By Jim Heffernan
Bombs have been in the news a lot
lately — the N-bomb, the F-bomb, Michael Moore’s Broadway show (bombed). Now
the United States and North Korea are staring each other down over North
Korea’s bomb plans.
In many, many decades of life, I
have found that living is more tranquil when bombs are not in the news. I’m old
enough to actually remember the dropping of the A-bomb on Japan, bringing World
War II to an end.
The A-bomb (for Atomic) is the
father of the N-bomb (Nuclear). Somewhere in there to further scare us are the
H-bomb (hydrogen, stronger than the others) and another N-bomb (Neutron), which
only kills people but leaves buildings standing. Drop a neutron bob on New York
City, for example, and Trump Tower would remain standing. Not so much its
inhabitants.
I was 5 years old when atomic bombs
were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. News of it was everywhere, and even a
child of kindergarten age understood that it was something terrible, frightening.
I can recall my parents talking seriously about it at supper, ignoring the Lone
Ranger on the kitchen radio in the background.
The whole idea of such a big bomb
frightened me. And here’s how it manifested itself on one occasion: I was
playing on our front porch when a huge bomb-like object suddenly appeared in
the sky above western Duluth. It terrified me. I ran into the house screaming
to my mother that the atomic bomb was coming.
She darted onto the porch and saw
immediately what it really was: a blimp (a.k.a. dirigible). Not the Good Year
blimp, just an ordinary blimp that looked an awful lot like a great big bomb.
My mother allayed my fears, explaining that it was a harmless aircraft. Not to
worry.
As time went by, the atomic bomb
became kind of a fun thing for kids. One of the big breakfast cereal
producers—General Mills, maybe Kellogg’s—offered kids an “Atomic Bomb Ring” for
25 cents and a box top from one of their cereals. I got one. It was an
adjustable metal ring with a tiny plastic bomb on top. If you held the bomb
close to your eye, inside the bomb you could see something like sparks flying.
Wow.
Of course the threat of an atomic
attack prompted the schools to add atomic bomb attack drills to fire drills. I
learned later that some schools in the country had the kids “duck and cover”
beneath their school desks. We just filed into the hall and stood facing the
lockers lining the wall until the all clear. This was not nearly as much fun as
a fire drill, which required us to file outside the school in orderly fashion
and breathe the fresh air of a beautiful day. You could say atomic bomb drills
bombed in comparison.
Oh yes, the F-bomb. Got to deliver
on that. It was brought to the fore recently by short-lived White House
communications director Anthony Scaramucci in an interview with a New Yorker
magazine reporter during which Scaramucci dropped several F-bombs, shocking
nearly everyone and probably resulting in the loss of his job after serving
just 10 days.
But it opened the door to several
media organizations, like the New York Times, to use the entire F-bomb word in
reporting on Scaramucci’s diatribe. I was shocked. I remember the first time I
ever saw the word in print: summer of 1963 reading Irving Wallace’s novel “The
Carpetbaggers.”
It’s a word that was very familiar
to teenage boys of my generation, and many generations before and after, but
nobody ever wrote it down, for goodness sake. (Goodness had nothing to do with
it.)
I had actually learned the word
several years before. Right around the time the A-bomb was employed for the
first time, I learned what is today referred to as the F-bomb stood for. A
neighbor boy and I were in the alley next to my home (these things always
happen in alleys) discussing various swear words and their seriousness. They
were all bad, of course, but “hell” and “damn” didn’t seem like they would bar
you from getting into heaven, should the occasion arise. A few others were more
serious—you know what they are without my actually spelling them out.
Then my friend (we weren’t close,
though) said he’d tell me the “worst” swear word of all. It was what we today
refer to as the F-bomb. And he was right. It has endured as the worst swear
word of all throughout the many, many decades of my life. Oops, we’re back to
square one.
Editor's note: We learned to "duck & cover" in the 50's. Check out the video the Dept. of Education and civil Defense Dept. prepared for those of us growing up in that era HERE.
