The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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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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