Thursday, January 6, 2011

cold war
























I can hear the drill alarm
grinding loud in a Midwest tank town.
Crouched beside me, head down,
Rory Fiocchi whispers under his breath,
“This time they’re gonna nuke us.”

White knuckling the school-desk legs,
fear pangs my solar plexus,
as I wonder what kind of radiated eggs
will appear. It’s not recess. Mute,
we leave death to the professionals.

A family still hangs here in the dark,
like sick dogs, over the loot of a dozen
canned goods, toys and a transistor radio,
waiting for the nuclear fog to lift.
Stark silence drowns out the noise.

The current owner enjoys
this old root cellar. It keeps produce
cool in the winter, but not frozen.
He prefers radishes year round,
you know. That’s the beauty of it.



Tess Kincaid
January, 2011




There's a stone root cellar, built partially underground in a terrace behind Willow Manor. Until recently, we  thought it was an old fallout shelter left over from the Cold War.  Back in November, Barbara posted a wonderful article on root cellars on her informative blog Folkways Notebook. You can read it HERE.


Would you like me to read this poem to you?

97 comments:

  1. Fascinating. We went to an estate sale at a house not far from us and they had a shelter built under the house, we snuck down there and it was just such a strange feeling. I've never even seen a root cellar - guess they didn't need them much here in Arizona.

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  2. My great-grandmother's place had a similar structure. I used to stay in there for hours, bound and determined there was a secret opening to another world.

    As I got older, it became my hideaway to go and write or draw - so in many ways, it was my portal to that other world.

    Great write, Tess.

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  3. Beautiful, if words about such an horrific subject can be beautiful.

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  4. Chilling immagery Tess, Can ihave a raddish?

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  5. At my parents last home there was a good sized cellar, and I was informed by someone 'in authority' that if need be, it would be commandeered as a shelter for half the village. Luckily no war broke out!

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  6. Chilling piece of writing, but the reality of shelters for war can be chilling. I have always been fascinated by the old root cellars, though most I have seen have been pretty small. Nicely done.

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  7. you know tess, despite having lived through the cold war i have no recollection of the drills that i read were commonplace in many areas of the world. sweet piece of writing! woolly socks are on! steven

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  8. I like the line about leaving death to the professionals. Maybe I have watched "The Unit" too much.

    Okay...what IS that thing in the prompt?

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  9. This captured that cold and fearful time with such clarity and beauty.

    It made me wonder about the effects of all those drills on all those people after all these years...

    Beautiful writing, as always.

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  10. Fireblossom, it's whatever you see in it!

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  11. Happy New Year Tess. Lucky you having a cellar.

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  12. Splendid poem, Tess! Yes, I remember the drills, and at one point my father contemplated a makeshift bomb shelter. By the seventh grade I was convinced the world would end in a nuclear holocaust. On a happier note, my DNA fondly remembers the root cellars of my ancestors :-)

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  13. Startling and beautiful. Thanks for sharing your creativity. ~Kristie

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  14. Great work as usual Tess. As good as it all is, the final stanza is sublime. Super bravos!

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  15. I absolutely love this!
    I am fond of your poetry in general, but I think this is my favorite, so far. The imagery is sharp as knife, so vivid in my mind, as if it lives on my retinas. The fear - as you describe it - is real to me. I love the line:
    "Mute, we leave death to the professionals". Wonderfully laconic! And the last stanza is sheer brilliance.

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  16. of course my eye went right to the 8 in the photo.
    I love this piece Willow,
    it is very unexpected.

    It keeps produce cool in the winter, but not frozen.
    This line is really playing in my mind.

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  17. Really enjoyed this piece - I am fascinated though by the thought of nuke cellars. I suppose living over here in Europe we must have thought that there was no chance of survival anyway so why bother?

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  18. There is so much in this. The uncomprehension of children forced to deal with the fallout of adult things is particularly poignant, also the family huddled in the dark, and the sweet surprise at the end.

    It was in the news yesterday that radishes can combat arsenic in our systems.

    Your word choices are... wow.

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  19. what an interesting post...love it;)

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  20. Haunting and brilliant.

