1960
New York Times No. 1 bestseller: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee
Best Picture: “The Apartment”
Cashbox No. 1 song of year: “Theme From ‘A Summer Place’,” Percy Faith and His Orchestra
World Series: Pittsburgh Pirates beat N.Y. Yankees, 4 games to 3
Americans killed in Vietnam War: 5 (9 total, incl. 4 in 1956-59)
Significant events:
February 1: four black college students from N.C. AT&T stage a sit-in at a Woolworth’s whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. after being denied service, sparking a national Civil Rights movement.
April 12: Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space and first to orbit the Earth.
May 1: Soviets shoot down a U.S. U-2 spy plane and capture pilot Francis Gary Powers, heightening Cold War tensions.
May 10: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law.
August 6: Chubby Checker performs “The Twist” on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” starting a worldwide dance craze.
September 28, 1960: Democratic presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy speaks in front of the Lawrence Hotel in Erie, PA while campaigning two days after the first Nixon-Kennedy debate.
October 13: Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off homer in bottom of 9th inning of Game 7 of 1960 World Series beats N.Y. Yankees 10-9 as Pittsburgh Pirates win World Series, 4 games to 3.
November 8: Senator John F. Kennedy wins presidential election over vice president Richard M. Nixon, 303-219 in electoral votes and by 112,827 in popular votes.
May 3, 1960
Cold Negotiations
Being just 13 years old, the story meant nothing to me as it broke over the news. I had no idea what was going on, or its significance, and the only thing I knew about the Cold War was that Khrushchev was a pretty scary guy who had a big wart next to his nose and said that he would bury us.
Which was pretty darn scary if you were 13 years old and you didn’t want to get buried.
Other than that, my head was pretty much up my butt. All I cared about was baseball, mainly the Pittsburgh Pirates that year, who had a pretty good team, and what girl I was currently hot on that I had absolutely no chance with. Which was just about every girl at school.
Helping Nosey Nobinski, this weird kid that I knew, cut the wires on a big bundle of the Erie Times that he was about to deliver, I happened to look at the headlines, which I seldom did before looking at the sports page. Getting ink smudges on my hands, I pulled off the top paper and read: “Reds Shoot Down U.S. Plane over U.S.S.R.” Underneath, the sub-headline read, “Pilot captured, Khrush Upset.”
The story was from an incident that took place on May 1st, and it appeared to be big news, which was usually the case when a story was in headlines. I had intended to just glance at it and then turn to check the baseball scores, but there was a picture of Khrushchev staring me in the face, and I figured I’d better see if he had said something about when we might get buried.
According to the story, which I didn’t really understand, a United States U-2 plane had been shot down while taking photos over Soviet airspace, and the U.S.S.R was very upset about it.
"Good Lord, that’s all that we need, to go to war with the Soviets,” I said to Nosey as he put the bundle of papers into his orange shoulder bag with “Erie Times” in large letters on the side.
“Son,” Nosey said – for some strange reason he called everybody son – “I don’t know anything about that, I don’t make the news, all I do is deliver it.”
“Well, maybe you should know something about it, it could be pretty serious,” I said, not really knowing if it was or not.
“Well, I don’t have time for that, we’ve got to deliver these papers,” he said, “and you promised you’d help me.”
So I said, okay, let’s get going, and we went about our business, and I quickly forgot about the story, and then checked out the baseball scores as we walked.
After we finished, I stopped back at Nosey’s house to have a bottle of Nehi Orange and some chips that he promised for helping him. As we sat down to snack he turned on the TV to watch “American Bandstand,” which I loved, and eagerly looked forward to seeing. But instead of Dick Clark coming on, Walter Cronkite was on talking about the U-2 incident.
“After being shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile at an altitude of nearly 70,000 feet, the U-2 plane crashed to the ground and the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured,” Cronkite said.
“Oh wow, how did he survive after getting shot down so high up like that?” I said.
“He must have had a parachute,” Nosey said. “They’re good for things like that, you know.”
“I wonder how they captured him?” I said.
“They probably hit him with a bottle of vodka,” Nosey said, laughing, and wiping his mouth with his hand after devouring a chip.
Shushing Nosey, I continued to listen as Cronkite went on.
“The Soviets claim to have recovered the plane practically intact, and they say that it’s proof that the U.S. has been spying on them,” Cronkite said.
“Good Lord, they caught us spying on them?” I said. “No wonder Khrushchev is mad.”
“He probably didn’t like what we saw, like how he polishes his head or sends people to Siberia,” Nosey said, letting loose with his patented sick donkey howl.
“Hey, this isn’t funny, it’s terrible news,” I said.
Cronkite continued: “The U.S. denies that the plane had been spying, they say it was a weather plane, but the Soviets claim to have recovered the camera and spying mechanisms.”
“Oh boy, I hope that isn’t true,” I said, shuddering. “This could cause us to get buried.”
“Son, don’t worry, you know the Soviets, they’re probably making it up, and it isn’t true,” Nosey said, eating another chip.
But it was true. We were caught red-handed.
Despite the U.S.’s efforts to put spin on it, a furor erupted in the U.S.S.R and throughout the world. Practically overnight, tensions between the two superpowers became a powder keg that could erupt at any time. It was the Cold War on the cusp of becoming hot.
More of the story came out in the following days, and I became more and more frightened. It was hard to get my mind off of it, and I would go to bed at night with visions of Khrushchev’s finger reaching for the button that would end up burying us.
Each night I’d watch Cronkite and hope that somehow things would be cleared up and go away. But they only got worse.
After a trial, Powers was convicted on August 19th of “the grave crime of espionage,” the Soviet courts said, and he was sentenced to three years in prison followed by seven years in a labor camp.
Thankfully, on February 10, 1962, the U.S. managed to pull off a prisoner exchange of Powers for captured Soviet KGB spy Colonel Rudolf Abel at the Glienicke Bridge in Germany, which connected East and West Berlin, and the situation cooled down.
But the Cold War continued to smolder, and became more heated from that point on.
With every kid in the U.S. undergoing "duck and cover" and air raid drills at school, leaving them with vivid and terrifying nightmares, and the nation seeing Khrushchev’s face plastered on every newscast, magazine and newspaper, it left the nation fearful that nuclear war could be erupting at any time, bringing the world to an end.
It was scary times for us all.
But somehow, some way, we managed to survive.
