move out of that house if I were you.'" Afterward. Alice Etters realized she'd been so alarmed by his news that she'd failed to ask what it actually meant that she had 10 times the normal level of radiation in her body. During the next few; days, spokesmen forlheNRC and Pennsylvania's Bureau of Radiological Health insisted that the radiation in Alice Etter's body had no connection to the accident at Three Mile Island. The scanning machine, they said, makes a distinction between forms of radiation. It showed that Alice Etters—and the eight other people—had a kind of radiation that usually comes from well water when the wells are located near uranium deposits. (There is a great deal of uranium in northeast Pennsylvania.) The problem has always existed, though scientists have only begun to recognize it during the past decade. Il is a serious problem, too—one that can cause bone cancer. In the long run, according to Thomas Gerusky. director of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Radiological Health, the radiation from well water may threaten as many people as 1he emissions from Three Mile Island. But. in the wake of the accidnet, Gerusky and his staff have neither the funds nor the personnel to deal with the problem. When Dr. Gotchy called Mrs. Etters he told her there would be an article about his tindings in the next day’s Harrisburg Patriot. There was one—a front page piece which said that the NRC hadn't found any high readings of radiation among the people who had been scanned. When Alice Etters' daughter read the article she got furious. She phoned the Patriot and said. 'There are high readings. My mother and my aunt have them." The next day a reporter interviewed Alice Etters. His story was published in one column, inside the paper, under a headline that read. “TM] Area Resident Still Upset." Nevertheless, the text told a fragmentary version of Alice Etters' tale. The next Sunday night, when the antinuclear pediatrician. Dr. Helen Caldicott, gave a well- attended speech at the Harrisburg Area Community College, Alice Etters was in the audience. She told her story again. The following day she and a government official were interviewed on TV. News of her plight spread quickly. And, in the atmosphere of distrust for all official explanations that has pervaded this area since March 28, thousands of people believed that her problems were caused by the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, not by the water in her well or the fieldstones in her house. Alice Etters' story alarmed many of the people who hadn't originally gone for a body scan. So, when she and the eight others were rescanned—and pronounced normal—scores of area residents asked if they could be tested. Met Ed, which had to pay for the process, refused their requests. Its spokesmen said that the utility wasn't responsible for the type of radiation detected in Mrs. Etters. Met Ed refused to shoulder the cost of more medical examinations. At home, Alice Etters tried to remain calm. But she has lost her appetite and has “ In those days I was afraid we'd be invaded by a foreign country. It never occurred to me that here we would be invaded by Americans." trouble sleeping. She rarely goes outside— and certainly doesn't want to plant a garden. as she has most years. She doesn't like to go to downtown Middletown either, for she worries that people will criticize her for being a fear-monger or a publicity seeker. She has begun to get telephone calls from other people who have experienced disturbing physical symptoms since the accident. It seems that dozens of men and women in her immediate neighborhood— Red Hill—have throat trouble or nausea. Mrs. Etters has received phone calls from most of the other people with high radiation readings, too. Several of them have children—a 1-year-old, a 2-year-old, an 8-year-old—who had to be sedated before they were scanned. They don't want to reveal their names, for fear that widespread attention will unnerve them still more— and reduce their property values if they decide to leave. But they are all deeply worried. They still don’t know what the information means. Everyone who has called has remarked on the same strange thing—a funny taste in their mouths. They’d detected it after the accident. It makes them walk around —as Mrs. Etters told me one day—"as if we’d just eaten persimmons.” One night. Mrs. Etters’ granddaughter dreamed that she and her 10-year-old cousin were sitting on