HISTORY: Hidden Cold War cache re-discovered at Auburn’s Placer High.

It was the Cold War and every community in the country had a plan in place for when the bombers arrived or the missiles started dropping. Even Auburn.

In the Earl Crabbe Gym basement, civil defense workers stored canisters of water, hard-tack biscuits and toiletries in anticipation of an attack from the skies that never came.

Over the years, the room was locked up, ignored and then forgotten.

In the past week, however, the cache of containers with the once-common “CD” civil defense emblem were re-discovered by volunteers working to repaint the high school’s weight-lifting room.

Wednesday, some of them were marveling at what they had found in a room that time appeared to have forgotten. Stacks of biscuit containers, tongue depressors, bandages, commode liners, plastic cups, and even containers of clear water were neatly stacked, all seemingly awaiting the day students would be rushed from their classes to escape a nuclear attack.

“It was always rumored that there was a bomb shelter at the high school,” Doug Randall of Auburn’s Consolidated Painting said. “Now it sets the rumor to fact.”

Randy Albright, Warehouse Paint sales representative and a Placer Class of 1983 grad, said he was surprised that the water being stored in plastic bags was still perfectly clear.

“I’m just surprised everything was in good condition after 50 or 60 years,” Albright said.

I wonder if it’s still potable, and if the biscuits are still edible.