Charles Nelson Hutchins

Castroville, Texas

May 23, 2003

Abby Hutchins

Palo Alto College

History 1302 - Maymester 2003

Well since you were born and raised during the Cold War, tell me about some of the prominent memories you have.
Well the prominent memories, I guess they would have begun with Sputnik, that was a satellite that was a satellite that Russia put into orbit around the earth before the United States could get one. I just remember part of that time of the space race. I think that the United States was the first one that put a monkey in a space satellite and retrieved. After that, other event during the Cold War, I remember the Russians and personalities like Khrushchev banging his shoe against the speaker podium. I remember the Civil Rights riots that were going on during that time, Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, of course Kennedy being killed.

Ok, expand on Vietnam , were you old enough to be drafted?
I graduated from high school in 1965 and at that time the build up for military, and recruits and draftees was really getting active, I was going to college and so I had a college deferment. A lot of my friends in Van Horn and ones that I went to school with at Tech, when they got out or quit going to school were drafted but I never did get drafted. Going to school five years and then during that five years they had created the lottery system of draft and my number was 309 on my birth date so they were going to have to draft people from age or birthdays, mine would have been the 309th birth date for that particular year and I'm not sure how many year spans that encompassed, but all of them would have to be drafted until mine so there was very, very little chance that I would have ever been drafted. I do remember watching a lot of television in college in the dorm, before we went to supper every night watching the war and following it very closely all through that time.

So as you grew up and during college the main way that you found out about the war and everything that was going on was TV?
For me it was, radio was just something to play music on it wasn't like now where there is talk radio and there is news on it constantly. Of course there is the newspaper that mother and dad would read but I didn't read much of the newspaper. Mainly I stayed informed by television.

How did your family and community prepare for bomb attacks and stuff like that?
Well the main thing that the community did would be through the school community. We would have bomb drills, I guess, where we would get under the desk and cover our head maybe out in the hall, and we would have those kind of drills. I don't know if they would have been very effective had there been a war. But some of the people in the neighborhood would build bomb shelters, which were concrete bunkers that were built in the backyards. Our family, we didn't have any bomb shelters. If we had a war I guess we would have gone over to a neighbor's house.

You said you remember some about the Civil Rights, what are your memories on that?
Mainly just again on television and the demonstrations that they would have. You still see news clips occasionally where they would have the big water hoses, hosing down the marchers, and some of the riots and fires and things like that. I remember Martin Luther King, seeing him speak. He was portrayed by the news, a lot of their news, would be casting suspicion on whether he was communist inspired or not. I remember him being killed as well. But civil rights in Lamesa, you weren't exposed to discrimination like you were in the deep South. We went to high school that was an all-white school, there weren't any blacks there and I never thought any different, or anything about it. There was a black community and they had a school where they were.

What memories do you have about the JFK assassination?
When he was killed I was a junior in high school, in a study hall. I remember when the principal came on the P.A. system and informed the school that the President of the United States had been assassinated. It was a very sad event. We watched a lot of TV during that time, those days following that, to be informed on what was going on. I lived in Van Horn at the time, that day after school I went across the street to a friend's house and watched everything on TV that we could to see what was going on.

Are there any major events that took place at that time that affected your life then and now?
Oh, they may have but I couldn't tell you exactly what they would have been. The Cuban Missile Crisis and that scary time, Kennedy being killed, and King being assassinated. If they did have an affect on my life I don't really know how.

Besides all of the hard times, what was your daily life like?
When I was little growing up in Lubbock and Lamesa, we would just go outside every day after school or if it was before I started school we would just play a lot. We didn't have television until I was probably four or five years old so that was good in hindsight. We didn't watch 24 hours worth of television. For one thing it didn't start till about seven o'clock in the morning and went off at about 10. We learned to play and to do things. We didn't have computers or any of the computer games that they have that kids get stuck on. We just played football, baseball; we'd play army, and any games you could think of. Most of the games we would create with kids up and down the street.

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you would like to share with me now?
Well, not really. They say it was a cold war but it was just everyday life to me passing through it. As adults, I guess we realize more what's going on and that there are problems. As kids growing up, you've never grown up before so you don't know what it's supposed to be like and that's just the way life is and that just seems to be the way it was in my time.

ANALYSIS

I learned a lot from this interview. I learned that when my father was young there was a lot of hard times but because he was so young, he didn't realize how hard life was for everyone. I learned that my father was raised in a town where civil rights were not a big problem. I also concluded that I am a lot like my father. Now I know what the Cold War was actually like to live through. Before the interview I didn't even know what went on during that time. I benefited from learning about the past through my father because I can see how I would have looked at things. I also get to hear the more down to earth side of the story. One drawback that I examined was that my father was too young to really know the political part of most of the events. Overall, this is an effective way to learn about the past because one can hear first hand through stories, instead of reading about history in books.

Ochoa, Ruben E. Castroville, Texas. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/C C/hjc5.html. The history of little towns like Castroville, Texas are usually never told or heard of. This project is put together to get the histories of little towns to the interested.

Clark, Andrew. Khrushchev banging his shoe against the speaker podiumRussian Keep Khrushchev Name Alive- Literally. Y-Press. http://www.ypress.org/specialedition/russia/102499_khrushchev.html. Many adults who lived during the Cold War remember the event when Khrushchev was banging his shoe against the table. This site gives a summary of the time the Khrushchev was in control and in the middle of the article there is a recollection from one of his grandsons about the "shoe banging" incident.

VietnamVietnam War. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vietnam.htm. This site goes into a very detailed summary of the Vietnam War. It gives all kinds of facts, including total personnel for each year.

lottery system of draft Would you have been drafted. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/13/the.draft. This site put together by CNN gives a good definition and description of how the government did the lottery draft system.

JFK assassinationJFK Assassination. http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/5237/k.html. This site gives a quick run through of JFK's presidency, then talks about the assassination in detail.

Goldman, Jerry; Stein, Giel. Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missle Crisis, October 18-29,1962. http://www.hpol.org/jfk/cuban. This site gives you the option of watching and listening to different recorded events. This site also gives a summary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Last updated on: 12/15/2008 20:27:53