intoScie .. .. • irrigation canals, into etv, the Mormon Chu Universities, Research at They were tied into cow d Technology, into 1 the Government, and potatoes and ‘ John Birch Soci- and the Chamber of Commerce. Continued from Page 7 body pinned to the ceiling. Mom said it was probably hanging over a rafter or something, but I remember the news stories saying pinned. The mystery was solved and interest gradually drifted. SL-1 was sealed up and left to cool down for a long time. The SL-1 Explosion must have been in 1961 or 1962. It has remained a pivotal point in my life, of the same historical magnitude as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Assassination and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. But when I left Idaho, I kept finding otherwise well-informed people who looked blank when I mentioned the SL-1 Explosion. No one—with only two exceptions in these eighteen years—had ever heard of it. Indeed, no one even knew of The Site. f in g e r in g ^^^lalf-Lives I came out of Idaho Falls three days after high school graduation, not to escape the governmental-corporate-scientific, high-security, high-risk, high-stress atomic research environment, but to escape the artistic and literary desolation I perceived there. I thought that in The Big World, the achievements of the educated elite—my people—were not so narrowly constrained by the critical importance of their work (atomic research), nor impeded by the dead weight of dumb Mormon farmers. I went to Berkeley, despite its radical reputation, because friends there offered me the quickest escape from Idaho. Like most country kids going to the big city, I found the world much wider than I imagined . I was no longer part of the educated elite: they had gone to expensive private schools and learned a lot more than I had. In fact, I didn’t like them very much, and I was a hick to them. “My” Site people were considered as backward and provincial as the farmers I had so heartily despised. My dual-class view of society was no longer valid, nor my juvenile loyalties and prejudices. I plunged, as though instinctively, into the mechanics of illegal drugs and clandestine politics. I was adept at using codes, steering conversation around sensitive topics, remembering the phone was tapped, remembering who knew what and who shouldn’t, remembering what name to call everyone by in each situation. It was easy; I’d done it all my life. But all through the anti-war period I continued to be a staunch supporter of nuclear power. (I had discovered that only hicks still called it “atomic.”) When my radical friends would not be convinced, I reverted to my childhood arrogance: they weren’t Site people; they didn’t know what they were talking about When I did turn against nuclear power years later, it was on political, not technological grounds. I still believed that nuclear power was feasible, efficient, and could be made as safe as any other form of energy generation if research were not hampered by fears of the ignorant. But the economic and administrative centralization it required made it undesirable for the world in which I wanted to live. It was still later that I came to see how nuclear power, for all the white lab coats and sterile rooms, was dirtier than the coal mine my grandfather died in. But while acknowledging the danger of the radioactivity at a reactor’s core, I still see more danger in the security system around its perimeter. The one may have killed my father, but the other could do worse yet to my daughter. The nuclear zone in which I grew up was small and contained, though I didn’t know it at the time. It was easy to get out of; half by accident I stumbled into the nuclear-free world. Now there is talk of nuclear-free zones, which sound like places you don't find your way out to, but find your way in to. And all around them would be a nuclear world where kids grow up thinking that nuclear power and protection from nuclear power are as necessary and normal a part of the balance of nature as day and night, summer and winter, life and death. And to learn otherwise, they would have to happen into one of a few shrinking, embattled. enclaves, like Indian reservations. I grew up in an atomic zone, left the moment I could, and under no circumstances will I go back to one. I lived there in a nuclear society, and I won’t go back to that either. It took me a long time to appreciate this big, free world, and I’m not prepared to surrender or abandon it. Gwion is a writer living in Portland. This is his first story in CSQ. The photos were taken by Gwion’s father or have been provided by the Department of Energy. URBAN GARDENS Organic Plant Starts. Territorial Seeds. 2714 NW THURMAN • 226-0577 Two blocks south of old Montgomery Wards. Open 10am 7 days a week. Molly Dolan has the answer to the age old question: “What am I going to make for dinner tonight?” $A Tortelloni ^A Fettucini 3A Ravioli *A Conchiglie $A Fusilli ^A Riso £A Sauces iA Pizza £A Sausage ?A Torta Rustica £A Cheeses JA Olive Oils ^A Pasta Salads ^ACatering Too £A All fresh, all take-out, all delicious Open Mon.-Sat. 10am-7pm 2309 NORTHWEST KEARNEY, PORTLAND, OREGON 97210 Clinton St. Quarterly 35
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