We answered all their questions fully and sincerely, and even volunteered information we thought might interest them, basking in the attention of the FBI itself. No one ever pointed out that something I said might ruin a friend’s father’s career, or might lead the parents to prison and our friends to foster homes. That never happened that I know of, but I talked openly to the FBI two or three times a year for ten years without really understanding the effect it could have on other people’s lives. I was only a child. That was Idaho Falls, Idaho, headquarters for the National Reactor Testing Station, The Site, which was about fifty miles west of town on the Arco Desert. I was proud that Dad worked there, and that most of my friend’s dads did too. It was the birthplace of the USS Nautilus, or at least the atomic engine for it. With 33 “piles," The Site was “the largest cluster of atomic reactors in The Free World.” We moved there in 1956, when I was in second grade, and I lived there until I left high school in 1967. Many years and many changes later, I heard an anti-nuclear activist speculating grimly on life in a society dominated by nuclear power. I realized that such a society already existed. I grew up in it and could tell about it firsthand. Perhaps a year ago, a friend asked about the cancer rate there. I’d never heard anything about that, and had never thought of it. A few months later Dad was diagnosed as having cancer. He died recently. That connection, and the revival of childhood memories brought about by Dad’s death, have made me think that now is the time to tell what I know. "Security As A Way of Life In our schoolbooks, lathers sometimes took their kids to where they worked—the office, the factory, the store, the station— and showed them around. Our dads couldn’t do that. Once in a while I would ask Dad about his work and he would remind me that it was secret and he couldn’t talk about it. I did know that Dad was an electrician and worked at MTR-ETR (Materials Testing Reactor-Energy Testing Reactor), a pair of reactors in the same compound. Other dads worked at places like EBR-1 (Experimental Breeder Reactor) or SL-2, which I think stood for Steam Liquid. There were occasional tours of The Site for families of employees, but we were never taken on one. My own experience of where Dad worked was a glitter of metal in the daytime and a glimmer of lights at night far across the desert on the way to Craters of the Moon. “Now right over here,” Dad would point out a stretch of desert between the highway and the distant glitter, “is where they bury stuff that’s gotten dirty.” We learned early that “dirty” meant contaminated and “hot” meant radioactive, and they weren’t the same. He had several shirts and pants, pairs of shoes, dozens of pairs of gloves, buried out there. There were tanks and huge trucks too, he said, even whole buildings. I couldn’t imagine a hole big enough to put a house in. “Couldn’t spies take pictures of The Site from here?” one of us asked once as we were passing. He assured us that guards at The Site had telescopes and were always watching the highway through them. If guards saw anyone taking pictures, they’d come out and arrest the person and get the film back. It hadn’t occurred to me before then that The Site itself would have guards like the A.E.C. (Atomic Energy Commission) Building in town. I remember the building, administrative headquarters for The Site, as a monolithic rectangle two blocks long, a block wide, and five or six stories high, light green, with small rectangular windows that glowed dull yellow and featureless at night—all of them, all the time. There were no trees or bushes nearby where someone might hide. In the middle of one long side was a glass double door, with a guard standing at each side of the door. Those guards scared me, though neither the FBI nor the police did. It wasn’t the guns: there were guns all over, and shootouts rarely even made the front page of the paper. Mom tried to comfort me: the guards were only interested in someone sneaking around or trying to That was Id for the Natic Site, whic town on the Arco Desert. I was proud that Dad worked there. With 33 “piles, ” The Site was “the largest cluster of atomic reactors in The Free World. ” break into the A.E.C. Building. If they saw someone, they would shout stop, then shoot over the person’s head. Only then, if the person still didn’t stop, would they shoot to kill. It seemed too easy to find myself there by accident some night. I knew, deep down, that if I heard them shooting over my head, there was no way in the world I could stop running. The A.E.C. Building was a block from the high school and two blocks from the church, but I generally avoided walking past it, especially at night. When I was a burgeoning teenage hoodlum, and by god not afraid of nothing, I strolled past on the sidewalk one day and glanced up to see “Atomic Energy Commission” painted modestly above the door. I was never that close again. Site security had a special problem when the Idaho Territorial Centennial rolled around. Some local group decreed that all the men had to grow beards, just like in the old days. Any man caught without a beard on the streets of Idaho Falls could be “arrested” by the “posse,” taken to “court,” and “fined” a $5 contribution toward the fireworks or parade or something. It was to be a lot of fun and horsing around and a way of extracting a bit more money from the tourists on their way to or from Yellowstone. Dad started growing his beard along with all the other men. Within a week, Site security