On The Floor, Hands Over You Head

I feel bad for kids today having the ever present fear of school shootings. My daughter Emma, in 10th grade, tells me about drills they do in school on a regular basis.  At Parkland High School last year, there was a student who was arrested for having a hit list and a house full of guns.  At least that was the rumor.  The first part was true for sure.

Back in Lincoln Elementary School, especially in fifth grade, we had our own scary times and our own inadequate response to those times.

Let me set the stage. In October of 1962, the Soviet Union was caught moving nuclear weapons onto the island of Cuba.  Supposedly, two of the targets of those weapons were right here in the Lehigh Valley, Bethlehem Steel and Mack Trucks.  I can remember the adults in my life talking about this in alarming terms whenever they got together.  It was a scary time indeed.

I am a little unclear on the timeline of the next few things. I don’t know if the community response to the fear of nuclear weapons started before the Cuban missile crisis or after. But I do remember fallout shelters. Public shelters tended to be in banks or other concrete buildings. They contained a stash of supplies and a modicum of safety in the event of a nuclear attack. You would have food to eat and a shield from nuclear radiation.  I can remember Citizens National Bank, at Main and Second Streets in Slatington, had a fallout shelter. It was clearly marked on the outside of the building. I’m sure there were others, as well.

People of means spent money on building their own private fallout shelters. Dr, Heintzleman, of Neffs, had one built. I can’t remember any others, though I am sure they existed.  Again, these were scary times.

If a nuclear attack occurred while we were in school, we were to get on our hands and knees on the floor and cover our heads with our hands. We practiced that often. Like I’ve said before, in this blog, those were simpler times. I don’t know how much thought was put into that exercise. My guess is that they felt that something had to be done so this was it. After all, is there really a way to survive a nuclear attack?  Better to do something than nothing.

The Cuban missile crisis has faded into history. We don’t really worry too much anymore about nuclear attacks.  I wonder what happened to the fallout shelters. I don’t remember seeing any designated signs anymore. Are there still rooms in the basements of banks that are filled with 55 year old cans of soup and bottles of water? Are the private fallout shelters still being maintained?

Scary times then and scary times now.  I think we should all take the advice of Robert Fulghum from his book, “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” He learned, and wrote, that when we go out in the world we should make sure to hold each others’ hands.