Duck and cover

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Did any of you here have to do the duck and cover drills during the 1950's.Since I never lived in that time period, I would want to know.

In elementary school, we had drills like that. We all had to get under our desks when the alarm went off. We had two types of alarms---one was a fire alarm and the other was a drill alert alarm. (I imagine some still use this for bad storms or tornado warnings). No one was ever really afraid; it was like playing fun and games. It was fun because we got out of having to do school work for awhile and we could be noisy and crawl from desk to desk to visit our friends. Teachers didn't have that much control to keep us quiet!

A few years later, the drills were different. It was the "Cuban Crisis" situation.

There was a train track that was near our school. We had drills quite often. We would have to leave classroom and line up on the playground. Once there, when everyone was in formation, we had to go single file and walk to the train track and just stand there forever. All this took probably an hour. Then, we were all made to wear dogtags. We were told we might need them if we got separated from our families. If we were at school when the bombs started we might have to take a train out and it might be a while before we could be reunited with our families.

It didn't bother me at all. I actually looked forward to a train trip away from the humdrum. Thought about losing the dog tag in transit and becoming a world adventurer. Then, students started swapping dog tags with friends as a "going steady" item but everybody had to give the tags back to proper owner very quickly if there was a drill, because teachers started checking our tags in line-ups.

Again, no one I know of was really scared about anything. We all just liked getting out of the classroom.

GLTirebiter

Yes, during the 60's--while the Cuban Missle Crisis was going on. The teacher yelled "Down!", and we were to dive under our desks, tuck our arms over our heads, and close our eyes tight. There also was a large tin of water and cartons of survival biscuits stashed in the teacher's closet in the back of the classroom.

GrandmaJones

yes,all the time.

Cagefighter

We did them in the 80's they were called "Tornado/Disaster drills"

poppers

I remember my family getting some sort of notice of how many people/refugees our house could accomodate in the event the bomb was dropped on Minneapolis, 100 miles away. I remember the Cuban missile crisis vividly. The father of one of my classmates told us on a Friday that we'd be dead by Monday - I hardly slept that entire time and had nightmares years afterwards. I remember the crisis in Berlin when the wall went up in 1961 - our school dismissed early to go to the train station in town to watch troops board a train as it made its way from Wisconsin to Fort Lewis, Washington. I even remember black out drills. Those were some darn scary times.

catherinedrew

here in nz, kids do earthquake drills....leap underdesks, doorways etc. we have a plan should one strike. We live on faultlines. Learned to live with it.