The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got more than a couple of friends who think the economy — the world economy, no less — is on its way down the toilet. Huge debts, large deficits, the Federal Reserve printing money like it was Charmin — they see a Fiscal Armageddon on the horizon. Depression, unemployment, then the collapse of civilization as we know it. They’re wondering if it’s time to buy a gun. Or an arsenal. They’re wondering if they should buy Chinese currency or a year’s supply of food and water. They’re wondering what to do with their money that will keep them afloat when their neighbors drown.

I remember one of my dad’s pals, Malcolm, building a bomb shelter in his basement. Great guy, Malcolm, salt of the earth, a family man, just taking care of his family down in Northern Georgia near the foothills of the Appalachian where we lived. He took me down into his basement — I was all of 12 years old — to show me the shelter that would keep his family alive after the communists attacked us with nuclear weapons, an event he saw as inevitable.

He had water tanks and shelves full of canned goods. He had gas masks and a propane stove. He had flashlights and a ton of batteries. “Electricity’ll be gone. Maybe forever,” he told me. There were bunk beds and a portable toilet. It looked like Motel 6 had mated with a Goodwill. It really didn’t look like a home for months of subterranean living, unless you were gophers.

In the corner by the door Malcolm had his hunting rifle. “For food?” I asked, thinking maybe a dinner of radioactive deer might be the way to go. Malcolm picked up the gun and gave me a ‘serious’ look. “No, Skeeter,” he said solemnly. “Your dad didn’t plan for what’s coming and … well, when you all try to come to our shelter, I’d have to stop you. There’s only room for us.”

Now, I wasn’t the sharpest kid on the block, but I took his meaning pretty quick. “You mean you’d shoot us, Malcolm?” Malcolm set the rifle back in its spot and nodded. “I have to protect my family first. That’s the way it is.”

It’s real hard to like a man who tells you he’d kill you, whether you’re 12 or 64. The world after a nuclear war, and probably an economic Armageddon too, would be filled with Malcolms. They see the bleakest future and the darkest side of human nature, I suspect because they find it in themselves. Me, I’m not interested in either. But I’m always glad to know who to avoid, catastrophe or no.

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I was a kid in Georgia during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I wasn’t real sure how far we were from Havana, but some of the neighbors were real sure the commies were going to nuke the bejabbers out of our locale so they put concrete block fallout shelters in their basements. Malcom, the father of my friend Anita, kept his hunting rifle by the door and told me, when he gave me the tour of this subterranean future home, how he would have to shoot me and my family when we came begging to get in when the bombs began to fall.

At school we did the nuclear drill, the one where we got under our desk. Don’t look at the blast, we were instructed, you’ll be blinded. I’m not sure if my desk was sufficient to stop radiation, but hey, any port in a storm. Now that I’m an old geezer and managed to live through decades without having ICBM’s landing in the neighborhood, it’s a little like deja vu to have all this talk of Korean missiles landing in our backyard. I’m expecting half the neighbors to start digging their fallout shelters any day. The news, gotta love those folks, like to keep the drumbeat going.

Me, I’m too old to excavate for our shelter. The neighbors probably think they should keep a hunting rifle next to their door to keep me and the mizzus out when the nukes rain down, but I plan to reassure them. We have an old school desk next to our front door, usually for sitting on when we put our shoes on to go outside. I figure if it was good enough in 1962, it’s good enough now. We just have to remember to keep our eyes shut when the mushroom cloud shows up down the road….

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