started taking over eastern Europe and then the Cold War began, there was talk that the Soviets also had atomic bombs, and in the US Civil Defense began. There were adults and teens who were airplane spotters, my Dad among them, I was still a little boy and I became afraid of airplanes, any of them. There weren't many the flew over our town, but I looked with suspicion on the ones that did; one day I even saw a "flying wing" now I know it as a B49, it was awesome, and I knew it was one of ours from the pictures the airplane spotters had.
Then the air raid drills started in school. Our school was one room down and one room up, grades 1 to 4 were downstairs and grades 5 to 8 were up, the upstairs is where my Dad went to High School; then grades 1 to 8 were downstairs. There was no running water, and outhouses; really they were inside the woodshed. Every morning two older boys went to Mr. Hanscoms well and got a pail of water, it was stored in a stone crock with a spigot at the bottom, we all shared one tin cup that was chained to the counter; none of us died from it, and there was not a lot of sickness. The air raid drill comprised of getting under our desks which were screwed to the floor as were the chairs. The floor was wood and my grandfather oiled the floors every summer, I can still remember the pleasant odor. We did have electric lights although sparse, and the heat came from a wood stove that our teacher, Mrs. Pierce, lit every morning. For teaching four grades and being the custodian she earned $900.00 a year!

Gradually the air raid stuff was less common but town and cities still had signs pointing the Shelters, which were stocked with food, water and probably bandages and toilet supplies. I also no longer was afraid of airplanes. A couple of times we drove by the Sanford, Maine airport which was a Navy Facility until maybe 1950, there was an actual outline of a carrier deck and a fake ships superstructure, I remember the planes all in a line of rows, wings folded I thought they were really neat, later in life I became a U S Navy Enlisted Aircrewman; and I did visit Hiroshima in 1964.
By 1954 towns were building consolidated schools and all of the old one room schools closed, it was the first time Lebanon had a school bus, the driver and his wife rode with us and you damned well better behave, they kept the bus spotless, the driver owned a 1930 Ford Model A which he still drove and he swept it clean on the inside after every trip.

Back to rhymes tomorrow