    I think I was in gr5 or so when we lived in an old house with a root cellar and crawlspaces and an attic.

    It felt alive in a way no modern house can.

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  21. I was in elementary school in the 50's when we studied all about the bombs etc. Then I was a young mother during the Cuban crisis. I can remember the fear in my solar plexus as I tried to go about my daily routine. I love the root cellar at my grandparents farm. Your poem is outstanding as usual. Where is your reading?
    QMM

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  22. "Duck and Cover".... back to the cold war. I can remember not fully comprehending what war meant, but I knew we were being taught to hide from it. I have had a VERY fortunate life, never having had to experience that kind of violence that war brings first hand. Not having many root cellars in the city, we hid under our desks during alarm drills. War felt very close during those drills. The memories of it are still vivid in my mind. I was young and impressionable. But what do vegetables in a root cellar care about all this? The root cellar stores the food we need to live and protects us from ourselves during war. I loved your poem Tess. It took me back to my cold war memories.

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  23. Adjusting my eyes, I am not used to seeing your blog in white. Beautiful poem and fascinating space you have there.

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  24. Ah, yes, I needed something fresh for the new year. I'm sure the dark background will return at some point!

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  25. Another great work. I felt a little lost at the end, it felt like it changed pace too quickly, but then I realized the brilliance of how quickly things change and how well this work captures that feeling.

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  26. KMShear, I wrote this from the perspective of standing in the root cellar and the flashbacks it brought. Yeah, a quick switch at the end, but I wanted to leave on a positive note!

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  27. I don't think we did the drills, but I remember having dreams about cowering under my desk & thinking how will this help? And after I saw Red Dawn my dreams were full or men in combat gear sweeping into the classroom...

    You know, I've never liked a radish. Although I did raise some from seed as a child - pretty & red & blech! LOL

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  28. Vivid, Tess, and chilling, almost frighteningly so!
    Evokes memories of my grandmother's, the house i grew up in. There is a root cellar, a rather large one, under the barn. It keeps apples into March. I remember the smell. I also remember the cabbage pile in one corner, more and more leaves to be peeled off, before it was finally gone in February. I remember the wooden crates filled with sand, celeriac, parsnip roots and carrots buried in it. And round black-skinned radish, which needed to be peeled and grated, marinated and eaten instead of lettuce in the depth of winter. Oak barrels with hard cider lined one wall, at the end of the row a small one, with the "mother vinegar" living in it. I never believed that tale, until I grew tall enough to take off the cloth covering the hole at the top and shine a flashlight deep into the barrel's innards, and there she sat, quivering as if she were ready to move on, in the deep vinegar sea, giving off the sweet-sour smell of a foul apple suddenly pierced.

    That root cellar nourished my grandmother through the horrible war winter of 1944, with her small son. The barn saved their life: during one of the air raids, a bomb fell through the roof and onto the haystack, in so soft a landing it did not explode. The miracle I owe my life to.

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  29. Merisi, this city girl was trying to imagine what a working root cellar might have to offer. Thank you so much for painting this lovely picture.

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  30. Tess -- What a wonderful surprise -- mentioning FOLKWAYS NOTEBOOK on your 'cold war' post. I read the poem and had interpreted it personally as, point counterpoint. This seems to fit for me. Very good poem and thanks again for the mention. -- barbara.

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  31. Love the imagery. Merisi's response is almost a poem itself. Wow.

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  32. I am ancient enough to have
    participated in "duck and cover"
    drills in the 50's. It always seemed
    so dumb to me, cramming ourselves
    under those cheesy little desks.
    In the late 50's though, I caught
    the cold war fever. My first short
    story was about a family running
    to the mountains to escape the
    radiation, and marauding enemy
    armies, pre RED DAWN of course.
    When jet airliners first came into
    vogue, and you would hear their
    supersonic whine late at night,
    I would stand up on my bed and
    stare out the window, waiting for
    the nuclear flash I knew would
    come.

    Like Fireblossom, I keyed in
    on the line /we leave death
    to the professionals/ and this
    was my prompt for my magpie.
    The image you display, after
    much perusal, appears to be
    a modern sculpture, with several
    men, or people, in a struggle
    or an embrace; you pick,
    man's inhumanity to man
    or love is the only true answer
    to the end of war and the dawn
    of peace.

