NEW FAMILY IN TOWN

foreign cats are funny creatures soft and cuddly and gentle most of the time but in a flash they can turn into wild animals killers ready to destroy even their own kind people can be like that sometimes too take my neighbors in valley road it's a pleasant little street only a couple of blocks long and everybody knows everybody else they're warm and friendly and cooperative these neighbors of mine most of the men work together in the mill downtown and play together nights and weekends women have their babies together and the kids grow up almost as though they were all members of the same big family you couldn't ask for a friendlier place than pleasant valley it didn't seem quite so friendly though when the new people moved into the block foreigners obviously from the looks of them a good many of those same warm-hearted neighbors began to carry on like so many cats have you ever noticed how often we are that way about people and things we aren't familiar with the new family stayed very much to themselves they made no overtures and we let them alone too our wives said they were stuck up the new people were english name of trombly we learned from the grocer like most englishmen his first thought was of next summer's garden or was it a garden looked more as though you were trying to bury himself alive the englishman obviously was insane everybody said the speculation about him even interrupted the saturday night poker game but maybe he wasn't crazy maybe there was something worth digging for in his backyard maybe well joe watson's curiosity finally got the best of him he broke the ice and it made us all look pretty silly of course i don't chap wish it were true though no this is going to be a bomb shelter we're only 12 miles from the city and with the steel mill well one can't tell can one oh it doesn't make sense to me now the way i figure it if the bomb drops we're goners anyway so what's the difference but you're wrong mr uh joe watson uh mind if i come over and take a look by all means mr watson well that's some big hole you've got there but i still think you're going to a lot of trouble for nothing oh but you're wrong about not doing anything i saw a bit of bombing in england during the last show it was almost continuous from 1939 to 1945 night after night but we only had 29 000 casualties in all that time i can tell you been a lot worse if it hadn't been for shelters and an efficient civil defense organization yes but you didn't have the h-bomb then no we didn't it's true the h-bomb is many times more powerful than anything we experienced in world war ii but the experts tell us that the best thing to do about the h-bomb is to get out of the way of it evacuate if you live in the center of town and have enough warning but living out here like we do this could mean the difference between living and not living now if you'll give me a hand up out of this hole of mine i'll show you now this is the way our shelter's going to look when it's finished you see i'm using six inch reinforced concrete walls all around with a concrete slab roof and two and a half feet of earth on top of that the air intakes here and this pipe is for the aerial of the wireless set but a setup like that is going to cost a fortune isn't it this won't cost any more than a new garage and we think our lives are rather more important than the finish of our motorcar of course we could uh just dig a hole and shore it and roof it with planks and covered with dirt but i don't think that'd stand up long under a terrific h-bomb blast that's why we're building a sturdy shelter even though it will cost us more so mr trombley let us in on his secret he told us how to get plans of our own from our local or state civil defense director plans for all kinds of shelters most of us living so close to an important target area had given some thought to the matter and then dropped the idea because of the cost but trombley had an answer for that too you can provide good protection for only a few dollars and a little weekend carpenter work if you have a seller that's entirely below ground just by building a stout lean to like this a basement provides considerable protection against radiation anyhow and this protection can be increased by sandbagging the lean to either way the shelter will protect you from falling debris in case your house is blown down by the blast of the bomb or you can do something more elaborate but not much more expensive with sand bags around a corner room in the basement we're building outside well away from the house to get below ground and eliminate the hazard of possible fire or collapse of the house and although basement shelters can give quite a lot of protection ours will give even more but everybody should have some sort of a shelter because there may not be time for evacuation if an emergency comes well things really started popping in our neighborhood after that there still were a few who scoffed but most of us began to make some provision against a bombing ed martin was working on a slip trench which he said he was going to cover with a concrete slab and dirt on top of that several families began building shelters in their basements and a few of us went whole hog and started elaborate underground bomb proofs in our own backyards the trombleys finish their shelter first and invited us in for a look it was a regular tea party in most unusual surroundings it's not luxurious but to do even if we have to stay underground for days to time to avoid radioactive fallout but what on earth would you do sitting down here day after day would drive you crazy i should think oh no we've got all the food and water that we need in all in cans and bottles so there's no chance of contamination and we didn't forget to bring the can opener either and we've books and games to keep our minds occupied of course there's the wireless it's a battery set because we probably won't have electricity down here after a bombing so that's how we'll get our news and instructions from the civil defense people on connell rad channels 6 40 and 12 40. and we'll have plenty of light too in case the power goes off which it undoubtedly will and there are extra bulbs and batteries just in case uh what are those tools for over there in the corner oh these they're just in case our shelter gets covered with the wreckage from our house or if we want to help pull out one of our neighbors who's not so fortunate one has to consider these things you know oh what's that a chemical water closet oh i i see uh how about a spot of tea oh i'd love it can i help oh no no thanks there's not room really here i'll do it in just a moment now one for each cup and then we shall do one for the pot and there now it'll be ready in a jiffy well i must say you have this place fixed up very cozily down here even a hot plate although i don't suppose that'll be much use to you after a bombing no we just put it down here for the convenience now actually if the power goes off we'll have to use canned heat and we can't even use that very much because you know fire burns oxygen and we'll need all we have if we have to stay underground for very long but it does seem a shame to spend all that money for something you may never need no it isn't a waste at all because we can use it as a play room to keep the young ones out of the house when we're entertaining or as a storage place for foods that should be kept cool like your old fashioned root cellar i can use it as a tool shed and of course it can always serve as a doghouse for me when mums gets annoyed because of my pipe ashes on the carpet oh john what a thing to say whatever will our neighbors think well it was a nice party and everyone agreed the trombleys were perfectly swell people in spite of their different accent but there's no getting away from it people can be a lot like cats sometimes can't they you