The Bolduc-Charbonneau-Ouellette family clans that were desperately clinging together amid thousands of other poor, under-trained, under-educated, ethnic ghetto inhabitants scattered across Lower Centralville, Little Canada and Pawtucketville served as unwilling witnesses to the challenging history of the Cold War in Lowell from 1946 to 1989.
These may have not been “the worst of times”, to quote a favorite English author, and yet for some fortunate few, whose family affairs had been better planned, these were also not “the best of times”.
A potential nuclear annihilation hovered daily in the cumulus clouds of our East-West international misunderstandings. Moscow and Washington broadcast threats and warnings to anyone, who might listen, about the charred, radioactive, future landscape that might soon become our forgotten playgrounds called towns and cities.
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
Every radio and TV program, which had been initially intended for public entertainment, was often tainted with disturbing glimpses of a horror show of potential events destined to ruin mankind’s very existence on the planet.
True, Rock and Roll music and the roaring new cars of the 1950s were here to stay, but all was not joy in River City, USA. Big trouble was brewing in the skies, the seas and in the souls of ordinary people scattered across our lonely planet.
Major American, Canadian and European cities had been pinpointed for nuclear or thermonuclear incineration by strategic planners in the Kremlin. In ths mix, every key city with a population of 100,000 persons or more was to be destroyed.
However, this nuclear terror was of an international flavor, whereby every Soviet city of a similar size was to be eliminated by our Strategic Air Command (SAC) squadrons flying their Stratofortress bombers constantly over the oceans of the world.
The situation was tense, although most Americans had no concept whatsoever regarding the “rules of the game”. But, the people at SAC under the guidance of General Curtis LeMay certainly did. The whole world was actually teetering on the edge of disaster.
Key Players in the Early Stages of the US-Soviet Nuclear Race
The national secrecy that enveloped the development of the Manhattan Project and, later, the Atomic Energy Commission, AEC, contributed to the mystical aura attributed to key figures involved in this endeavor. On a public stage, American audiences were often exposed to Dr. Edward Teller‘s worldview regarding nuclear research and the further development of nuclear weapons.
Bomb Shelters for all new homes
Many of the home bomb shelters were one-room affairs accessible at the basement level within the house, while others were stand-alone cellar-type structures near the house. They typically had shelving for food and household storage, small beds, including bunk beds, and minimal furniture– but usually no bathrooms.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the buzz word in American homes was “fallout shelter.”
A fallout shelter was a civil defense initiative intended to reduce casualties in a nuclear war. It was designed to allow occupants to avoid exposure to harmful radioactive fallout from a nuclear blast and its likely aftermath of radiation until radioactivity dropped to a safer level.
The fallout shelter craze came with the cold war involving the United States and Russia. Events during the Cold War heightened the awareness of fallout shelters and peaked in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed little interest in shelters until 1957, when a Gaither Report was released. The report assessed the relative nuclear capability and civil defense efforts of the United States and the Soviet Union.
The report concluded that the United States would soon be surpassed in all categories of nuclear weaponry, and that civil defense preparations in the USSR were well ahead of American efforts. See below:
Fallout shelters were the rage in the ’50s and ’60s
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Digging Up the History of the Nuclear Fallout Shelter
For 75 years, images of bunker life have reflected the shifting optimism, anxieties and cynicism of the Atomic Age
Thomas Bishop, Zócalo Public Square April 25, 2022
General observations
These curious, architectural modifications to the standard, New England “saltbox” constructions, which were still popular in our parts of the country in the 1950s, may not have been esthetically fashionable, but such changes increased the cost of a new house by 100% or more. Only wealthy new homeowners could afford such engineering luxury. The remaining poor people were left wondering by the wayside.
What about the remaining 99.8% of the folks living day-to-day without a shelter?
Answer: Life can be unfair, sometimes, and this would be a tragic situation underlining that conclusion.
Read about Public Shelters.
