two continuous drcams until 1 started to hear it was getting better. I told you the one about seeing myself dead. Here is.the other: “We were asleep and we heard a big rumble. That woke us up. We started to go outside and there was this gigantic explosion. “We got in our car and we were almost al the turnpike. But there was something keeping us back. Our car couldn't get through. So we tried another place. But we couldn't get through there cither. There was a blockade all around Middletown so there was no way we could get out. “We got back to the house and the radiation started to get to us. It started coming through our windows. “ Every time I had that dream I woke up real sweaty.” There are, clearly, a great many conflicting pressures on the kids in Mrs. Christ’s class—and on their families. Several of the students have parents or relatives who work at Three Mile Island. They earn good money—and spend some of it at stores that other kids’ parents own. Besides, Middletown has a beneficial economic relationship with Met Ed. Its government buys the utility’s electricity wholesale and resells it to the area’s consumers at retail prices. Recently, Met Ed has been arguing that if the nuclear generators are shut down forever, the company’s financial future could be endangered. Many of the children’s families accept that logic and fear the town will suffer financial setback, too. At the end of our discussion. I asked the kids to vote on whether they thought that the reactors—or, at least. Unit O n e - should be reopened. Eight thought that the nuclear power plants should remain shut down; seven thought they should function again; one was undecided. Some of the kids who'd described the most harrowing experiences and dreams insisted that the plant was essential to the area's economy and to America's energy needs. Mrs. Christ agreed. Though she’d packed her suitcases and a strongbox the Saturday after the accident, she never left town: “ I felt that my place was to stay with my home." In fact, that Saturday her brother had driven down from Shamokin —from coal country, where most of her family still lives—and helped her and her husband shingle the outside of their house. The three of them had a lawn picnic that day. The near-meltdown hasn't particularly influenced her feelings about nuclear power. She thinks that if Unit One does reopen. “ It'll probably be the safest place in the world because of all this publicity. Besides, we need the power. Where else are we going to gel it?” Later, though, she began to talk about some haunting childhood memories. Her grandfather, a coal miner in Shamokin, had died of black lung—and he’d also had Parkinson’s disease. She wondered if there was a connection between the two ailments. Then she said, softly, that the men who worked in the anthracite mines 20 or 30 years ago never realized that the persistent cough, which they called miners’ asthma, would turn out to be a disease The radiation started to get us. It started coming through our windows. Every time I had that dream I woke up real sweaty. endemic to all coal miners, coming from chemical particles that formed the very dust they breathed. “Maybe we’ll find that the same sort of thing is true of the radiation here,” she said. “Come back in 20 years and interview some people and you might find that a lot of us have changed our minds about all this. 1 know there’s a teacher here in our building who is going to have a baby in September. If I were her. I think I’d really be upset. But she doesn’t seem to be.” Then, with a slightly nervous chuckle, she added: “You know, you could drive yourself crazy worrying about things like tha t.” Julie's Story The senior class of Middletown Regional High School was supposed to have its prom on Friday. March 30. Julie Rcigle had been looking forward to that event for months, (t already had been a good year for Julie. She'd made the volleyball team and the basketball team; she'd been appointed Middletown’s representative to the prestigious area-wide youth forum; in May. she ahd her friend Ernie Ccssa would be the Rotary Club students of the month. Her father owns a trucking company and raises beef cattle on the banks of the Susquehanna, about a mile away from Three Mile Island; her mother is a secretary at Penn State’s nearby Capital Campus: They are both extremely proud of their bright, blonde, gregarious only child. Julie already had been accepted at Shippensburg State College, where she expected to study journalism as a prelude to a fun- filled, adventurous life. That week in March, she’d found an ideal job—she would work in a women's clothing shop, which would allow her to buy skirts and dresses at discount prices. What's more, she had a boyfriend she cared about deeply The prom promised to mark a graceful end to a golden year. Like everyone else in Middletown, Julie had heard there was trouble at Three Mile Island the previous Wednesday. Though she’d accepted Met Ed’s assurances that it was a small leak, she must have had some premonition of trouble. For, Thursday night, "1 dreamed that I was standing in my bathroom with my gown on when 1 heard the news that the prom had been cancelled because of radiation, “ Friday morning. I told my best friend about the dream. She said she’d had one just like it. So we began to joke about our nightmares." At nine on Friday morning, Julie was in an accounting class. She'd mastered most of the material—and. feeling a little bored, she stared idly out the window. Suddenly she saw Middletown’s mayor, Robert Reid —who is also a teacher at the high school —sprinting toward his car in the parking lot. A small detail telegraphed his anxiety to her. "He almost always stops for the slop sign outside the lot. He cares a lot about setting a good example for the rest of us. But that morning he whipped in his car and ran right through it. Right then. J knew something was wrong.” At 10:30. when Julie was silting in her English class, the janitor came in to close the airvents. Downstairs, there was a traffic jam in front of the building. Soon, a voice on the loudspeaker told the students to close all the windows. The teachers didn't know any more about what was going on than the kids did. "They just said. 'Ifanvthing happens, we’ll announce it over the FA system.'" Julie and her classmates were so nervous they couldn’t study. “We just sat there and played charades all period, to get our minds oft what might happen. The charades were kind of funny. I remember one girl who said. 'Guess what 1 am?’ She raised up three lingers and stuck her hand out toward us. Then she yelled. ‘Boom! I’m Three Mile Island.’” Julie went home at about 12:30. She still assumed that she’d go to the prom that night, so the few extra hours were a gift: She figured she'd go downtown and get her hair done. Just as she was leaving for the beautician. her mother came home. Some of the professors at Capital Campus had been worrying since Wednesday that Met Ed was concealing the truth. Mrs. Reigle was frightened, too—far more frightened than her daughter. “ She said. ‘We’re leaving.'” Julie recalls. “Of course. I didn't want to go. 1 thought she was dragging me away from one of the most important dances of my life. And 1was scared that if I didn't report for work the next morning I’d lose my job. I'd been trying to get one like it ever since basketball season.” At least. Julie figured, she’d have an hour or so to pack. “ But my mother told me to be in the car in 10 minutes. That was very hard. How could I gothrough 18 years worth of things, and choose what to take? I thought. ‘What if I never come back? What is of value to me?’ SKIERS/ SELL y o & R CARED W /A l T E R R E C R E A T I O N A L EQU/PMEA/T: BUY P R E -O W N E D S N / E Q U IP M E N T ATA FRACTIONOF b RETAIL COST! WE SUPPORT THE * SK/3 * 3 0 0T S # POLES > CLOTHING * GOGGLES ETC. SALOMON CONSIGNMENT W IN TE R RECREATIONAL EQUIPMENT 29
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