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  33. A wonderful post. I enjoyed reading about the root cellar.

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  34. you put me right there! I am desperate to know what happened to the family and wanted to read on... Loved the imagery!

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  35. Barbara, yes, you got the intended contrasts! Thank you.

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  36. Impressive poem, very powerful.
    Love the new look blog.

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  37. Just wanted to add my thanks to Merisi for her fantastic description of the root cellar, intertwined as it was with the succulent mundane and the stunningly miraculous. As Margaret said, almost a poem itself.

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  38. Love that word - Root cellar -remember the term from years ago..and the fallout shelters...my father was terrified of Russia after the Cuban Crisis..I believe that is why he took us from Chicago to the farm in MN....nice write...bkm

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  39. Gosh Tess, you really took me back to air raid sirens and bomb shelters! Like Glenn, I grabbed the line "Mute,
    we leave death to the professionals." and thought 'We can no longer do that. Who can trust professionals fighters, who continually plan for war, to choose peace? I guess it is absolutely essential to our survival that we think through the issues, seek out Internationalist to support and get political.

    In "Cull" there is a line: 'This is the first time in the history of the planet that a species facing extinction has the technology to prevent it but lacks the wisdom to use it.'

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  40. I remember the times in school. The cellar discovery sounds great. So much to think about. A great place to be a child.

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  41. Very vivid piece. I wonder what ever happened to Rory Fiocchi : )
    We never did these drills in our school, but I have heard of them. Must have been scary, with such an unknown factor.
    Your cellar is the only one that I've ever seen that opens from the floor inside like it does...very unusual. I always find cellars and basements somewhat creepy. It must be the damp, dark confined space. Shivers!

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  42. Thank you, Tess, Margaret and Carolina Linzhead!
    Tess' word evoked those memories, and I wished I had reread my thoughts before hitting the publish button. Maybe, once I am a little freer in choosing my subjects, I can photograph that old cellar, or similar ones. I have a few more vivid images that I would like to capture before they are all lost for good.

    My mom, after milking the cows in the evening, always put a pot of milk on the steps leading to the root cellar, where it stayed fresh and cool. I remember being reprimanded for licking some of the cream that had risen to the top overnight, when I went to collect the pot in the morning. ;-)

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  43. I enjoyed your poem; it was very telling of the fear that resided in us kids during that time.
    No one in my family had a root cellar and I am wondering if it is because in the south the weather is seldom cold enough to keep food in that situation. I know my grandmother & mother did some canning, but I don't think many un-canned items could be stored in a warm/humid climate.

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  44. i am reminded of when i was a little girl in school and we had these kinds of drills where we had to squat down along along a wall and cover our heads... in case of a bomb drop. we had no idea of it all, we were so young.

    Willow the description in your poetry always takes me away to another place... well done.

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  45. I remember the hopeless fear, under the table, as if that would help..you caught it!

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  46. Thanks so much for your interesting comments, all. Speaking of roots, I just got home from the dentist. Root canal is scheduled. Ick. Things usually come in threes for me. Root cellar, root canal...wonder what the third root will be?

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  47. And how I remember the drills at school. The number of alarms that sounded as a warning, the number for all clear. Duck and cover under our little desks. How utterly clueless we all were. And probably still are.

    I like what I read as the transition of use in your poem, relating to the above. Such contrast in use/emotion of the root cellar....

    Rick

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  48. ... a root beer float perhaps?

    I remember those drills and my grandparents had a root cellar. I can still remember how it smelled and felt.

    Your magpie is magnificent.

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  49. Oh my claustraphobia would do me in if stuck in a cellar..

    This is a really good poem:-)

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  50. nostalgia at its beyondest reach.

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  51. How terrifying the threat of bombs must have been.
    The house where I worked and lived in Norway one summer had a root cellar. Carrots were stored in dry cold sand - and the most wonderful strawberry wine in all stages. Huge big glass vessels with a ruby red mixture to bottles of the potent wine ready to drink ...which I so enjoyed sampling!

