Time Bomb

"Now I lay me down to sleep...." Many of us recited that prayer at bedtime. I had stopped doing that - I didn't like the way it sounded at the end.

All summer long ships were sailing into the Caribbean, into its warm blue/green waters making their way into the harbors of Cuba. Lots of Russian ships. Our navy was watching. My cousin Danny watched them from the deck of his destroyer.
He saw Russian merchant vessels with their decks loaded down with big crates covered up in canvas. The newspapers said that a large amount of Russian soldiers were now in Cuba, and Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and all the other news men on TV were wondering what was going on down there.

What did I know about it? Cuba this and Cuba that. For years now it seemed that everything bad in the world somehow got all tangled up with that island so close to our shore.

The images I saw, the black and white and gray pictures of Castro. Always pointing his finger in the air and blaming America for all the problems in the world.
There he was hugging Nikita Kruschev and telling the world he was now a Communist, and the Russians were his only friends in the world. America was out to get him and he wasn't going to allow another Bay of Pigs happen again, so he was letting the Russians come and train his army.

Black and white and gray images of Russian ships at sea.

One Monday night in October, the 22nd it was, as I was getting ready to watch TV, President Kennedy came on to talk to the country. One of our U-2 spy planes had taken pictures of missile bases on Cuba, he said. He showed us pictures of them.

Black and white and gray images of trucks and tents and airplanes. White letters pointing out the missiles and the barracks of soldiers.

These were Russian missiles and Russian soldiers, and the missiles were capable of striking deep into our country. President Kennedy then told us that the missiles were nuclear ones. Nuclear missiles aimed right at us just ninety miles away. The President declared that he would regard any missile fired at us from Cuba as an act of war coming from the Russians, and that we would strike back at them. He was ordering a quarantine around Cuba, and our navy was going to stop and search all ships to make sure they weren't bringing in more weapons. He scared the bejeezus out of me and probably everybody else in the world.

It was hard to sleep that night.

Black and white and gray images of atomic bombs going off. The force of a nuclear blast destroying everything in its path would play over and over again in my mind.



On the way to school we sang the Kruschev song, something to help us laugh it all off, but in the back of our minds we feared the worst, and we had more air-raid drills to remind us all of the danger.

Black and white and gray images of American navy ships following a Russian submarine.
More photos of Russian missile sites, and the U.N. building, and stories about U-2 spy planes. Thousands of soldiers being sent to Florida, and would the Russians allow us to search their ships peacefully?

Tick, tick, tick, it seemed to me.

And then the day came.

Black and white and gray images of Russian ships, with their decks jammed with great big crates, and we were going to stop them.

Tick, tick, tick, it seemed to me.

"..if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."