Our Fall-Out Shelter

 

 

Only a few days ago we visited graves and attended parades to remember and celebrate the lives of our men and women who have given their lives for each of us in the United States of America and many European countries. My mind traveled back in time to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, a time that created fear in the hearts of many Americans. 

I created a post on Facebook--

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

and then continued to think and recall the fears of war during my childhood.  Would I be dead some day soon, before I could even drive a car?

Beginning in mid-1950's my father and our family would drive to the Miami Country club to open the doors for people in the neighborhood seeking shelter from the storm. One year we learned afterwards that the three story dark red brick Fullerton home on East Central and Elm st. had been hit. I knew the Fullerton's were not in the shelter that night, and it worried me that Billy, my classmate, could have been hurt. The news the next day reassured us that no one was injured and that the storm hit the north side of the house. Otherwise, it was an exciting time for the kids because we were allowed to run in and out of the men's and women's basement locker rooms. 

KGLC blared loudly on various radios that people brought with them.  Depending on the length of time in the basement Dad would sometimes sell pop or other snacks to the families. 

 

History changed. After the Civil Defense became active, the club was no longer used as a place of shelter and the talk of our parents centered on building "Fallout Shelters" that could also be tornado shelters. 

1961-63 became a pivotal time in our history, and my parents, along with the Dahl family and others in town, took the Soviet threats seriously. Driving the Muntz, Dad's race car, my father made it an adventure to find a suitable shelter and safety for his family.

The awning covers the bomb shelter entrance.  

By summer of 1962 a "fallout shelter" had been dropped into the ground at 209 H NE.  Mother filled it with the proper foods and toiletries. (We didn't know all the dangers.)   It was my job to remind her to change the foods every six months.  It was a schedule we kept throughout my high school years.  And, yet, I only wished to live to be 16 and legally drive a car. On a personal note, there was a multiple choice question on my driver's test December 26, 1963 that asked how low we should let our gas tanks drop before refilling. The correct answer was refill at a half-a-tank. The logic being that we would need that much gas to drive to the caves in Missouri for safety.

In retrospect our naivety stuns me. I grew up in a culture of families who had survived world wars, early pandemics, and the devastating recession/depression of the 1930's. We planned to survive and live. There was a great future ahead for all who worked.

Our optimism can be seen in our history as the Civil Defense advised schools and communities to build shelters. I don't personally remember the short movies showing how to conduct air-raid drills.

However, I vividly recall hiding under my desk in fifth grade at Roosevelt and looking out the window wondering if I would see the atomic bomb go off before it killed me. In junior high and high school we were instructed to go to the hall ways and duck and cover. As a young girl wearing tight skirts and blouses, I found it difficult to squat properly and remain in position any length of time. I wasn't the least bit worried about dying, I was more concerned with my slip showing. 

This Getty Image is much larger than our reality.

Our bomb shelter was a steel tank dropped into the ground covered with cement, much like our present day tornado shelter buried in the corner of or garage, with a ladder and opening a foot above ground. The square opening and steel top with lock inside to keep strangers out made it challenging to lower food and supplies to the shelter. (During those years girls did not wear jeans. I had summer shorts or dresses.)

Our shelter contained a bathroom at the far end, two pull down bunk beds on each side of the tank, built in storage units under the beds (built by my father). Any wall space left over contained food, water, first aid items, and decks of cards to play. I do not recall how the shelter was lighted, but we did have a battery powered radio. We sat on the beds or the storage unit underneath. Mother put Tang in the shelter instead of Kool-Aid because we learned from experience that we would not drink Kool-Aid without sugar added, and Tang was ready to mix, sugar, flavors, and water.

Mother kept a list of all items purchased in the construction of the shelter.

Over the years we made several trips to the shelter when the tornado sirens blared, otherwise, I invited friends over and we spent the night in the deep deep darkness of the shelter, creating memories that we would live to tell about. 