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  52. As a small child, I too recall something we did at school,,heads down on the desk, arms over head. We had no real inkling, and it was almost a game. I do remember feeling very nervous when I was outdoors and would hear an airplane,so I suppose some of it crept in.
    In those days we also had a very old house, with an old root cellar, which doubled as a tornado shelter. I absolutely hated it's fullness of spiders, and would rather have been blown away.

    Wonderful wonderful writing, Willow,,and many excellent congrats on your chapbook nomination!!!

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  53. My neighbor in NJ really did have a bomb shelter. Being a peace-time kid I thought it strange that someone would have such a room in their home and so, secretly, I was a little afraid of them. I also remember a shelf in that room with several bottles of Joy dish detergent. That Cold War wasn't going to get in the way of the dishwashing, that was for sure.

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  54. What a contrast between a fall-out shelter and a root cellar. I'm glad yours is a root cellar.

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  55. Outstanding Tess..! chilling and incredible imagery! Got me here ha ;)

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  56. Awesome delivery here, clearly carefully crafted. 'The stark silence drowned out the noise' is a powerful line, as is 'Mute, We left death to the professionals'. Nicely ending rather abruptly, the poem really captures that moment of fear, of wonderment, of mortality, of soundless, movementless panic.

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  57. Some folk in our towns still have old Anderson shelters in their gardens, and have converted them into garden sheds. Lovely idea to grow produce though. Nice to hear you reading it.

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  58. I remember the drill...when the alarm sounds children, everyone get under your desks and put your head down.....like that would change a thing.

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  59. This must be the week to recall old childhood memories. Have a grand week!

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  60. Root cellars are amazing ! thanks for posting. I knew someone who had a bomb shelter and tons of stockpiled supplies-
    I understand the motive for it; we still have fall out shelter signs posted around our area too...

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  61. Chilling, Tess! A child of the 'cold war' era, I relate to the terrible fear of the final transgression. It was ingrained into us as children. I still remember the chill of the air raid warning whistle. It blew for tornadoes as well as air raids. Our root cellar was outside and totally beneath ground. Canned goods, garden storage and our fishing worms were all contained within the dark, damp, cobwebby, scary (for a little girl) hole in the ground. You have captured this time of fear so very well.

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  62. yes... I remember the school teachers "drilled" it in us. Living in fear... such delight.. :)
    We were so ingrained that when burning the trash out back, I used to pretend the cardboard boxes were buildings in Russia. If it were winter outside, it always added a special effect because all the pictures I had seen of Russia were cold and snowy....
    Nice poem, Willow! You brought back memories..

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  63. Wonderful, Tess. The house we grew up in was in a neighborhood where every single other house had a fallout shelter, and as a child who "ducked and covered" in drills, I was always nervous that if the big one was dropped, I'd be a goner, but all my neighbors would be in their little bunkers, eating canned tuna! I often wonder now what the heck they use those for...

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  64. creepy to think of huddling down in the dark fearing nuclear attack...nowadays the threat is insidious and everywhere. I cannot live like that then nor now. Hell, life is a terminal disease so we'd better damn well LIVE.

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  65. Superbly written, Tess. And I longed to hear it read, but the play button isn't visible.

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  66. I have actually been in atomic bomb shelters at the time when they were recommended. My friend at work bought a house and moved in and found it under what he thought was the entrance to a cellar.

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  67. Shades of the 50's!! I'm glad I missed the bleakest years of the Cold War. Nice One Shot, Tess!

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  68. a cold war is frightful,
    you have captured a piece of it here, what a lovely entry all shall adore...

    Happy Writing.

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  69. your poems are so different and imaginitive...
    particularly loved that Rory s name is in this, even tho I dont know who that is, lol
    made it very real

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  70. Willow - I just implemented a new gadget to my blog side bar that is offered. It is a "Most Viewed". I selected to highlight "Top 10" and the Magpie poems certainly dominate. Wanted to thank you for offering these prompts. I have really been inspired - although the current prompt has thrown me for a loop. I'm trying, though!

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  71. Wow, this was truly breathtaking. I love how solar plexus is used and sounds so natural and unnatural all at the same time. It's incredible how you've taken such a haunting subject, a war shelter, and made it into something so beautiful.

