The Missiles of October

I hope the creators of the movie don’t mind my borrowing the title for this post, but I’m too lazy to think of anything clever, and of course, now you know what this is about.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Being now old enough to play the “I was there” game, this is what I remember about it.

In those days, I was a student at one of those fancy New England prep schools, at which I received a great education, partly because TV wasn’t really an option. The television was in the housemaster’s quarters, and only rarely were we allowed to watch. Certain exceptions were made occasionally, though, for stuff like “The Andy Griffith Show.”

But the days in question were unusual. There was one night -- October 22 -- when we were required to watch TV. We all assembled in the various housemasters’ apartments around the school to hear JFK deliver his now-famous address to the nation, warning the Russians not to station missiles in Cuba. You can find this easily on YouTube, but here’s an especially memorable line:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that gets your attention! Sounds like something Harrison Ford might say, and probably has said, in one of his movies. But this was no movie. Nowadays, people who worry about the end of the world are considered one beer short of a six-pack, as they say – but for a few days, we actually had to consider it a real possibility.

I don’t remember much else about the experience at school. The headmaster was a minister, and there were daily chapel services we were required to attend, and the sermons at that time, as you can expect, were pretty heavy. And as President Kennedy actually had attended the school himself as a student, his address had a special meaning for us.

Since I’m able to write this, the world did not end. The Russian boats turned around. While the President got kudos for standing up to the Soviets, we all know now that there was a backroom deal: our own missiles in Turkey, which upset the Russians, had to go away. Even so, those are the times when you really appreciate a President with a brain.

As for movies, well, we needed some lightening up, and Stanley Kubrick gave us “Dr. Strangelove” a few years later. As I recall, it wasn’t until 1974, though, that “The Missiles of October” was shown on TV, and by then I was old enough to decide for myself what to watch. All I can tell you is, no actor has ever done as good a JFK as Bill Devane.

I Was There, and So Were They

This week’s annual meeting of the U.N. in New York reminds me of my own little box seat on world events as I was growing up in the city.

We lived on the second floor of an apartment building which had a good view of Park Avenue (yes, the average person actually had a shot at affording such an abode in those days). I was right across the street from Hunter College, but more importantly, my bedroom window had a beautiful view of the USSR mission at 680 Park.

That building was the frequent target of demonstrations, mostly by Hungarian expatriates protesting the Soviet Union’s use of tanks to suppress freedom movements in their country. Sometimes there were only a few demonstrators; other times the crowds were large, so much so that New York police on horses were there to keep the peace. The crowds were not violent – they made noise and carried signs, but it was the late 1950s, after all.

The Soviet mission had a wonderful architectural feature: a good-sized balcony overlooking Park Avenue. It was not uncommon for Russian and other dignitaries who were staying or who were invited there to appear on the balcony and wave at the crowds, even unappreciative ones.

On more than one occasion, then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, when he was in town, would appear on the balcony. Sometimes this was in the evening, when my parents were having people over for dinner. Not to miss an opportunity, my mother would bring the guests back to my bedroom, open the window, and look out. It didn’t really matter to them whether I was actually in bed or not. Once, Fidel Castro and Mr. Khrushchev had a meeting at the mission. My memory is bad on this point, so I don’t know whether they appeared on the balcony together, but if they did, I’m sure my mom and her dinner guests were craning their necks out the window. My mother would sometimes go downstairs to invite the police on their horses to come upstairs for a drink. No ma’am, they said, we’re on duty. And then there was the issue of what to do with the horses.

Even our side street adjacent to our apartment building was useful, because limousines carrying important people on Park Avenue would sometimes use it to escape heavy traffic. Once, the limo carrying French President Charles de Gaulle turned down the street while I was looking out the window, and I could swear that he saw me wave at him and waved back. But maybe that was just my first childhood delusion of grandeur.

Right across the side street, as I mentioned, was Hunter College, and carved into the wall was this saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We are of different opinions at different hours, but we may always be said to be at heart on the side of truth.” I saw it every morning when I got up and looked out the window.

Which tells me I better not make too much stuff up here, historical or not.

Foreign Policy

This week I had to take our relatively old laptop into the computer repair shop, which typically has a moderate turnover of employees. The new and attractive young woman at the counter had an accent. I asked her where she was from. It was Kazakhstan. I hesitated for a second, then said, “Alma Ata.” She broke into an absolutely radiant smile. “How you know this?” she asked.

No, I wasn’t psychic. Alma Ata is not her name. That’s the capital of her country, and happens to be her hometown. I know this because I’m an amateur radio operator and I’m constantly consulting maps. Kazakhstan, of course, was a part of the former Soviet Union, and is where the Russian space center is. Baikonur is that area’s Cape Canaveral.

My knowledge of geography made me a new friend – knowledge which might have been even more useful if I were 40 years younger and unmarried! Anyway, I can safely say that this is the first Kazakh I have ever met in person (I have talked to them once or twice on the radio).

Reverse the process. Let’s say you were parachuted into Kazakhstan, whose language you barely spoke, and you encountered someone who knew a city or two in your country – especially if you were from a smaller city in a less-populated state, and you ran across a Kazakh who knew something about it and perhaps had even been there. You’d probably be smiling yourself, right?

Anyway, seeing the smile on this girl’s face reinforced for me the concept that knowing something about the “Ubeki-beki-stan-stans” of this world, to reference Herman Cain (who?) can have its benefits.