Fallout Shelter

During the summer when I was 9, I lived a house we rented at the end of a road in Northern California. It was a rental from some weird guy that sang in a band. Their favorite song to sing was that one about the lion sleeping in the jungle. He would sing when he came over to fix things on the house. There were huge pine trees everywhere. Squirrels running and jumping from branch to branch, occasionally bombing you with a pinecone knocked loose. Once a pinecone broke our patio table. Of course, our mom didn’t believe it was not me or my little sister that broke the table.

My sister and I shared a room in the middle of the house. We had a nightstand between our beds and windows above our heads. I was playing with some toy cars one weekend morning and one of them fell down the vent in our room behind the nightstand. I moved the nightstand forward and grabbed a flashlight to see inside to see if my car was there. One of those plastic flashlights that took 2 D batteries. I could not see my car, but I saw some papers. I pulled at the vent to see if it would come out and it wiggled loose. I pulled and twisted, and it finally popped out. I had a clearer look of the papers. They looked like some old magazines. I reached into the vent to pull them out. They were some old dirty magazines, probably hidden there by the last kid that lived here. I put them to the side and reached back down the vent and could not feel my car.

I was a clever kid, one of those kids that loved watching that guy with the mullet save the day on tv, so I was always fixing or making something. I went to the bathroom and grabbed a dental mirror we had and used a rubber band to put it on a stick to lower down the vent to see if my car was there. I slowly lowered the mirror down the vent and used the flashlight to reflect light off the mirror so I could see. I could see my car down there. Because the car had wheels, it had rolled in far. My arm was not long enough to reach, so I had to get creative. I pieced together some race car tracks and taped them so they would not separate. I took a coat hanger and bent it open with some pliers and made it the right elbow shape to curve into the vent. I taped the race car track to the coat hanger and had the hook on the end so I could scoop the car out of the vent. I planned to use the hook to pull the car onto the track. At the end of the track, I put some tape upside down so it when I scooped the car onto it, it would stick. According to my watch I had been trying to get my car for about 14 minutes. I was getting hungry, so I decided to get some food and resume the car rescue afterwards. My sister was in the living room watching that movie where the kid steals a book, the other kids horse dies, and then they fly on a white dragon dog thing to save the world.

Our mom was at work, so we took care of ourselves. I asked her if she wanted some mac n cheese. She squeaked, “sure”. So, I made mac n cheese, we ate it all up and she went back to her movie. I get back in the room to realize my flashlight was left on. “Dang it, dead batteries,” I said in disappointment to myself. I went to the junk drawer to see if we had any. Nope, none in there. I checked the garage, none in there. Then I remembered there was another flashlight in the other building that our washer and dryer were in. There was a guest house and a couple utility sheds next to the house, one of them had our washer and dryer inside. The guest house was used for storage. I ran over to grab the flashlight and brought it to the room. I laid down on the ground and started fishing the car out of the vent. According to my mirror the car had rolled in and stopped when it hit something else in the vent. From the looks of it, it was a small book. “I wonder what else in in the other vents of this house”, I said to myself. I was able to get my car pulled to where I could reach it and got it out. Then I went after the book. I was able to hook the far edge of the book and kept tugging at it, to get it close to the bend in the duct. Once I could see it, I pulled the race car track out and reached down to grab the book. It was small, dusty, and had a black cover made from some kind of animal skin.

I took the book to the kitchen and used a paper towel to clean it off with some spray cleaner. There was writing inside that was in cursive. It was hard to make out, but it was what appeared to be a journal. A very old journal because some of the entry dates were from 1960’s. There was not a name that I could immediately find in the journal. There was a bunch of odd entries talking about an underground building somewhere on the property. I felt excited that I had found something neat but at the same time I felt like I was going to be in trouble because I was reading someone else’s thoughts. I went back to my room and put the dirty magazines back in the vent. Put the nightstand back and then I put the book in my backpack.