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  72. It's so fun to see what everyone else "sees" in this magpie prompt. Many thanks for hosting us week after week.
    For the first time, I had you read this to me, and wow, that's what I'm going to do from now on. I'm a visual learner, practically 100%, but hearing you read it with the cadence you intended is quite powerful. Nice write, Tess. Loved the line about silence drowning noise, that's a great image.

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  73. This piece displays a great sense of timing throughout and I like the subtle rhymes scattered here and there in the piece. really enjoyed reading this.

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  74. This took me back to the late seventies, Willow, when we all thought we were going to be fried. It was a scary time.

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  75. Brought back the memory of duck and cover drills from elementary school.

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  76. Oh, I remember those drills! They might as well have had us put paper bags on our heads.

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  77. Wonderful. Interesting about the root cellar...

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  78. Willow,
    Being the only one
    left alive.
    They were happy to find
    the treasure trove:
    A root cellar
    Full of food.
    Perhaps they'd live
    A few days more.

    The only The only "fall-out-shelter" alert I can remember is when I was in the 6th grade and we went to the school basement and sat against the wall with our heads between our legs and our hands over our heads.
    ThenI thought about Dorothy.
    rel

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  79. think the most haunting line for me was...A family still hangs here in the dark,like sick dogs.. this gave me shivers - so much suffering and loss of humanity in one single line...excellent write tess

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  80. Oh, those chilling times when Thatcher, Reagan and (we were told) the Soviet Union were preparing to bring about the ultimate democracy - the fusion of East and West in the form of irradiated dust! You capture the sense of domestic claustrophobia within the context of those short survival odds so well.

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  81. Interesting view- no root cellars here, just storm cellars.

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  82. Eerily fascinating! This felt like watching a movie... I guess tunnels, cellars and the underground in general, have always held my interest... And especially when they are part of a home, it adds to the interest! I am sure each cellar will have a loooooooooong story to tell...
    And this one was very nicely narrated, Tess... thanks..

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  83. I remember the "under the desk" drills from my school days. Your poem brought back a bit of that pit of your stomach anxiousness I felt when we had those. It was really interesting to learn about the root cellars too. I've never been in one but I think my imagination would go wild!

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  84. Oh yes, I remember the drills, getting under desks and keeping heads down! Well I preferred them to the fire drills where we had to climb down the open air stiar cases outside from 2 or 3 floors up! After all the posts are out, you must reveal what this really is. Gonna be a good week of readings...

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  85. Have only read it in books and now beautiful words describing it here, which still sends the reality back to a stunned silence.

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  86. Dear Tess: It is very chilling...the cold war lambasted fear into the darling kids. I guess that was what Dr. Spock would do! Brrr...Good thing they could put to use the foibles of man...as in a root cellar...hope we can "root out" nukes one day! They are definitely not mankinds "finest hour" rather mankinds "last hour". Great food for thought...Love the "white knuckles on the desk and the Nuclear eggs"...what a picnic, eh?

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  87. There are worlds in those few stanzas, 'that's the beauty of it'

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  88. Governments all over the world did a splendid job of Keeping Us All Terrified during the Cold War.That's how they keep us down and keep us paying for their Insane Armies and WMDs, the Donkeys as well as the Elephants, the Reds as well as the Blues. Never fell for it myself, but your poem captures the fear they created very well.

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  89. Excellent, era-evocative verses.

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  90. I can see how this gets to the root of things...

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  91. Wow! You were that scared, even though no bomb has ever been dropped on the American Mainland.

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  92. Wonderful imaginative piece, Tess. The first lines grabbed my attention right away--my brother and I were just having a conversation about those drills where we had to crouch under our desks at school. We even had drills where the whole school piled into cars and drove away to some far away location.

    I wonder too what effect those days had on me.

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  93. Since, amazingly, no one else has asked, why did you choose to use the words "previous owner" in the reading, and the words "current owner" in the printed text? Each phrase works, but gives the poem a very different flavor.

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  94. Marcheline, yes, I changed it to "current" owner after posting. Current has a nicer flow and keeps the last stanza in the present. I'll have to re-record the piece. Thanks for taking note, my friend!

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)