THE AIR RAID SHELTER CAPER…. HYDROGEN BOMB CHANGED EVERYTHING

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.

alan skeoch

August 2019

BIKINI ATOLL

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

explosion began in earnest. The population of the Atoll, around 147 people, were

displaced never to return. Many of the anchored warships now like in deep waters

around Bikini. One surprising result now over 70 years later is the return of fish life

and coral life to the waters and the verdant growth of palm trees. Radioactive soils remain

though and efforts at re populating the islands has been considered too dangerous.

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

PICTURE GALLERY SOMEWHAT RELATED TO THE AIR RAID SHELTER CAPER

(What kind of parents would allow their son to build and air raid shelter?)

Here we are emulating Red Skeoch whose White Owl Invisible cigars gave him

great satisfaction. He taught his grandsons, Kevin and Andrew, to smoke them

when they were six and eight years old. We all survived the fears of the 20th century.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR MOTHER…ELSIE (FREEMAN) SKEOCH?

MOM, Elsie was her real name but Dad called her Methusalum which is a corruption of the biblical Methusalah who was the oldest person in the bible. Mom

was a year older that Dad so it was natural for him to draw that to everyone’s attention. Mom ran the show. She was the real breadwinner…the homemaker…

the common sense person. And, as such she was taken for granted. Happens to a lot of people…being taken for granted. Sort of a backhanded compliment.

Marjorie noted the picture of Dad and Mon in their courting days…”his hand is perilously close to her breast.” True. Mom had the most important job in the

air raid shelter caper. “Mom, you rush right down and fill those laundry tubs while the city still has a water system.”

ARNOLD “RED” SKEOCH

THESE pictures will give you some idea of how dad just loved to make fun of his children. A delight for us. And you might understand how Dad helped

build the air raid shelter even though he thought it was a damn fool idea. He had the last laugh…for he got the bottle of Hennessy’s. See if you can

find the two sons…the gutsy bugger and the kid stupid as Joe’s dog’. To Dad the air raid shelter caper was a source of great humour.