announced that all Site workers either had to shave or get new pictures for their identification cards.One friend of Dad’s got a new ID card and grew a big, black, full-faced beard, and then kept it when the Centennial was over. Everyone else shaved. It wasn’t fun anymore. I worried about Dad getting beat up for not having a beard, but the whole game died out. A few old timers grew long magnificent beards, and were admired and complimented on the street. It turned out to be one more source of bitterness between The Site and the rest of town. wo-Tier Society I he Atomic Energy Commission moved into Idaho Falls just after WWII, and pretty suddenly. Our development headquarters I Reactor Testing Station, The about fifty miles west of was probably housing for construction workers for The Site. It was 30-40 blocks of one-story, square, stucco houses in three alternating designs and six alternating pastel colors. By the time we got there it was pretty rundown. Our three bedroom house cost $5,000. Newer, more expensive developments adjoined ours, and that’s where most of the Site families lived. The house next door to ours was rented out to families of Navy men— every six months we’d get a new set of neighbors in from Newport News, Virginia. Many of the scientists were at The Site for a specific project, and would re- - turn to their university or research center after a year or two. The people who came to The Site were highly educated scientists, technicians and government bureaucrats. They were more mobile—socially, economically and geographically—than the locals. At the beginning of each school year, we Site kids got a special government form (printed on cards, not a mimeo). It was very, very important because thfe school got extra money for each of us. The public schools were excellent in math and science, even before the postSputnik push. The Science Fair was the big event of the school year. We routinely scored very high in national tests, and many graduates of the high school went to places like MIT, Berkeley and Cal Tech. Yet humanities and social sciences were on the farm town level. I was amazed later to discover that people had read Shakespeare in high school. Before The Site came, Idaho Falls was a small town river crossing and commercial center for the agricultural and ranching economy of the Upper Snake Valley. The area produces wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cattle and sheep. I was told that Idaho Falls was not typical for a town of 40,000. Our two color television stations, classical music radio station and the symphony were products of the high education level of The Site people. The Site/non-Site split was more important than the Mormon/non-Mormon split. Idaho Falls was about seventy percent Mormon, and non-Mormons were not very successful in business and were nonexistent in politics. Site people were not involved in either. I had friends, close friends even, who were not Site kids, but there was always a distance between us. They could be smarter, stronger, faster, richer and even more ambitious than I was, but it didn’t matter. I was tied into Science and Technology, into Universities, Research and the Government. They were tied into cows and potatoes and irrigation canals, into the John Birch Society, the Mormon Church and the Chamber of Commerce. There was more chance for them to escape than for us to get bogged down, but not much. The only significant competition or association we Site kids had was with each other. ippopotamus In The Pigpen Idaho Falls had many elements of what I now recognize as a company-town economy. The prosperity of local businesses fluctuated according to decisions made in Washington and based on national or international political concerns. The Nixon-Kennedy campaign was my first awareness of presidential politics. The main issue nationally seemed to be Kennedy’s Catholicism. Locally, however, the important issue was cutbacks at The Site, which Kennedy threatened. Sure enough, shortly after Kennedy took office, Westinghouse was closed down, and several of my friends’ dads lost their jobs. Some had to move. The closure threw the area into an economic recession for several years. Another otherwise unaccountable economic trough was attributed to the cancellation of a top-secret atomic aircraft project. Almost all of the men worked for one of the big companies. The few who worked directly for the A.E.C. (and especially if they worked at the A.E.C. Building rather than at The Site) were a little suspect to us kids—more like umpires than real baseball players. The line between the companies and the government was always a bit hazy. The companies, such as Westinghouse or Phillips Petroleum (who signed Dad’s checks) or other government agencies, such as the Navy, had some lease or contract arrangement with the A.E.C. Workers for both public and private concerns needed government security clearances. Labor unions were outlawed at The Site, even though people were working for private corporations. The A.E.C. buses contributed to the company town feel. The men gathered on streetcorners at 6:00 to 6:30 am, waiting for the Greyhound-sized blue buses to come and get them. We often went split sessions and had to be in school at 7:00 am. One of my most vivid memories is these knots of men standing in the snow before dawn, smoking, talking softly, some reading magazines or newspapers by streetlight. The sight was both eerie and exhilarating. It reminded me of rising before dawn to watch the first Clinton St. Quarterly 5
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