EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, 1950s

We have friends on the Mississippi Gulf Coast where it seems the next weather catastrophe is always just around the corner, mostly hurricanes. Now the Gulf Coast is bracing for the effects of the "worst oil disaster in history," which will affect their lives and their environment. One friend said he could smell the oil at his house, but an AP article in today's Trib states "that some are seeing and smelling oil where there is none." Some Mississippi friends have signed on to work as volunteers, washing water fowl and such, but the same AP article says no one knows why the jellyfish and water fowl are dying.

Considering the great devastation some areas of the world suffer because of natural disasters, it seems almost ridiculous to mention Monday's ferocious windstorm with gusts of 60+ mph here in the great Inland Northwest. The wind uprooted trees, caused electrical outages in some parts of town, and even jack-knifed a truck on the Interstate Bridge. Even so, our problems were light – no loss of life and most people just suffered minor inconvenience. I would hazard a guess that they probably didn't even hear about this storm in Mississippi. Still, it's the talk of our town.

"I couldn't do anything," said one of the ladies of the club. "We've become so dependent on electricity. Fortunately I had some baked chicken breasts in the refrigerator that I could use to make sandwiches for supper."

It just points out again how much we need to give some thought to disaster preparedness. Could you fix a meal without electricity? Do you have ready-to-eat food in your cupboard that would allow you and your family to survive several days without cooking? What about water? And – even though none of us can take on the world -- would you be able to help a neighbor with food and/or supplies?

The concept of preparedness has fascinated me since childhood – once I got over being traumatized, that is. Back in the '50s, people thought atomic war might be imminent, and in its infinite wisdom, the government made sure little school children were well-versed on what to do in the event someone dropped "the bomb." We were shown films in school including information on how to identify locations of bomb shelters (there was one in the basement of the post office in Orofino), how to prepare a bomb shelter in the basement of your house, and then what foods would be safe to eat when we finally crawled out. Yes, even though someone bombed you, you might survive just fine, but there would be weird stuff, called "fall-out," and it would affect your food. You could trim mold off of bread and eat it but moldy meat should be discarded – or something like that. You should throw away the mayonnaise because it contains eggs. It's hilarious when you think of it, isn't it? I wonder if they have those old films online.

And there was this audio signal, called the conelrad signal. Perhaps you've heard it because "they" will still use it when "they" want to get information to you – these days usually a weather warning. I think they just call it an emergency signal now. The radio station in Orofino would play it for a full minute at 1:00 p.m. every day. "This is a test and only a test," the announcer would say. "Had this been a real disaster, you would have been instructed to turn to channel 1250 for further instructions." Hey! It was a scary world I grew up in. Every bit as scary as anything you could tell me about the world today – and the government did it to us.

At some point, all of this bomb shelter preparedness stuff went away, and rather quietly, too. Apparently someone someplace (one of "them") realized how impractical these ideas of basement shelters were. We would probably kill each other fighting for places in the shelters because obviously we couldn't accommodate everyone underground, and then what kind of world would we come out to? The fall-out, which before was just affecting our food, would naturally have devastated our whole world.

But what remains for our consideration is emergency preparedness. I think we probably don't receive enough information or encouragement along these lines – from "them."

Today is "Cinco de Mayo," and every commercial email site to which I subscribe has sent recipes for tonight's Mexican meal. Instead I'm going with an old favorite – Bennie's enchiladas – made with pheasant.

[Top photo: The weather is still unsettled. Note the rain gutters on the shop / garage that Mike had installed last week. Bottom photo: Mule deer move through the field above the town house.] KW