Mr. Sullivan’s Bomb
[The following short piece is from "Elsewhere," a memoirre based on my journals. It was written sometime after I was 12 but the story itself takes place with I was six or seven, in the safety of my grandmother's living room, watching "The Ed Sullivan Show."]
Mr. Sullivan didn't look like a movie star. He wasn't handsome like Clark Kent. I didn't like his show nearly as much as I liked "Superman." But my grandmother liked it a lot. She let me stay up past my bedtime on Sunday nights to watch it with her. I sat on floor by her big gray chair, right next to her legs until the commercials came on; then it was okay for me to be silly. Sometimes we even got to eat our strawberry ice cream in the living room on TV trays. But my grandmother got real mad at Mr. Sullivan the night he had the bomb commercial on his show. She yelled at me to go straight to my bedroom when that man's face started melting off. I told her I wanted to stay up and see it but my grandmother said it was way too scary for kids. It could make me go blind. It was against the law for kids to watch that kind of stuff. My grandmother said they would put her in jail if she let me see it.
That bomb really was a terrible thing. It was just as scary as my grandmother said it was. Scarier even than "Superman" the time Great Caesar's ghost was haunting the chief. Even when Lois Lane figured out it wasn't really a ghost at all who was doing all that haunting--just some bank robbers pretending to be ghosts so they could steal a lot of money--I was still scared. I didn't like ghosts. But ghosts are better than bombs. I wished I never saw it explode and kill that man.
I already knew all about the bomb. My teacher talked about it because we had to practice what to do when one exploded on our school. We were supposed to hide under our desks and put our arms over our heads. Some of the kids cried every time we practiced hiding from the bomb. Sometimes I felt like crying, too. If a bomb exploded on our school we would all be murdered even if we were hiding under our desks. All us kids knew that. I figured the teacher knew it, too. I told her we should dig a bomb shelter under our classroom and put food and flashlights in there. She didn't think that was a very good idea--said we'd be plenty safe right under our desks. Grown up always tell lies. I hoped my teacher watched Mr. Sullivan's bomb exploding on TV. Then she'd know we needed a bomb shelter. I wanted her to be upset just like my grandmother was.
The bomb was almost the death of my grandmother that night. I was almost the death of her a lot of times, too, but I never did see her get like that before. When I came back in the living room she was sitting on the couch with her hand over her eyes. She kept saying "oh my, oh my, oh my," over and over again. Then she got up and went straight to the telephone to call Mrs. Johnson. She was the Baptist lady who lived across the street from us. My grandmother was crying. I heard her tell Mrs. Johnson she was glad my grandfather was in his grave so he couldn't see that bomb. I didn’t like my grandmother getting upset like that but Mr. Sullivan's bomb was a bad, bad thing. It could probably even kill Superman.
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: On May 27, 1956, Ed Sullivan introduced at short cartoon depicting what would happen to people in the wake of an atomic bomb. There was no warning other than a brief comment by Mr. Sullivan advising children who might still be up that it was a "fantasy," and not to get frightened. That was almost 60 years ago.] - See more at: https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/27567#sthash.26iOOz6H.dpuf