By SCOTT SAALMAN
Scaramouch
It is Easter Sunday, and he is showing me where the dead will be placed, should anyone die down here, 12 feet below the ground, in this cold, silent, tomb-like room.
The paper-thin curtains to our right just inside the entrance are pulled apart as we stand on the 30-degree slope and look into the cramped, cobwebby storage area to see where the bodies are lowered, should anyone die down here in this shadowy room where the earthy scent of potatoes and garden dirt is eternal.
He comments matter-of-factly about wrapping the bodies in plastic and putting them into the body vault veiled by the curtains.
A chill runs from the base of my spine on up my neck and circulates in my jaws, making me numb and thick-tongued, and though it is 15 to 20 degrees colder down here than up there, the root of my dorsal chill evolves not from room temperature, but from what he is telling me, for my grandfather’s words are like ice from the bottom of the world. But I say nothing of this chill to him, for I am here to learn, not to feel.
It is Easter Sunday 1994, and we are in a bomb shelter. A year is etched in the concrete above our heads: 1961.
This shelter was built sometime between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was a rush job, he says modestly.
It was a bleak time for our country, our world, a fearful time. It was to be a different kind of war. People were urged to arm themselves with shovels. Not firearms. A different kind of war, for this time we weren’t being asked to stand our ground. Instead, we were being urged to hide beneath our ground, to dig deep into our soil and shelter our families in apprehension of a nuclear attack. Khrushchev was going to pump up Cuba with long-range nuclear missiles, the steroid of world powers, thus turning America into a subterranean culture.
It is Easter Sunday and we tour this 33-year-old, 10-by-20 hole. It is the room that time forgot, void of today’s conveniences of the remote control/push button generation. This shelter provides potential occupants bare Nuclear Age necessities. Coal oil lamps in the corners, should the electricity go. A kerosene furnace. An escape hatch, should the house catch fire. A 500-gallon water tank. A jumble of plastic water jugs. A toilet. Radios. Batteries. Flashlights. Lanterns. Canned fruit. Honey. Wild cherry wine.
We might have had to stay down here two weeks, he says.
“How would you know if it was OK to go above?” I say.
“Geiger counters,” he says.
The fact that my grandfather has a Geiger counter floors me.
He pulls a box of matches from a shelf. The matchbook covers advertise Swisher Sweets. The matches are as old as this hole, older than me, and he strikes one. A flame appears. Our shadows melt onto the concrete-blocked walls like hot candle wax.
Above our heads: One foot of concrete; reinforced steel; three feet of dirt. With our feet on the green tiles of the shelter, we stand five feet below basement level. It is not a comfortable room for sufferers of claustrophobia.
So, I say, should the need have occurred, who would’ve been invited down here?
He is silent in his deep thought. Then he says that he never believed he would be the one using it. He always saw himself standing guard outside the door, protecting his family.
I can picture him outside the heavy door, my noble grandfather in his Cuba days, a Geiger counter clicking away in one hand, his big strong back pressed against the 1/8-inch steel door, designed to keep out radiation. It would be easier to break through the steel door than to break through this determined man from the sweat and callus generation.
He says, “I always figured someone would kill me to get inside here.”
Fortunately, the missiles were never fired. This bomb shelter has only served as a vegetable cellar, tornado shelter and make-shift barber shop.
My grandfather hasn’t let his guard down, hasn’t grown soft on the topic of war. There are too many little countries out there with nuclear arsenals now, he says, hardheaded little countries with western world envy and trigger-happy fingers hovering over the doomsday button.
“I’ll bet you a dollar that this shelter will still be used one day,” he says, and the way he says this makes me think twice about taking him up on his bet.
It is Easter Sunday 1994, and we retrace our steps up the 30-degree incline, brush by the thin curtains that the bodies will be put behind should the need occur, and then we step out of the bomb shelter and up into the basement.
Above us, the house rattles with the sound of footsteps, lots of them and chairs scooting across the dining room floor, Easter Sunday sounds, the sounds of our loved ones at ground level. We smile, and I cannot help but secretly pray that my grandfather loses the dollar upon which our world hinges.
Email Scott at scottsaalman@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @SaalmanScott.