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Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Night the Nuke Was Coming to Woolmarket, Ms


As I mention in one of my other Stories "My Momma gave me Issues", I grew up for the most part as a Air Force brat and my father was in the Strategic Air Command which was responsible for the plane's and nukes that were to be delivered in the event it was necessary and during the timeframe of my youth it seemed like every other day a possible reason for use by one side or the other came along.

There were so many possible events for the background of this story that the Brothers and I don't agree on which it was but the belief by my father that for sure the nukes were coming one night is the basis for the story.

My father would get a little pissed when we told this story around the fire and laughed because to him it was a very real possibility and he was doing his job to the best of his ability to protect his family. All those years in the service during the cold war trained him to believe that way. There is a good possibility that he knew that some of those times we were a lot closer to the end then any of us imagined.

There came this night where the national news had stated that the Chinese or North Koreans had captured one of our ships and the possibility of War was very likely. During this time the kids that lived home was Edie, Ren, and Tim, and I but we also had a fairly new sister in law named Wanda with a young one called L Stan. Wanda's husband Stan was away at basic training so I was the oldest boy around. I think I was around sixteen.

A few years earlier my father had sold some of his land to the Interstate 10 folks for a new highway and they had spent the last couple of years building it. To do so they had to pump in lot sand out of the river. The sand was piled up about 20 foot higher than the normal elevation and about every 100 or so feet it had a large culvert running thru the bottom of it. Remember that as it becomes important later in the story.

A few years earlier we had also built a garage with two rooms above where all the boys had a bedroom and Dad would bang on the garage door if he wanted your attention about something as we usually had some music on loud. So there came this banging on the door and you could tell there was some urgency involved in it. We say yeah and he says fall out which is military for get your rear end down here now!

We get down in the yard and he hands me a rifle and says get Wanda and L Stan out here (they lived in a trailer next to the house) we need to find a place to hide out for a while as there is going to be a war. Now before I go into this deeper I have got to give a little info on my sister in law Wanda. Wanda has and has always had the most expression in her face of anybody I have ever known. She don't have to talk, you know what she is thinking by the way she looks at you.

So I go to the trailer and bang on the door and she opens it. I say to Wanda we got to go hide out a while as Dad thinks someone is going to nuke us. I have thought about that expression that was on her face many times over the years and my interpretation of what I saw in her face was oh lord what kind of family have I married into here! But she get's L Stan and falls out into the yard with the rest of us.

We look around and Dad has gone back into the house. We are all exchanging stories on guessing what the hell is going on when Dad comes out the house with a pillow case filled with can goods and his 12 gauge shotgun. He told us what was going on and that there was a very good possibility of a nuke hitting Biloxi any moment. Biloxi was about 10 miles away and it had a large base he was sure would be targeted.

Someone ask where we going Dad and he says we are going to hide out in one of those culverts under the interstate. So we get to the culvert and he sends me in first as my job is to guard the other end of the culvert while he takes the one toward the house. He says when the nuke hits there will be a rush of people trying to find shelter and we have limited food. It may become necessary to defend our bomb shelter. So now we are all in the culvert for about 45 minutes and I am looking out over the area expecting either the enemy or the neighbors to be charging the culvert but I don't see anyone. After about an hour this becomes a little boring so I yell to the other end of the culvert "Dad I don't see anybody coming". He yells back boy that nuclear bomb drops you going to see a whole bunch people wanting this culvert!

The time limit we stayed there in that culvert that night varies depending on who you ask varies but Dad eventually figured it was safe to go back to the house as a nuke was not coming that night. I seem to remember that someone got hungry and Dad realized he left the can openers back at the house. The all clear was called and we all went back to the house.


Art Nalley
Redneck Heritage Network
@2011

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