 The heyday of the fallout shelter occurred during the administration of John F. Kennedy, which saw both a rise in international tensions and Kennedy's advocacy of shelters as part of the American response. During the Berlin Crisis of 1961, precipitated by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's aggressive moves toward West Berlin, Kennedy gave a nationally televised speech explaining the gravity of the situation. He also endorsed the construction of fallout shelters, saying, "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." If further inducement for building shelters was needed, it was provided fifteen months later by the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the world came closer to nuclear war than it ever had before.

* https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/fallout-shelters

 

 

 

 

Miami Memories: Tornado alley

In my wanderings this morning I was playing with words and rhymes. The sun barely breached the horizon and cast a golden red glow in my room causing an old rhyme to echo, "Red sky in the morning sailors take warning." "This is the green day," I mumble to the world, "Top of the Morning to all of you and Happy St. Patrick's Day." My mind casually ambled playing with green rhymes (while the chicken boiled over!):

Green clouds brewing

Tornadoes building

Sirens blowing

Dead man walking

Run for shelter.

With that last line I was taken back to Roosevelt School on Gst. Northeast, Miami, Oklahoma, and my fifth grade classroom with Miss Garman. We had tornado sirens starting that year I entered fifth grade; we had KGLC broadcasting music, sports, and weather; and we had one basement in the block, next door to us, at the Broderick's. It's purpose mainly was to store canned goods. The wet cement walls were lined with shelves and one window well gave light from the West. (I would have preferred the Searle's basement which was a cleanly lite apartment, but it was a block away. Fear and torrents of rain usually kept us near home.) I don't know which scared me the worst, the cold damp dark basement, the threat of tornadoes, or my imagination that snakes would slither out of the walls.

Several times that spring we all found ourselves running for cover and standing face to face dripping wet and shaking in that basement. As much as tornadoes frightened me, clouds and weather patterns fascinated me. Because we were often outside playing golf and just playing my dad taught me what to watch for when the weather began to change. On the playground that spring day I felt static in the air, as I swung back and forth watching the green clouds boil and build in the Southwest sky. I noticed the teachers eyes were watching the skies, I thought with the same fascination. Inside our flat blond brick building the radio blared from the office and Miss Garman, our teacher, had placed her radio by the window to listen for any warnings.

Our fifth grade windows faced the East and tornadoes generally battered us from the Southwest, so I would not be able to watch and warn people. I walked up to Miss Garman's desk and spoke quietly in her ear, "If you will let me go out to the playground I can watch for the storm and warn everyone." She smiled and said, "No, don't worry. We'll send you kids home who live nearby if it gets bad." I thought that was a great idea since the school had windows on all sides and no real shelter.

Within minutes the winds began to whip up the dust and tangle the trees. KGLC announced that a tornado was on the ground in Welch, Ok., and for residents to be prepared to take cover. Nervous excitement built in the classroom. At some point Miss Hamilton, our principal, walked room to room with her high heels clicking telling us if sirens blew that those of us who lived nearby and had basements close would be sent home. Then with her beady eyes and shaking finger she pointed at us (we knew who we were) saying, "You are to go directly home to your parents first, then go take shelter. The rest of us will take shelter in the kitchen."

In an instant, sirens rang. Ivan Lee, the neighborhood bully, fled from his 6th grade room screaming while the rest of us, David, Diane, the two Jeanne's and myself ran in giggly delight. The blowing torrents of rain had hit just as we left the building. The two Jeanne's were the first ones home, we turned to run up the alley with Ivan Lee already out of sight. I was running so hard one of my moccasins flew off. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, I was so scared. My mother, holding my little sister's hand, met me in the backyard near the alley. We immediately dashed over to the Broderick's basement. Off and on siren warnings blared that afternoon and evening. Each time frightened eyes stood and faced each other while mother's tried to calm us. We learned that tornadoes had touched down out by the fairgrounds and then East of town, but not near us.

I knew we were all scared that day, even the bully, Ivan Lee had shown fear in his banshee scream and tears. What I didn't know was that there would be another spring day, soon, when the skies turned green, and Ivan Lee and I would come face to face with our fears.

Letty Stapp Watt
storyteller and historian