Dear Diary,

During the first week in January of my senior year in high school, a strange smell began to permeate around the senior lockers. The nearby bathrooms and drains were searched for a possible sewer line backup, but nothing could be found. Several days later the smell grew from a “rotten-egg” like odor to a pungent reek. Finally, someone remembered that an air-raid shelter was underneath the lounge--maybe the smell was coming from there.

Unfortunately, no one could find the door. It had been covered during a remodeling effort several years earlier. So the original blueprints on file at city hall were checked. However, even then the janitors still couldn’t enter the shelter. The door was locked and no one could find the key. Boy, did we feel safe.

The key was found somewhere in the main office. But when the door was unlocked and when the knob was turned, the door still wouldn’t open. It was stuck. Will this nightmare ever end?

After two weeks of suffering, the janitors were finally able to enter the shelter and discover the cause of the stench. The pipes had ruptured during the Christmas holidays and water had gotten into the supplies (which probably hadn’t been changed since the shelter was built). Blankets were dry-rotted, medicine was expired and unusable and the food--don’t even talk about the food.

Removing the spoiled supplies and cleaning the shelter, eliminated the smell. But the shelter wasn’t restocked as the threat of nuclear war seemed very remote. Hopefully that was the case, because if an emergency did arise, we were in BIG TROUBLE. So, have you checked your shelter lately?