Oh, the stories a newspaper can tell
By Staff
Scot Beard
One of the things I enjoy doing each week is scouring old newspapers for the Looking Back feature on page two of the paper.
I have always enjoyed history, and I find it fascinating to see what was happening in Franklin County 10, 15, 25 and 50 years ago.
The majority of news I have found – like paving projects – is boring now, but was important at the time.
If it had not been important, we would still be driving on dirt roads.
Not all of the stories are bad, however. I have found some fascinating stories about court challenges of election results and struggles to fund local schools.
Tuesday morning I found what I consider the most interesting article yet.
The story, published in the Aug. 27, 1959 edition, caught my attention with the headline "30,000 Bound for Franklin if Atomic Threat Develops."
I was surprised.
The most ominous thing I have read about in the 1959 editions so far was the polio threat.
The story talked about how the county could expect a growth in population if an atomic bomb were to hit one of seven strategic targets in Alabama.
The article was also fascinating because of the language it used.
Here is a sample: "If the third world war should come, and it could be hours or minutes away now…"
In hind sight, it is funny to look back and see how worked up people got about the idea of the Soviet Union lobbing a few nukes in our general direction.
It is only funny because the attack never came.
I remember the end of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war in the 1980s. While I was only a child – I was born in 1980 – I do remember the tension, even though it had faded greatly since the 1960s.
I can only imagine what it must have been like back then when technology and defense of such an attack was nowhere near as developed as it is now.
This article gave me better insight into the fears of that day than anything I have seen on the History Channel.
Of course people in Washington, D.C. were scared, but realizing how people in Franklin County Alabama – which had to be pretty low on the Soviet list of targets – would be affected was interesting.
I cannot wait to find out what other stories await me in the newspapers of yesterday.