I called my friend up the road to see if he was home and told him I had found something cool. He said he would come later to see what it was. His great, great, great, grandma had invented that spicy sauce that everyone puts on their food. The little red bottle that has the green lid. I get my backpack ready for an adventure. My uncle used to take me bird watching and taught me some survival stuff. He used to take me hiking with him when I lived in Southern California. We would go on hikes when he would visit us in Northern California as well. Some of what I learned from my uncle and from the guy on tv with the mullet, taught me to be ready for all types of situations. I had my slingshot, a bag full of marbles for ammo, binoculars, some rope, my water bottle, some granola bars, some first aid stuff and my knife. I had a bunch of other odds and ends in there too, but they are for another adventure. So, my friend shows up, we go to the garage to grab some shovels and I show him the old journal. We read a few pages and it explains the layout of the property and which corner of the lot the building is in, and he agrees we should look for the underground building. According to the book it is somewhere in the southwest corner. I had been around the whole property and in that part of the lot was apple trees, some pine trees that marked the edge of the property and a huge burn pile that was burnt once a year to get rid of all the brush from trimming the trees and any big branches that fell from above.

We walked down to the apple trees and I started reading the journal for more clues. There was a map on one of the pages that said how many feet from the property line the air vent was. I went to the fence and stepped out 38 steps in from the fence. Then stepped over 14 steps up. There was a green apple tree right in that spot. We both started looking around and did not see any type of vent or anything sticking out of the ground. We laid the shovels down under the pine trees at the edge of the lot and decided to come back the next day. I was hoping to find something that day. I went back to the house and back to my room to play some video games. Later that evening I decided to read the journal some more to understand why there was a building underground. I guess back then people were building fallout shelters to hide in in case we got bombed. The journal writer did have his name on a page I read.

His name was Percelli. I wrote that down in my notepad with other notes I had been taking while reading the journal. I drew a little map of the property and where the shelter was. I read more and more, and he was writing his thoughts about fighting off his neighbors if we got bombed because they made fun of him for having a shelter. He wrote about how much food he would need for a year and then I found something interesting. He wrote about a safe he was ordering to put in the shelter to lock away his valuables. This guy talked about friends he lost in the war against Germany and how he was the only one out of all his friends that made it home. He wished he had married so he was not all alone. One thing caught my attention in the journal. He wrote, “one more score and I can hide in safety for a while, the world that has abandoned me and my brothers will burn”. What I could gather from this journal is there was a fallout shelter on the property, and it could have some cool treasures inside waiting to be found. I was going to go looking for it the next day. Since I was being raised by a single mom that worked double shifts, I had plenty of time to look for this shelter.

I woke up the next morning and my friend said he did not want to come over. He had to help his mom go fill up all the gumball and candy machines they owned. I got my little sister to come with me. I had to promise to play dolls and have a tea party with her to get her to go along. We looked and looked and could not find anything. I wondered if the vent could be made of metal, so I went and grabbed my magnets from my science kit and some string. My sister and I swung the magnets back and forth around the ground to see if they would find any metal. When I was near the green apple tree my magnet suddenly snapped to the bottom of the tree. “Trees aren’t magnetic”, I thought. I bent down to get a closer look and it seemed there was a metal pipe that the apple tree had grown around. Just a little piece of metal was sticking out and that’s what my magnet caught on. I told my sis and being that she was 7 she didn’t have anything to say about it. I told her she could go back inside, and I’d come get her if I needed her.

I was going to start digging when my sister came flying down the hill. Out of breath she says, “there is some old man at the front door knocking”. So, I tell her to throw the shovels in the trees and to hide in the laundry room. I run up to the house, go through the back door and get to the front door, and answer it. The old man looks at me and smiles, “hello young man are your mom and dad home”? I said, “my mom is at work and my dad should be home in an hour or so”. He was a stranger, so I lied about having a dad. He says he used to live here a few years ago and he was wondering if anyone had found his book he left behind. I tried to play it off like I had no clue to which book he was referring to. Could this be Percelli? I said, “no sir, we have lived here for a little over a year and have not seen any book”. His smile disappeared, he lunged forward, grabbed my shirt and in an almost low growl saying, “it’s bad to lie to adult’s son”. I confessed, that I had found the book and I would go get it for him. I went and grabbed it out of my room and gave it to him. He tipped his hat and said, “thanks kid”. Then he hobbled off. Good thing I already took all the notes I needed from the book for myself. I went and grabbed my sister and we got inside and locked the doors. Right then I decided not to dig for the shelter.

