Alan Skeoch

THE AIR RAID  SHELTER CAPER…

MEMORIES OF FEAR

alan skeoch

august 2019

This Victorian desk/bookcase/vanity mirror brings back the fear I  felt in 1954 when atom bomb

laden B52 bombers overflew Toronto each day high up in the stratosphere.  Their vapour trails

were chilling.

More chilling was my sure and curtain belief that a nuclear war was very possible and that

Toronto could be a target of Soviet Union missiles.  Or Toronto could be hit by accident of an

American B52 crash.   I drew a circle with my compass.  One point on our city hall and the 

other pencils point tracing a circle.   We were just outside the circle of mass destruction.  Survival

was possible.  With care.   American atom bomb tests had  been  moved to Bikini Atoll, depopulated 

islands in the south central Pacific Ocean.  The population of 167 had been  moved.  They would never

 return as test after test of atomic weapons were conducted.  

BUT I figured  we might survive an atom bomb

explosion…just barely do  so if precautions were taken.

THE VICTORIAN DESK BOOKCASE

This cabinet was the heart of our basement air raid shelter.  It had to be stocked so I began slipping

cans of tomato soup, pork and beans and canned  peaches down the back stairs to the cabinet.

Never gave any thought to how the soup could be cooked.   Pork and  beans and peaches could be

eaten cold.  What else was needed?  A big bag of Quaker rolled oats tucked  away in a tin with a lid lest

  the mice erode our food supply.  Rolled oats  do not need to be cooked and are considered nutritious.

Alcohol? A year of so later  I stuffed a full bottle of Hennessey’s cognac in the ceiling gap

between heating pipes and floor joists.  Water?  That was easy.  “Mom, in the event of nuclear war, could

you rush down and fill the cement laundry tups with water?”  “What if I am working?” ?/ Right, anyone home

must fill the laundry tubs before the detonation.?

What else should I put in the old desk?  Books, perhaps a Steinbeck or

Dickens or Cowboy Western by Luke Short.  A bible?  Might get around

to reading it to allay fear or increase it?  Toothpaste.  The thought of

toothpaste raised another distasteful thought.   Toilet paper.  But where

would we relieve ourselves?  I had no answer except the tenant’s

downstairs toilet on the other side of the wood panelling between my

air raid shelter and their bathroom.  

Thoughts of Mr and Mrs Douglas, our tenants at 455 Annette Street, 

Toronto west end. raised the thorny question of who would  be let into

our raid shelter and who would be left to die of nuclear burns.  Shelters

had to be kept secret.  A terrible fact.  Our shelter would only have

room for brother Eric, mom and dad.   Four people.  And, oh yes,

our cat Tinker.  She would not be a  problem and she was family.

All others would be kept out which meant the hook latch on the back

door would have to be reinforced somehow.  Thoughts of friends like

Big Red Stevenson, Russ Vanstone, Good Sanford or Kaye  Donovon yelling for entrance

was unsettling.  Sadly my girlfriend was on the eastern side of the 

circle of death.  She would not survive.  The relationship was tenuous

at times anyway.

   We would need to keep a record.   Maybe have to live for two or three

weeks in the air raid shelter.  So the desk side was stocked with pens, pencils

and green spiral bond notebooks.  Who knows,  maybe a great novel will

result providing we all survive.

Survival?  The shelter was between the old cement block coal bin and

the huge furnace.  Some protection on the north particularly since the coal bin

was  double walled.  The western wall had no windows… solid  cement blocks.  

It was  on the east side I had a problem.  Two cellar

windows…flimsy.  If the shock wave hit them they would shatter and render 

the shelter useless.   I decided to ignore the window on the other side of the

furnace and  proceeded to consider bricking up the other window.  Mom and dad

did not approve so instead I covered the window with short pine planks and kept

a small supply of bricks ready if needed. 

The silliest part of this shelter was the sleeping arrangement.  One old moth

eaten studio couch was all I could find.    We would have to take turns to sleep.

