but didn’t get catch on there or in Germany, so the Germans sent the communists to Russia, where the people wanted to create a classless society because the Czar had been cruel to them.
Our world map at school showed that Russia was huge, much bigger than the United States. I thought the reason the newspaper said we were in a Cold War with them was that it was always cold in Russia. The good news was that the commies were so far away. How could they do anything to us?
. Trying to copy the USA, they changed their name to the USSR, but that was like putting a different label on a can of Spam and calling it caviar. They had vodka, we had moonshine; they had ballet, we had baseball. Russians had the freedom to vote for any candidate hand-picked by the communist party; we had two parties and anyone could get elected in Georgia, as long as he was white.
Then the Russians somehow stole the secret formula for our atomic bomb. It was amazing. No one could figure out the secret Coke recipe or the 11 secret herbs and spices in the Colonel's fried chicken -- but the sneaky Russians got their hands on the A-bomb blueprints! And once they had the bomb, it was no secret that they could use it.
Civil Defense signs were put up all over town, even at school. We were told to hide under our desks if we were attacked, and once a month we practiced doing that. We were also told that massive supplies of canned food were hidden underground. I hoped we would never have to go underground to eat Spam.
Meanwhile, things were heating up between us and the Commies. The United States started a group called NATO, which I thought stood for the North Atlantic and Turkey Organization. That allowed us to keep thousands of soldiers in Europe and to have A-bomb missiles in Turkey. My school map showed that Turkey is right next to Russia, so our putting missiles there would be like the Russians putting them in Cuba, which of course they did.
We started to have more emergency drills at school. Our radio had a special place on the dial so we could tune in to hear a government broadcast if the missiles started flying. “Don’t worry," Wiz said. "If there is an attack, it will all be over in less than a minute.” That was not reassuring.
Later on, though, Wiz showed me a copy of the Atlanta newspaper, which printed a map of the United States and all of the cities that Russia had selected as its A-bomb targets. Greatly relieved to see that Waycross was not big enough to be one of them, we quit worrying about getting bombed.
But one Sunday when the rest of us came home from church, Charlie told us that we were staying up late to see something special. The Russians had launched the world's first man-made satellite into outer space.
They called it Sputnik, he said, and it was scheduled to pass right overhead that night. Suddenly we had to start worrying about the Russians again: What if Sputnik had a laser gun and shot at our house?
We went outside a little before 9 o'clock and, sure enough, we saw it: a yellow, blinking object moving across the dark sky. Wiz said, “That spacecraft is traveling over 17,000 miles per hour.” That was hard to believe, as it appeared to be moving slowly over our house.
I will never forget standing there in the cool night air, thinking that the Russians were going to take us over for sure. My little brother, Moose, started to cry and said, “Deuce, we don’t have a Sputnik."
It was our country's wake-up call, but the Russians didn’t take us over. About three months later, Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere and the space race caught fire. America shot past the Russians, and what would someday be called their evil empire eventually collapsed.
America got another wake-up call when four black students defiantly sat down beside shocked white folks at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and a skinny Jewish kid with a guitar moved from Minnesota to New York. The times they are a'changin', he sang. Boy, was he right.
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