Our Principal called it a Retention Drill. It was an irritating nagging siren, which bleeped three times in a row for at least a minute per repetition. Stopped for about a 10 second period and beeped again. The Retention Drill would require all school attendees if in a classroom to hide under our desks, as well as the teacher (after she made certain her students were tucked neatly into fetal positions) to hide beneath her desk. If the Retention Drill caught you in the hallways of our school, each student was top immediately place their bodies next to the nearest set of meal lockers placing their heads between their legs, with hands covering the eyes and ears. This only lasted a few seconds, now that I look back at it, but until our Principal announced over our “loudspeaker” “This was just a drill we are all safe,” it seemed an eternity wondering when that Mushroom Cloud would appear outside our school’s neighborhood and would we all see Russian Military Troops invading our school! The Retention Drill was the scariest of all drills…back in the day we had Fire Drills, and on Monday morning’s in Pittsburgh exactly at Noon, the Civil Defense Sirens would blare for one minute, throughout the city, and when that happened all students had to sit (no slouching permitted) upright hands folded and await the end of the siren. If it was 12:01, or 12:02 and God forbid 12:03 and the SIRENS had not sounded their screeching beware voices, some teachers and students were a bit nervous that the Third World War had begun!
Those were the days in the 1950s when the Cold War, sometimes seemed to get a little less chilly and more heated, but America would prevail, and a good “Duck and Cover,” SURELY would save all of our lives. No nuclear bomb would deter our apple pie from baking in the oven…no radiation poisoning would stop a baseball game from playing, and certainly, no mushroom cloud would destroy our white picket fences.
August 27, 2019, and a brand-new year of school has begun for most of the country, and if not this week, then certainly by Labor Day. No need for Retention Drills, nope, if the Atomic Bomb falls...MEH, but instead, the children of America have a more serious kind of drill, one that can and will and does sneak up at any time and any school. Now, our school children/our kids/our grandkids/our relatives/our neighbors/even stranger’s kids and educational staff, have to learn how to survive NOT being slaughtered like animals. Some call it Safe Places, some call it Secure Rooms, but too few identify it the LACK OF WILL BY POLITICIANS TO STOP GUN VIOLENCE AND THE PERIFERATION OF PURCHASING AND OWNING WEAPONS AS HEINOUS AND DANGEROUS AS THOSE USED IN WARFARE! Another School Year approaches, and to date, all we, as a nation are able to provide for our children are thoughts and prayers and how to cram 25 kids into a darkened closet, or some half assess room with minimal locks on the door and maybe only one window. I can not imagine how the first day of school must feel when parents kiss their children goodbye and have to wonder, will they be able to kiss them hello at the end of the day!