I told my mom when she got home about the book and the old man and she laughed and said, “you have such an imagination”. She did not believe me! The weekend had come and passed. Bored out of our minds we are sitting in the living room and my sister says, “the creepy old man is back”. I look out the window and he’s walking buy with a shovel and a backpack. So, I go grabbed my binoculars to see what he was up to. He goes right over to the spot by where my magnet hit the tree and started digging. Me being curious I still wanted to know what is in the shelter. Not very long after he started digging, he must have hit a tree root. He moved over to another spot. Then he hit another tree root. He scratched his head. Then he put down his shovel and started walking towards the house. We ducked down; I told my sister to hide in the closet. He came to the other door and knocked. I did not open it this time. I opened the curtain with the phone in my hand. I told the old man, “I’ll call the cops if you try anything funny”. He started chuckling, “ha ha ha, I am the cop’s son”. Then he showed me a badge. It was an old badge, but it was a badge. He then said, “my name is detective Percelli, I actually own this house. You can call my nephew and ask him”. I grabbed the phone book and called our landlord.

Phone: Brrrrrr, brrrrrr, brrrrrr,

Landlord: “Hello”

Me” “Sir, Mr. Tony, there is an old man named Percelli at our door and he says he owns this house.”

Landlord: “he does buddy, I just take care of it for him,”

Me: “why is he digging a hole in the backyard”?

Landlord: “just let him, he does this every few years”.

Me: “ok thank you, goodbye”

I opened the door and Mr. Percelli was patiently waiting. “What can I help you with sir?” Well, sonny, I need an axe or a hatchet.” I went to the woodshed and grabbed a hatchet and handed it to Mr. Percelli. He nodded his head with a smile on his face. I went to go back in the house, and he hollered at me, “are you coming or not?” I replied excitedly, “I will be right there!” He asked, “can you grab some water for us to drink?”

We mosey on down there and start to cut some of the roots out of the way and continued to dig down. We had a good-sized ditch dug near the tree about up to my knees by lunch time. I decided after I grabbed some food I was going to dig towards the base of the tree. I made some bologna sandwiches for Mr. Percelli, myself, and my sister. I brought mine and Mr. Percelli’s down to the apple tree. He gobbled it up fast. We resumed digging down and over toward the tree and I hit a rock. Well, I thought it was a rock. It was concrete. We got closer to the concrete and dug down. We dug down so far; I was in at least as deep as the deep end of a swimming pool. We carved stairs in the ditch so we could get out. I told Mr. Percelli I needed to go in for the night. He agreed it was quitting time. After we climbed out, he asked me, “will you help me tomorrow sonny”? I said, “sure, I want to know what we are digging for.” Being exhausted from all that digging I took a shower and went straight to bed.

The next morning, I walked down to the tree and got back to the digging. I moved over to the left and my shovel hit something metal. My magnet stuck to it. I uncovered it to find a pale green door. I moved as much dirt out of the way as I could and continued to uncover the door. After what seemed like forever, but it was actually 3 hours, Mr. Percelli was just walking down the hill. The door was finally uncovered and there was a big metal latch on the front. I was not strong enough to get it to move, neither was Mr. Percelli. We had to get a bar or something. Mr. Percelli asked, “can you run up to the garage and grab a hammer, a pipe wrench and a piece of pipe”? I went to the garage and grabbed a pipe wrench and a hammer and ran it down by the apple tree. Then I went back to grab a metal pipe to use on the end of the pipe wrench. Mr. Percelli instructed me to use the hammer to tap the latch and get any rust loose so it might open a little easier. I got the pipe wrench positioned and Mr. Percelli slid the pipe over the end of the wrench. I climbed back out of the ditch which was more of a hole and got on level ground. I went over to the side of the door and lowered myself onto the pipe. I bounced on it with all my weight as Mr. Percelli pulled down. There was a loud pop! The latch broke free!

