Interview

After reading the children's book "Butter Battle Book" and watching the animated short film, we were tasked with interviewing some one that lived through the cold war. During the interview I learned quite a lot about how the world worked 60 years ago.  When asked simple questions like, "what was your social life like?", "Were you scared of the USSR?", and " how did politics influence your daily life?", the answers were quite surprising. Social life was a large part of the fifties and sixties.  Many people felt like they had reputations that had to be upheld. Women always wore nice clothes and treated men with respect. Children listened to their parents and elders.  Men were valued members of society.  The social life much like it is now, was very complicated. Cold war influences did not scare people from having a social life nor did it frighten them into submission. The only part of life that was affected was the schooling. Teachers taught students how to prepare for a nuclear attack just to be safe. They struck fear in the minds of young children that someday soon, planes would drop bombs on American soil. We may laugh now at the ridiculousness of the drills because in all reality they wouldn't do anything, but during this time, they took them to heart. This leads into the second question. The Soviet Union struck fear into our political leader for quite some time. When asked if they were ever frightened of them, she said " it wasn't so much the Russians I was scared of, it was more the cubans. After they got those missiles from Russia everything got way more serious. The thought of a nuclear war then started to hit home with me. But I didn't let it ruin my life. I moved on like most people and as you can see America got over it. The last question sort of answers its self. Politics were the world in the Cold War era. With a war of words taking control of the media, national leaders controlled everything. National leaders were consonantly thinking about the situations at hand and how to prepare for the world coming to an end.