top of one of the towers at Three Mile Island. The boy was holding a balloon—suddenly, it carried him into outer space. The little girl reached out to rescue him, but she couldn't reach him. She woke up crying. A few days later, Alice Etters’ daughter decided to move away from Middletown forever. Alice and Harvey Etters think they’ll move, too, when Harvey retires this July. It won't be easy. The Etters family has lived in the area for about 300 years— indeed, the town of Etters is named for one of Harvey’s ancestors. AU of Harvey Etters' relatives still live within eight miles of his stone house on the Susquehanna. Besides. Harvey says, "Who. at 60. can go out a buy a new home, especially if the one he's leaving is worth S50.000 or S60.000?" "Still,” Alice answers, a little chidingly, “we care more about our health and peace of mind than about the almighty dollar.” A Protest Movement is Born For years, the Harrisburg area has been considered one of the most reflexively patriotic regions in America. Most likely, that was the main reason the government chose it as the locale for the trial in 1972 of Philip Berrigan. Elizabeth McAlister, and five others who allegedly conspired to kidnap Henry Kissinger. The Justice Department attorneys apparently assumed that the.jurors would accept their word without examining the very thin evidence they had to buttress their case. As a matter of fact, the jurors voted ten to two for acquittal. But. when I interviewed seven of them six months after the verdict, it was apparent that many of their neighbors regarded their opinions as a form of heresy. In those days, at the height of the antiwar movement, words like "dissenter" and “protestor” were still epithets here. Nevertheless, as the jurors made clear in our interviews, when people here believe that the government they've trusted has betrayed them, many feel especially hurt and angry. It’s a kind of rage you rarely see in a more jaundiced place like Manhattan —a rage that is the flip side of faith. But discontent with the government and the utilities is spreading. In Newberry Township, across the river from Middle- town, it caused Bruce Smith—a Republican town supervisor who supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 and admired Spiro Agnew—to give an impassioned antinuclear speech at a rally that was organized by Three Mile Island Alert—a speech, by the way, that Smith felt constrained to begin with the disclaimer, "I am not a protestor by nature.” During the last few years. Smith’s wife Pat, who trains temporary secretaries, has become a passionate golfer. In fact, she and Bruce settled in Etters, on a street called Fairway Drive, so that she could be near the Valley Green Golf Course. Since March 28 she has virtually given up golf: She has become a firebrand at the Public Utility Commission hearings and is one of the main organizers of weekly post-Three Mile Island forums at the Newberry Elementary School —meetings that are always attended by upward of 200 people. The same sort of commitment has consumed Mickey Minnich, 40, who chairs those meetings. Minnich, the football coach at Steelton High, is a hero here: This year his team was number one in the entire football-mad state of Pennsylvania. You can sense the compassion and the low-key magnetism that makes him an effective coach when you sit in his small office at Steelton High, listening to him phone a college coach, an old friend, to Sept 28. 29 Sonny, King, Dave Friesen John Stowell, Don Mumford Sept 30 & Oct 1 Fathead Newman Oct. 6 & 7 Richie Cole w/Alto Madness Oct. 12 & 13 Anthony Braxton Oct 19 & 20 Rich Halley & Freebop Nov 2 & 3 Ted Curson & Co The Kingston 224-2115 2021 S.W. Morrison f l SPACIOUS. ROCKOUS OPERA _____ N CRIDRNI Music bu Teddu Deane Written bu Mead Hunter Created & Directed by Luna Pettebone €ARTH PR€MI€R€ OCTOBER 1 2 STOREFRONT ACTORS THEATRE RESERVATIONS 248-0199 Club Long Goodbye goes after hours Oct. 12 — Music by Freestyle courtesy of Storefront Theatre October Every Monday Open Mike Every Thursday Poetry 3 A night of rare & obscure instruments 4 Fact Ditch 5&6 Dr. Twelve 7 Live KBOO Benefit 6 Bands 10 Lew Jones—Danse Macbre The Harper Band 14 New Wave 17 Melt Down w/John Ward 19&20 Dr. Twelve 21 New Wve 24 Swing Shift—Jaxz 26 Malchicks—Punk Rock 27 Playpen w /Wal Ipaper 28 New Wave—Punk 31 Halloween Special w/Costume Party LONG GOODBYE 3 0 0 N.W. lOth 228 -1008 32
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