[Milsurplus] SWBC Vintage

[Hue Miller]

>Message: 3
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:10:00 -0600
From: "David Stinson" <arc5 at ix.netcom.com>

>>....I wrote them a reception report and commented that 
>>their ruler needed to pay more attention to rice growing 

>Nice to hear someone- even if it is the DPRK- still does
this kind of thing.  I remember when I was a kid and sent
a reception report to Radio Havana Cuba.  For the next 
couple of years, I got regular propaganda mail from them.
Newspapers, booklets, even cards on holidays.
It was printed on paper that was made from 
sugercane pulp.  I wonder if our mailman thought
he had a "commie pinko" on his route ;-).
73 Dave AB5S

-To the last part first. Actually, as I recall, there were
some issues with FBI ? or local authorities taking note
of people who were getting such propaganda mail from
the Commies. Think I actually read about a case or two
where the Post Office refused to deliver the mail and 
sent it back or destroyed it. A minor level of intimidation
but in some cases, intimidation nevertheless. So the 
Bill of Rights is fungible, in some times.

-I wrote Radio Peking somewhere around 1962. For 
the next year or so, I received periodic mailings of
small booklets having to do with obscure political
warfare going on within China. This did not have a lot
to do with my life here. The booklets had tantalizing 
titles like maybe, "Resolutely Refute the Capitalist 
Roaders of Lin Bao Clique".  ( I just made up that 
particular name. ) Of course those made no sense to
me, and I didn't see how I could contribute anything
to their Struggle for Socialism, or why I, high school
student, should. So I would remove the covers from
their  booklets and use them to make new dust covers
for my own paperback books the same size. The 
average high skool students around me had no 
horizon past their high school area and no one took
notice that I had books with titles like "Resolutely
Refute, etc. etc."
A few years later I was talking to a another U.W.
student and he was telling me he had written 
Radio Peking and received from them a multiple
volume hardback book set on the life of Mao
Tse Tung, and he was gloating that he had stiffed
them for the cost. But thinking about it later, I 
don't think there was actually any way to transfer
money between the countries in those years. 
( File under: "Cold War Nostalgia". )
-Hue