BOMB SHELTER

When I was a kid my parents gave me an allowance. Ten dollars a week. I had to work for it, though. Helping clean the house, doing dishes, mowing the lawn. You get the picture. But I couldn’t collect my ten dollars until I helped my dad dig his bomb shelter.

My dad started digging a bomb shelter in the crawlspace underneath his bedroom when Obama was elected. Every week I would have to dig out a five gallon buckets worth of dirt and dump it in the backyard. If I didn’t dig, even if I had done all my other chores, I didn’t get my money.

We stopped after my dad started to worry about the supports for the house giving out. That space down there used to represent something, exactly what I was never sure. Now it’s just a place rats go to die. Now it’s just a hole.