Colin McEnroe Show: Cold War Connecticut & JFK: 'Elusive Hero'
A look back on the Cold War and what it was like to live in Connecticut.
When I was a kid, my parents fell into the practice of dropping me off at churches they themselves had no intention of attending.
So for a while, in the 1960s, I joined the Universalist Church on Fern Street in West Hartford. I went to services and Sunday school and, somewhere around sixth grade, I joined a Youth Fellowship there.
What I remember keenly is a fellowship session in which the leader, a young fair-haired guy probably in college or a year or two out, described to us what a nuclear explosion is really like. I had been brought up during the Cold War when the emphasis was on surviving an atomic bomb by hiding under your desk. This guy, I think his name was Dave, talked to us about the force of the explosion and the heat that followed. He made it clear that we would not survive in our classrooms or our homes, and that the people who had built fallout shelters would be no better off. It rocked my world.
That was the Sixties, a long dance with Death.
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Cold War
I was born in 1969, well past the days of under desk drills by the time I got to school. I remember watching The Day After on TV, and I assumed that my generation would never make it to adulthood because we would all die in a horrible nuclear attack or accident. This could have pushed me into making some bad decisions, but I was also too afraid of AIDS to have casual sex or get involved with drugs.
The Nike Site in Manchester also houses a gun range and a ballet company. What an interesting turn of events!
EMAIL FROM GREG:
I heard an advert blurb this AM on WNPR that you're discussing on your
radio show today the Nike missile program. I can't hear your show from
work (I'll catch it on podcast) but I'm an interested "fan" of the
history of that program, primarily from the aspect of how it "melded"
into society so seamlessly; many people never even knew that an
anti-aircraft missile battery existed in this country, let alone in
their backyard. I used to live in the Woodmont area of Milford, the
home where my wife grew up only walking distance from the RADAR site
up on the hill, and our house on Snow Apple Lane actually had what my
wife thinks was a bomb shelter (a concrete-lined void under the
porch)...Google Earth "N 41 13 40, W 73 01"
I also visited "Nike Park" in West Haven, but never found any
artifacts of significance. Google Earth "Nike Site Park West haven CT"
I've also visited site LA-96, off Mulholland Drive above Los Angeles;
they've left a lot of the site still in place (sans missiles,
unfortunately...) Fascinating collection of hardware at that launch
site. Do a Google Earth search on "LA-96 Nike Missile Site" and you
can find it.
There were a couple articles, with photos, in the Hartford Courant
earlier this past year, where a guy took a walk up a trail and found
an old site near where the DMV is in New Britain.
Once you get past the politics, Ed's Nike Missile Web Site on the web
of a wealth of information on the Nike program: http://ed-thelen.org/
I don't have any supporting info, but I've also read rumors of an
incident that happened in CT in the late 50s/early 60s, that *may*
have been some kind of launch error of a Nike that crashed in the
Hartford area, and was reported in the newspapers as an airplane
crash. I used to have some saved bookmarks to the conspiracy theory
and scans of newspaper articles, but I can't for the life of me find
that now. You might ask your guest expert if he/she has heard of that.
Interesting topic, I look forward to hearing it.
E-mail from Sara
First I want to thank you for giving us all a reprieve from the constant chatter about brining and frying and stuffing and roasting my God you'd think Americans have never eaten a meal. No Leave it to you guys to run a show about Cold War CT style. After hearing the show I realize that this year I am just glad to have skin and stuff. I hate how things written in email or communicate through the wonders of the Internet always have this snide mean spirited tone and I assure you in this case I am honestly being snide and mean spirited (Should I insert a LOL here? I am such an internet novice) I found the topic really interesting as I am known to wander around the woods in Manchester and have often wondered about our town run nursery school, Nike Tykes. The building has this cold war cinderblock feel and is found high on a hill as one drives from Manchester to Glastonbury. The Glastonbury border guard has never let me into the town due to income and vehicle standards so if I am driving towards Glastonbury I get detoured as Nike Tykes whose name origin has always intrigued me. I will be happy to check your guest website if you could link me-or I suppose I could check the WNPR page but I fear that I may get sucked into some sort of UConn Womens giant foam finger fund raiser thing.
Also-on the topic of tomorrow's tough turkey talk. In the spirit of full disclosure the reason I have so much time to sit around listening to NPR and sending rambling emails is that I receive Social Security disability benefits dues to a 25 year history of anorexia and bulimia. It's true- I have lost so much to eating or lack of eating obsessions. I miss being a teacher for CREC and I wish I had a normal relationship with food so that I could have normal relationships with people around food but unfortunately Thanksgiving is just too difficult. Imagine an alcoholic on National Get Drunk day with personified vodka bottles dancing on every grocery store flyer and every media program playfully discussing the forth coming binge and recovery strategies. No, I have opted out and have always been honest with my family. My son and old man will go the Thanksgiving table and I will go to a shelter if volunteers are needed (it's the one day that shelters are well staffed) or I will go to KMart for a diet coke and gum. (Just kidding-I'll also buy some holiday formal wear from the Jacquelyn Smith collection.) ANyway, thanks for remembering those who do not or can not get stuffed and sleepy on the annual eating day due to physical, financial, familial or psychological restrictions
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