Cold War Relic

“In the event of an attack, the lives of those families which are not hit in a nuclear blast and fire can still be saved if they can be warned to take shelter and if that shelter is available.”

President John F. Kennedy, July 25^th, 1961

Bob and Merna Potts took up the government’s call to build

the family fallout shelter. Within days of Kennedy’s speech,

they were in touch with Peace O’ Mind Shelter Co. out of

Stephenville, Texas. Fully guaranteed—course who’d be around

to complain if it didn’t work, Merna pointed out, but Bob

told her to hush up and start digging…. Construction took most

of the fall. Opened in December; cost close to 2,000 dollars even

back then. Wall Street said shelter trade could top twenty billion for

the coming year, (that is, if there was a coming year….)

They had to wrap it in heavy plastic to keep out

Oregon’s infamous damp, but it was a beauty. Steel-reinforced

concrete walls, Ceiling and floor eight inches thick.

It’d reduce gamma rays by a factor of ½ to the 10^th power.

Bathroom facilities, of course, were a bit more primitive

consisting of a pail and a supply of plastic bags, construction

was supposed to lie flush with the lawn, but created a noticeable

mound. “It certainly is a challenge to landscape around it,”

said Merna. But Bob reminded her about not asking what her country

could do for her, and how a little sacrifice on behalf of one’s family

could firm up our national nuclear resolve. With their shelter in, they took

the Cuban Missile Crisis, and those Soviet tanks at the Berlin wall,

in stride. More and more of their neighbors were digging

up their lawns in the night, though, installing ‘wine cellars’,

‘game rooms’ or “additions.” The Potts weren’t fooled. They saw the blankets,

water jugs, cans and often shotguns, going down into those holes.

Yet, fear and high alert can only hold the national attention for so long.

Mere security loses its glamour. Eventually, even Bob got tired

of all that duck and cover. Bombs, nuclear winter, détente

and even first strike capacity on the other side lost their power

to terrify. Folks just began to trust that our planes could stop their planes,

and that no one would really push that button, pick up that hot red phone..

Of course, the Potts’ teenage son Greg put the place to good use.

They got to calling it ‘Greg’s room’ after he ran an extension cord down there

and moved in his blow up chair, boom box, lava lamp, and tape collection.

He said it kept a good temperature on hot summer nights, but

he had to keep the hatch open, cause of ventilation problems.

The shelter’s just some strange fossil now, after a brief revival at Y2K,

a relic of cold war suburban life. Some of the original foodstuffs

are still down there, but Merna says she wouldn’t trust that can of egg solids.

And Bob, at 82, doesn’t visit his underground bunker much now. The boom

in the shelter market with another president talking up vigilance,

against a new generation of evil-doers hatching schemes of terror

doesn’t interest him much anymore. Bob used to believe he had a way around it all,

and no one had to die. But now, he knows better, himself unsheltered

from the increasing tempo of his body’s own fallout, he moves

in the world with greater care, as he charts the half-lives of his own

failing organs. Somehow, he isn’t afraid anymore. Some evenings,

he and Merna just sit on the porch and marvel at that mound, at their own

belief that they could hedge their bets against the inevitable, cheat death.

He barely remembers now when his fears ran deeper than his concrete hideout,

but he still wonders how he’d have lived down there, and how he’d have known

when it was safe to emerge, and he no longer prays for a world without end.