Delta-Bravo-Zero-Four-Black were our code words in Moscow that summer of 1954. The Cold War was on, and, despite our adolescence, we were right in the middle of it. Armed with Defense Department charts that showed the silhouettes, names, ranges, and blood-red stars of Soviet military aircraft, we scanned the skies and reported any unidentified sightings to our uniformed handlers at Fairchild Air Force Base. We peered through government-issue binoculars, watching for a sneak attack on Moscow—a small, rural, college town surrounded by contoured wheat fields in the panhandle of northern Idaho.

We belonged to the Air Force Ground Observer Corps, and were among 375,000 Americans who, in organized shifts, monitored horizons all over the country, reporting directly to the Air Force. According to the promotional materials from the Defense Department, the Soviets had the bomb and the planes to drop it, but America’s DEW line—the distant early-warning radar system—could not reliably detect low-flying bombers and their escort MiGs, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where we lived. With the United States so vulnerable, the Air Force operated the Ground Observer Corps for some nine years in the 1950s, enlisting private citizens to operate observation posts and act, it was said, like modern-day Paul Reveres.

Between the seventh and eighth grades, when Doris Day was singing “Secret Love” on the radio and adults were talking about the Army-McCarthy hearings at the dinner table, members of my Boy Scout Buffalo Patrol took our first loyalty oath, promising not to overthrow our government, and were formally inducted into the Ground Observer Corps. From the Air Force recruiter came promises of shiny silver wing pins, a subscription to Aircraft Flash magazine for photos of military jets with billowing contrails, and viewings of fun Air Force movies about the earth slowly turning red, like a Sherwin-Williams paint commercial.

A more effective pitch came from veteran sky watchers in our scout troop. Hidden behind the Soviet-aircraft identification chart in the observation shack was, we were told, a legendary book containing unprecedented carnal scenes not found in any available literature of the day. But that was not all. Supposedly the fastest girl in the eighth grade had signed up for the Ground Observer Corps, giving titillated Buffaloes all manner of sexual double entendres to snicker about when discussing the observation shack.

Because of where we lived, it didn’t take much to recruit us. According to adolescent folklore, Moscow, Idaho, was unquestionably the number-one Soviet bombing target. Although the town’s high school team was the Bears and one of its colors was red and there was even an annual May Day parade led by obscure Hollywood actors almost everyone pretended to have heard of, there were not, to our immense pride, any real similarities between the Moscow in Idaho and that other one. After all, we were the free Moscow, and that comparative fact was always cabled