These days there’s nothing more old-fashioned than a fallout shelter. It’s not, unfortunately, that the threat of a nuclear attack seems so out-dated; it’s the idea that you’d want to survive one. Still, for those who are pessimistic enough to expect a nuclear war to occur and optimistic enough to plan on sticking around afterward, shelter building has come back into vogue in the past year.
It’s easy to furnish a fallout shelter at your local supermarket, where dried food, fuel, and medical and sanitary supplies are all readily available. Imported bottled water will help the Martha Stewart set face Armageddon in style, while MREs or other military rations may leave you less reluctant to depart this life, should it come to that. Survivalists with a sense of history, however, will want to stock their postapocalyptic hideaways with genuine, original Cold War provisions, and Chalet Suzanne, a hotel and restaurant in Lake Wales, Florida, will be happy to help sticklers create that authentic Kennedy-era feel.
In 1962, in response to the Cuban missile crisis, the hotel’s owners canned several thousand cases of sterile Florida well water under contract to a Tampa firm. The water bore the brand name NASK, for Nuclear Attack Survival Kit, and a few dozen cases still remain. Cans may be purchased for $16.95 apiece (10 percent extra west of the Mississippi) through the hotel’s Web site, www.chaletsuzanne.com. Each can comes with a certificate of authenticity. A dollar from every purchase goes to the Cold War Museum (www.coldwar.org), which is run by Francis Gary Powers, Jr., son of the downed U-2 pilot. (Another good online source for fallout-shelter history is www.civildefensemuseum.com.)
Most original shelter chow has long since deteriorated to the point of uselessness. The sole exception is what was called “carbohydrate supplement” (candy), which remains edible in many cases, though it may contain a dye that has been found to cause cancer. But no human could possibly eat the crumbling, moldy crackers, wafers, and biscuits that once stocked fallout shelters across the nation. Many of the huge drums of water have become contaminated as well, but NASK, with its extra-thick interior coating and rugged metal packaging that makes it “impervious to nuclear fallout” (according to the label), is said to remain as potable as it was on the day it was canned. Better yet, it will last indefinitely, which means that if the world manages to muddle through its latest set of crises, authentic period water will someday be available for tomorrow’s Cold War re-enactors.
WHY DO WE SAY THAT?
“MISTAKES WERE MADE”
This passive, evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from personal responsibility for the act goes back farther in American history than one might expect. A few examples from earlier this year:
“McDonald’s . . . admits mistakes were made in letting the public know about the [non-vegetarian] ingredients in the fries and hash browns.” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
“No one can say that he served in an administration that did not make mistakes. . . . It is quite possible that mistakes were made.” (Henry A. Kissinger)
“If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.” (Cardinal Edward M. Egan of New York)
A presidential precedent for the excuse comes from Bill Clinton, who fended off questions about Democratic fundraising at a press conference on January 28, 1997, by saying, “Mistakes were made here by people who did it either deliberately or inadvertently.” A decade earlier, during the Iran-Contra scandal, President Ronald Reagan said in a radio broadcast on December 6, 1986, that, “it’s obvious that the execution of these policies was flawed and mistakes were made.” Public figures abroad also have ratified the usage. For example, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to news on April 21, 1997, that he would not be indicted in a political influence-peddling scandal with the concession that “mistakes were made.”
Long before Clinton and the others, however, President Ulysses S. Grant also found occasion to employ this evasive construction. In a note to his final report to Congress, on December 5, 1876, Grant alluded to the scandals that had marred his Presidency but carefully sidestepped responsibility for them. He said only that “mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit.”
Given the phrase’s long, unhappy history, perhaps it is finally time, as spinmeisters are also wont to say, to move on and put this one behind us. It’s a mistake.
