Blog Post: The War Scare of October

Most of the time growing up in Conejo it was one long summer, only interrupted by school. The outside world never seemed to be very important to me and the other students at Conejo Elementary School.  

But in the early 1960s that peaceful slumber was disturbed by the rumblings of war. It was all about Cuba (or Cuber as our president called it). For some reason, unknown to me, the Russian Communists had placed rockets there armed with atomic bombs and wanted to blow us up! Why they wanted this was also unknown, but we were told in school that they were godless Communists who just wanted to destroy America.  

The President had blockaded Cuba and it looked like war was coming. Everyone was talking about building bomb shelters and places to hide from the deadly radiation that was the bi-product of the nuclear blast. The school told us that a warning blast would sound that would inform us that the Soviet bombers were detected over Alaska and they would be over Thousand Oaks not long after that. The School would have all the students go home, I guess, to face death together with our families.  

We had no bomb shelter, and I fantasized about going into the hills where there were caves to stay. The most bizarre thing was the way people acted–they cleaned out the stores! I remember empty shelves at the Oakdale and E & K Market. I remember a guy selling a battery operated radio on the street corner for $40–then a great deal of money.  

I had nightmares of the bomb falling and being melted by the blast. The crisis was over in ten days. There was no war–the Russians blinked, so we were told–but the peace of my childhood was never quite the same.  

Do you recall that terrible time when WW III seemed just around the corner?

Richard Senate is a local historian and renowned area ghost hunter.