Everybody Take Shelter!

When his parents went out one evening last week, leaving him alone in the family's apartment in The Bronx, 23-year-old Stanley Gordon found himself momentarily at loose ends. But Stanley, a radio bug, and an interested participant in the Atomic Age, soon found something to do. He got out his tools and hooked up a microphone, a four-watt amplifier and an eight-inch loudspeaker. Then, seized with the kind of dreamy thirst for power which causes humans to throw matches into gas tanks or shoot fat women with BB guns, he leaned over and began to speak.

"This is an Office of Civilian Defense sound truck," he cried into the mike. "Unidentified airplanes approaching New York City. All residents black out. Prepare for atomic attack!" Then he turned up the amplifier volume, producing a sirenlike screaming sound. The windows of the Gordons' third-floor apartment--like those of most of the apartments around it--were open. The results of his announcement on the teeming Bronx exceeded Stanley's fondest expectations.

Hundreds of men & women surged out into the busy street intersection below. Automobiles screeched to a stop and their drivers leaped out and searched wildly for refuge. "Enemy planes are now 40 miles away," yelled Stanley. Then, rapidly he called: "Enemy planes are 30 miles away . . . Enemy planes are 20 miles away." As the crowd milled about wildly, he advised: "EVERYBODY TAKE SHELTER!"

Thinking it was time to soothe his audience, he then announced: "All enemy planes have been encountered and destroyed." But the happy ending he had contrived for his story did not satisfy the cops who burst into the apartment. They took him off to night court, advised the judge of his sins. Stanley, however, just couldn't help smiling as they did. "One of these funny kids, eh," intoned the judge, beginning to breathe hard. "The workhouse," he said. "Thirty days in the workhouse."

Stanley quit grinning.

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