AMERICA’S BLOODIEST DAY
IT MADE THE SOUTH’S DEFEAT POSSIBLE
James M. Mcpherson is known as the author of Battle Cry of Freedom, the best-selling one-volume history of the Civil J War. Now he has writ- J ten an absorbing short book. Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, the Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 224 pages, $26.00), which focuses on the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history. More than twice as many people were killed on September 17, 1862, as on September 11, 2001, but that is not his point. Rather, he shows that when the battle began, the Confederacy was probably closer to victory than it ever would be again. The first part of the book follows the war through the string of Union victories along the Mississippi and elsewhere in early 1862 and then the reverses that followed that summer, leaving the South looking more powerful than ever by fall. The account of the battle itself takes only 13 pages to move swiftly from the morning slaughter in the Cornfield to the midday horror of the Bloody Lane, the unnecessary Union bottleneck at Burnside Bridge, the dramatic late arrival of A. P. Hill’s Confederate division, and finally Gen. George B. McClellan’s characteristic ultimate reluctance to fully seize his opportunity. After the Union turned back the Army of Northern Virginia that day, Lincoln, in a new position of strength, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, ending all chance of reconciliation and changing the struggle, in McPherson’s words, “from one to restore the Union into one to destroy the old Union and build a new one purged of human bondage.” He concludes that though the paired Union triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 were undoubtedly momentous, as was Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in 1864, “they would never have-happened if the triple Confederate offensives in Mississippi, Kentucky, and most of all Maryland had not been defeated in the fall of 1862.”
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL” NO MORE
A NEW PBS SERIES COVERS THE FIGHT TO ELIMINATE JIM CROW
Fifty years ago a bold challenge to school segregation was winding its way slowly through the federal courts. The plaintiffs were black parents determined to stake out a better life for their children. Their cause would triumph two years later, when the United States Supreme Court struck down the legal doctrine of “separate but equal”—and sounded a death knell for Jim Crow.
This fall PBS airs a four-part documentary series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, which chronicles the history of legal segregation from the earliest days of Reconstruction to the eve of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The series uses never-before-seen photographs and film footage, oral histories, and interviews to plug an important gap in the documentary treatment of civil rights history. A strong companion piece to The Civil War and Eyes on the Prize, Rise and Fall offers a comprehensive look at the political, social, and cultural history of racial segregation in America.
The series premieres nationally on October 1, 8, 15, and 22 on PBS (check local listings). PBS will also maintain a Web site where viewers can learn more about the history of Jim Crow.
SCREENINGS
THE ROOKIE
Arriving on dvd and video just in time to provide an antidote to World Series hype, The Rookie, written by Mike Rich, directed by John Lee Hancock, and starring Dennis Quaid, is the best film about baseball since Bull Durham. Released last spring, The Rookie sneaked up on a lot of critics and, without fanfare or much studio backing, became a word-of-mouth hit. Exactly how good it is wasn’t obvious at first to many critics, and it may not grab you right away, not until you realize how many baseball-movie clichés aren’t in it.
The Rookie is based on—and sticks fairly close to—the true story of Jim Morris, who blew out his arm as a 23-year-old prospect and made his major-league debut 12 years later with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, appearing just long enough to have, as ballplayers say, a “cup of coffee” in the 1999 season and a couple more the next year. The first half of the film, which young children will probably enjoy the most, is about how Morris, then a high school baseball coach, inspires his team to take its divisional championship. The relaxed no-nonsense approach Morris brings to his baseball coaching is reflected in Rich’s unpretentious treatment of the material (and through Quaid’s relaxed and engaging performance). This serves him even better in the second half of the film, when Morris, keeping a bet with his players, gives the major leagues a second chance.
Though The Rookie is clearly aimed at what is called the family market, it’s not the kind of film you can simply park the youngsters in front of. Kids have been served so much sugar-coated fantasy in sports-related movies that they may not comprehend why it means so much for Morris to simply make the team. Adults, who can be aware of the failure of their dreams nearly every time they look at their own children, will understand. By the time Morris actually appears outside the Texas Rangers’ home park, in Arlington, it’s as if he’s seeing a major-league ballpark for the first time. We’re so completely with him that it doesn’t matter that the game he gets to pitch in, in front of his family and hometown friends, is completely meaningless.
Rich and Hancock could have hoked up the story into a poor man’s version of The Natural, falsifying a real-life story the way Robert Redford desecrated Bernard Malamud’s novel. But there are no artificial sweeteners in this big-league coffee, and Morris’s achievement in just appearing in a major-league game offers more than satisfactory emotional payoff.
