All of this mess with North Korea has me reminiscing about the Russians. Adam told me the other day that he thought I should go stock up on canned goods..this is after North Korea threatened to send long range missiles to “wipe” the US out.

You see, when I was a child the cold war was active which meant the US vs. the USSR (weird to say USSR instead of Russia!) for the most part. At any rate…my father, a Vietnam veteran had an intense….shall we call it a “fear” perhaps of the Russians.

It certainly made for an exciting (and I am sure I was sometimes fearful although fortunately do not recall) childhood. No, we did not have a bomb shelter. But we did have EVERYthing else. And, I mean it!!! I had my very own fitted gas mask. How many kids get to say that…We had months of stockpiled food and life supplies, all stored in these five gallon white buckets. To this day, the buckets are a great source of humor between my siblings and I and a great source of stress for my poor Mother.

Preparations for the russians started when I was about this age...

I remember one particular day when we went to this huge grocery store. It was like a grocery warehouse…probably like Sams clubs are today. I was riding in the seat of the cart. The main thing I remember is cases upon cases of tomato soup. The lady checking us out looked at me and smiled. She said, “my you are buying a lot of food” to which I replied…”Yes, the Russians are coming to dinner”. Ahhh, the innocence of a child. The last time I was at my Dad’s (granted this has been probably at least five years) there was still some of that tomato soup left!

...and ended when I was about this age