Waltzing Mathilda

It's 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis stops the heart of the world for 3 days. Fear lives forever and the threat lives on............

WALTZING MATHILDA

            Clutching a five-dollar bill, the pregnant young woman stood in front of the Thrifty-Food meat counter examining packages of ground beef. It wasn’t her regular grocery shopping day.

            Crowds elbowed their way down the aisles.  A decision must be made.  Soon shelves would be bare.

            After seeing her husband off to work that morning, she joined other wives and young mothers residing at their common apartment complex, for coffee, gossip and news stories. 

            The previous night, October 22, 1962, John F. Kennedy, gave the most frightening speech any president ever made.  The United States teetered on the brink of war he gravely announced. Nuclear war.

            A week earlier an American Air Force pilot flew over Cuba, noticed long range missile silos pointed toward North America, took photos and duly reported to headquarters.

            Subsequent long distance secret negotiations between Russia, (who installed them,) Cuba, (who wanted them) and The United States, (who didn’t) came to a standoff.  To force their hand, President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Russian ships into Cuban waters. Instead of complying, Russia upped the ante. Back off or risk nuclear war Khrushchev threatened.  

            With that unfathomable possibility fresh in their minds, the coffee klatchers conversations turned grim. Previously, the use of nuclear weapons occurred only once. High school history lessons featured fuzzy images in newsreels of the United States dropping atom bombs on Japan. Hundreds of thousands died, many more were damaged for life.

            Nothing would ever be the same again the alarmed women speculated. If the worse came to pass, food would be in short supply. In a fog of terror and confusion they decided it best to stock up on groceries. Early morning television shows reported the populace already doing that very thing.  Hoards descended on grocery stores like runs on the banks after the 1929 stock market crash.   

            Employed as a clerk at the local hardware store, each week the seventeen-year-old wife’s nineteen-year-old husband brought home his meager paycheck. Cashed, the one, and five dollar bills, each resided in separate envelopes until required.  Rent commanded the largest amount. Others labeled utilities, doctors, gas and food contained smaller sums. So tight the budget, food money amounted to a precise twelve dollars a week.

            Standing among other anxious shoppers, the mother-to-be contemplated the best use of the five-dollar bill pilfered from the rent stash.

            In a daze, she carefully calculated ground beef, priced at twenty-nine cents a pound could be bought in a four-pound package for one dollar. The savings would allow a purchase of an additional can of tomato sauce. Although meager, the extra provisions purchased that day to be put aside for the unthinkable possible disaster gave her a small degree of comfort.

            That evening she called her parents to get their reactions regarding the current state of affairs.  Had they bought extra food too, she asked?  No, they informed her.  If the worse scenario manifested, food would not save them. Trying to sound hopeful, they told her if they did live through this credible doomsday scenario, canned food would be plentiful for a long while. Remember ‘The Earth Abides’, her father asked? When she was in the eighth grade, at his urging she’d read that book. With a shiver, the storyline crystalized in her mind. Written in 1949, canned food saved the few survivors in that classic end of the world tale. 

            Television never played a large role in her life before marriage.  After, it figured prominently in her car-less, cash-less domestic filled days. School, friends and horses occupied her pre-nuptial world.  Soap operas talk shows and movies now filled long hours spent alone. The day after the shocking news hit the airwaves, she settled in for a random afternoon film.

            ‘On The Beach’ was released in 1959. The apocalyptic drama takes place after a nuclear holocaust. Set in Australia with an award winning cast, it tells the story of their end days. Radiation permeated every airspace on earth with the exception of the land down under. The cloud was however drifting south, where the few remaining humans left on the planet bravely faced their reality.

             ‘Waltzing Mathilda’, the iconic Australian composition, provided the soundtrack in haunting strains from raucous to funereal throughout the heart wrenching account that could only end one way.  As the poisonous air carried on trade winds drifts closer, the government gives out suicide pills. Some vow to resist ingesting them. In the end, they all do.

            Softly massaging her swollen belly, the woman imagined the film’s characters agonizing decisions. Not due to meet her own newborn for another three months, she now found herself wondering if she would. Her few short years on the planet up until then had been ones of peace.  With legs curled under her trembling body, tears began pouring down youthful silky cheeks and silently the end of her innocence slipped away. What kind of a world lie ahead?

            A few terror filled days later a collective sigh of relief swept the world. An agreement between the three countries had been reached. There would be no nuclear war. Not then.

             Almost sixty years later, when hearing ‘Waltzing Mathilda’, the now great-grandmother still feels the chill of that indelibly etched image of her country facing the prospect of nuclear annihilation, for those few days in 1962. As a lifelong pacifist, she hopes it serves as a cautionary tale.