Three chairs and the couch … and the Victorian desk that had been converted

into a larder of sorts.  Enough food for two or three days  at best.

Funny thing about the shelter was the floor.  For some stupid reason I began

construction by laying down a wooden pine floor. Made no sense really and  reduced

our headroom by  a few inches.   But it made the shelter look rather homey.

THEN, in 1956, a Hydrogen bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll.   A hydrogen

bomb was 1,100 times more  powerful than the two atomic bombs dropped

on Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki. ELEVEN  HUNDRED  TIMES!   That information

changed  everything.  The new  circle of  total devastation went way beyond our house

in West Toronto…way beyond  Etobicoke…beyond Malton airport.  

There was no point in my air raid  shelter.  Like thinking people around the world

I began to imagine a world without people.  One secret report from the scientists

testing nuclear weapons  on Bikini Atoll was  that the human race was about to

be depopulated.  Of humans only a ‘vestigial’ fragment would  survive and for them

life  on earth would  be unimaginably horrific.

So the Skeoch  air raid shelter just mouldered away.   Raids on the food supplies

occurred.  “Alan, go down and get two  cans  of tomato soup from your air raid 

shelter.” “Any rolled oats left down there?”  Finally all that remained was  the bookcase 

desk lathered with a dash  of coal dust.

About a decade later I remembered something really important.  That bottle

of Hennessy’s Cognac beside the stovepipe.  Eric  and I rushed  down and sure

enough, there it was.  Dusty like fine century old  wine.  But intact.  We had never

 tasted cognac and twisted  the top open.  Poured a bit of the nut brown liquid into

two glasses and then….YUCK!   This was not cognac.  It was water with colouring.

Dad had found the bottle long ago.  It must have given him a bit of pleasure as

he shovelled chunks  of anthracite  coal into he furnace.  And he must have

grinned to himself thinking that someday  his sons would remember the bottle.

And would they be surprised.

We  found it.   But we were not surprised. Nothing our dad ever did surprised  us.

Eric and  I were the luckiest of children.  Poor but we did not know it.  Treasured

but we did not know it.  Being taught but we did not know  it.  Loved  but we took

if for granted.   

“What kind  of Tom foolery are you up to now?”  

“Building an air raid shelter for all of us, Dad.”

“Now, if that is not the stupidest goddamn notion you have ever had, I’ll

be a monkey’s uncle.”

“You could  help get this  bookcase desk into the cellar..”

“Where in hell’s  half acre did you get the goddmaned thing?”

“Salvation Army store…delivered.”

“You payed good money for this thing?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“Another proof  of your stupidity.”

But he helped  lay the floor and get the old couch past the octopus

we called our furnace.   Neither Eric, Mom or I ever occupied the air raid

shelter.  But Dad did.  Shovelling coal beside the couch in winter. Then

reading the racing form from front to back and back  again. In summer the 

coolness of the cellar was as good a launch pad for Woodbine, Fort Erie, or

even Batavia Downs…as good  as he could  find.  Racing forms

were great literature to him.  Who did he  love more than mom and his  boys?

Northern Dancer comes to mind…a great Canadian horse.  Dad  did  not spend

time…waste time…thinking about the possibility of nuclear war.  He was  a man

of the moment.  A horseman.   If nuclear war was about to depopulate the planet

then Dad  just did  not want to be around such a stark landscape that had no horses. 

Then why did  he help the construction?  I think he saw me slip the bottle of

Hennesy’s into the the slot in the joists.  Just saying this creates  a false 

impression.  Dad  was  not a drinker in the sense of becoming an alcoholic.

He drank beer with friends and particularly his argumentative brothers…Art, 

Jack, Archie and Norman.  And Uncle Earnest who was really a cousin.

He also had  a  beer or two with his racetrack

cronies of which there were legions it seemed.  He was a social animal

rather than a solitary boozer.   I bet he shared that cognac with old Mr. Cook

on the corner house.  I bet they both laughed a lot.  