We had to pry the door open, but it opened enough for me to get inside. Mr. Percelli said, “go on in, ill pry the door open a little further”. I grabbed my backpack and the Flashlight and slowly entered the shelter while Mr. Percelli pried on door open a little further. It was weird smelling and musty. There was old paint peeling on the walls and some torn up fabric on the floor as if some old carpeting had been there at one time. There were all kinds of wooden shelves on all the walls loaded with glass jars and canned goods. Everything was so old and looked like it had been there for decades. There were 3 rooms in the whole shelter. One room looked like a kitchen area, the other looked like a sleeping quarter, and the last room appeared to be the common room. There was an old ugly orange couch and a chair. I heard a match strike and turned around. Mr. Percelli had lighted a lantern. He handed me the book and asked, “did you read the part about the safe”? I gulped and nodded yes. He smiled and said, “I have a surprise in there for you”. I hoped he was not going to hurt me or something crazy. I opened his book and found the part I had read about his safe. It was in the back kitchen room behind a shelf. We went over to it and he moved some canning jars off the two lower shelves. He removed the empty shelves and pulled and old brown blanket off the safe. The blanket was the same color as the wall it was next to. It seemed Mr. Percelli was pretty good at hiding things.

He said, “come on over her son”. I walked over to him and knelt beside the safe as he was. He got a far off look in his eyes and began to tell me why he had the shelter and why he had the safe. “Along time ago after I got out of the military, I became a detective. There were these bank robbers that had robbed 38 different banks. It took me 14 years to finally catch them”. Those numbers were familiar to me. I remembered them from the distances from the property line of the fallout shelter location. Mr. Percelli continued, “I caught them, and they were locked up for the rest of their lives. I did not find their money until a few years after they had been locked up. The department I worked for decided they did not need me anymore after I had them locked away so in spite of them, I kept the money I had found. I never turned it in to evidence or gave it back to the banks”. I asked, “How much money was it?” “Millions kid, more than a few people could spend in their lifetime.” He unlocked the safe, there were stacks and stacks of money inside. The safe went further into the wall than it appeared. There had to still be millions inside the safe. Mr. Percelli grabbed a few stacks of bills and said, “you need to go to college kid”. I was 9, college was far away for me.

He told me, “every few years I come out here to see who is living in this house and we go dig up my old fall out shelter that pushy salesman tricked me into buying and I give this evil money a good purpose.” “You however are a different case.” “I am going to give this money to your mother to put away for you for college.” “I am going to be leaving this house in your name and you have to continue this tradition for me when I am gone.” Each person you bring here gets $20,000.” My eyes lit up with excitement, was this for real? I agreed, and we slowly got up. Mr. Percelli closed the safe, covered it with a blanket, put the shelves back, put the canning jars back on the shelf, and we walked out of the shelter. Mr. Percelli put the money in his pocket. He asked me to help him cover up the shelter tomorrow and said he would be back by tomorrow to talk to my mother before she left for work.

Tomorrow came, Mr. Percelli showed up and talked to my mother. She was crying and hugging him. She followed him out to the garage, and they grabbed an oil can. They walked down to the hole in the ground and Mr. Percelli lubed the latches and hinges on the door. “Hopefully next time it won’t be so hard to open,” he said. I walked down and we filled in the hole around the shelter while my mom left for work. We stomped the dirt to pack it in good. Mr. Percelli had gone home. My mom was opening the mail a few years later and there was a letter from Mr. Percelli addressed to me.

He wrote,

“Dear kid,

I’m finally with my old battle buddies that I have missed since Germany. If you are receiving this letter, my lawyer will be stopping by to finalize papers with your mom and you so you receive what we discussed. Keep true to your promise and carry on this tradition. I have left my current home to your family, so you don’t have to worry about rent anymore. My nephew will still take care of this place for you. He has been paid to do so for the next 20 years. I started off doing this every year, as I got older I couldn’t do this much work physically to give away this money. That’s why I started to come every few years. By the time all the money is gone, 532 people will have been given money. That is a grand total of $10,640,000. If you do the math, 38 times 14 is 532. Funny how things work out that way sometimes. You are going to have to pass this on to someone else. I hope you and your family are doing well, take care kiddo.

Mr. Percelli”

My mom looked at me and jokingly asks, “what do you want to go to college for?” I knew for sure I was going to go for Criminal Justice so I could be a detective like Mr. Percelli. After I join the military that is what planned to do.