Fear of a depopulated world was not part of their lives.  I envy them now.

Nothing was to be taken too seriously.  As  mentioned  far too often in

these stories is Dad’s comment which  he repeated with glee.  “We have two

sons, one is a  gutsy bugger and the other is as stupid as Joes dog.”

As an adult I rather liked to be known as a gutsy bugger but Now, 

in retrospect I think Dad thought I was as stupid  as  Joe’s dog.

Building an air raid shelter when the world  was about to be destroyed.

Now that is stupidity.  

The Hydrogen bomb ended  the illusion of survivability anyhow.

BIKINI ATOLL

  Nearly 100 ships were anchored around Bikini Atoll in 1946 as American Nuclear test

BIKINI ATTOL…GHOST SHIPS OF WORLD WAR II…CONTAMINATION

In 1946 the United States had  a huge supply of surplus ships including the 

ships surrendered by the Japanese Navy.  So one of the most startling atomic test

was  planned  by anchoring 78 of these ships at varying distances  and angles to Bikini

Atoll where a test atom bomb was detonated.  Most were inside the Bikini Atoll lagoon.

Five sank and 14 were severely damaged but, surprisingly the rest survived. 

The USS Independence was one  of the test ships.  She Survived and sailed

back to port where she was stuffed with drums of radioactive  waste and  then

sunk 30 miles off the coast of California where she  rest spright to tis day.

What followed was a series of 66 more  test atomic  explosions  at Bikini.  Above

ground testing of atomic weapons continued through the 1950’s until such testing

was stopped as a result of scientists like Canadian Ursual  Franklin who roved

radioactive Strontium 90 was beng concentrated in children’s teeth.  How?  Very

simply.  Atomic  blast created clouds of radioactive dust that circled the globe.  Eventually

that dust settled on the ground.  Cattle ate radioactive  grass.  And  children  drank

radioactive milk.    That fact led eventually to world wide ban on above  ground

nuclear testing.

“Can we ever go home?”  So asked the displaced islanders of  Bikini Atoll.  They were awarded

a cash settlement of a two billio dollar land damage  claim but payment seems  to have stopped

when the initial fund  was  exhausted.  In 1970 the islanders were  allowed  to return but that

did  not last long since any food they tried to grow was  a radioactive danger to their health and they

were once again exiled, likely forever. “I do not believe its  safe,” said islander Evelyn Ralph-Jeadrik

even tough her island atoll called Rongelap, was a distance from Bikini.  “I don’t want to put my

children at risk.”

She was talking about the Bravo cnuliear test on March  1, 1954.  A  hydrogen bomb test that was  

“a thousand  times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

Ir took a while for the implications  of  the  1956 Hydrogen bomb to be clear I’m my mind.  I was building

the air raid shelter in the cellar based  on the hypothetical circles of devastation expected from an atomic

bomb.  That was  sometime in 1955.   By 1956 even a person  as  stupid  as  me realized that

there was  no hope of  survival.  Humanity had to rely on the Strategic Air Command bombers to 

provide some kind of  mutual  stalemate with the Soviet Unions  Bomber command.  No room for

error.

So the Skeoch Air raid shelter was  forgotten by all but Arnold ‘Red’ Skeoch as a  place to fantasize

about putting $20 on the nose of horses like Northern Dancer at the old Woodbine Racetrack while

he rested on the air raid shelter couch sipping Hennessy Cognac.

Events have a strange way of  interconnecting.  A few  years  later, in 1960,

I was a young geophysical prospector sent to test survey instruments at the bottom

of  CanMet uranium mine.   One of the Canadian mines that provided raw uranium

for the manufacture  of  atomic bombs.  

The account of that adventure has  been

attached in a separate email.  

alan skeoch

august 2019

Begin forwarded message:

From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>

Subject: Sunny side rocesvales July 24 2019

Date: July 24, 2019 at 6:35:47 PM EDT

To: alan.skeoch@rogers.com

DATELINE:  SUNNYSIDE: JULY 24, 2019

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