Posts Tagged ‘Oak Ridge’
How I learned to love the bomb – part 3
There are all kinds of things strange in Oak Ridge. In fact I would argue that something usual would be odd there. We even managed to make the normal, well, strange.
The old timers in our town don’t tell about the time before the land around the city was all subdivisions. No, these guys tell about the time before we understood about mercury poisoning.
The labs still remain in Oak Ridge, and they still do top secret government work, just as they have since they were built. In one of these labs, the old timers say they used to have pools of mercury. About 3 feet deep! And ‘in the days before we understood about inhaling it and getting it on our skin, we would just pull on our waders and go in.’ It seems they were just a bunch of good old boys, in back woods Tennessee, getting in their gear and their waders and going in to catch . . . strange diseases?
Every summer the local lake would get the public swim area shut down due to toxic levels of mercury. Us kids didn’t think anything of it. Isn’t mercury poisoning why any public swim area would be shut down?
And those billboards on the side of the turnpike, those were ordinary, too, right? They were versions of the ‘loose lips sink ships’ idea. Though the sign space has since been sold for the far more normal advertisements, I remember this Holiday version from my junior high years: A big red bow, a man and woman in sweaters hold up eggnog and the sign reads: ‘Tis the season – for keeping secrets!
I was so appalled and shocked the first time someone suggested I made that up. I pulled over my best friend and said ‘Tell him!’ My bud produced this one: ‘Secrets mean security.” And one of the old ones I saw printed out in the local library is now online . . .
The three see-no-evil, speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil monkeys adorn the sign with the following words: “What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here.” Check out the link – http://www.flickr.com/photos/amse/2965051856/
Yes, all things normal are abnormal there. Most kids practiced some kind of drill . . . in the mid-west – tornadoes. In the big cities – lockdowns. On the coast – hurricanes. In Oak Ridge – bomb warnings! You always hear about kids from the 50’s being taught to get under their desk or go to the basement. But we didn’t do any of that.
The siren would go off, and we would all sit there, maybe finishing homework, maybe doodling. But we didn’t go anywhere, we didn’t hide, we didn’t do anything in particular, we just sat there. Why? Because we knew that if the bomb came we were toast. All we could practice was knowing what the siren would be like right before we vaporized. Seriously. We sat at our desks with a ‘that’s how it will sound’ attitude, then we would calmly go back to our school work.
Though the city may have seemed blasé about nuclear attack they were anything but, however their indignation probably wasn’t what you would expect. My first year of high school someone published the Soviet ‘Hit List’. Apparently some spy had found the order in which the Russians would bomb American cities.
Oak Ridgers were shocked, stunned, outraged. How had we not made the top 5!?!?! It was an insult to all the city had worked for. If the Soviets were bombing, we wanted to be first in line.
Today, I’m really grateful that the bombs never fell. But even not falling, the mere threat made for a very colorful childhood! And it sure does explain a lot, doesn’t it?
How I Learned to Love the Bomb – Part 1
http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/09/learned/
How I Learned to Love the Bomb – Part 2
http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/09/learned-2/
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How I learned to love the bomb – part 2
While those of us in Oak Ridge didn’t seem to understand how odd we were, the people in the surrounding areas sure did.
Even today, with all the sprawl that occurs in most urban areas, Knoxville will only come so close to Oak Ridge. A good look at Google Earth shows that the other nearby towns are wary of us, too. Clinton, Harriman and even little Oliver Springs don’t want to get to near. Yes, the aerial view will tell you: this town has the cooties.
I didn’t know that all the neighboring cities referred to Oak Ridgers as ‘night lights’ – because we glow in the dark. I never even heard the term until I was in my twenties when someone finally got brave enough to say it to my classmate’s face. Think about it, we were the kids at the state schools who ate up all the scholarship spots. We came in as sophomores because of all that AP credit. We weren’t on the football teams as a general rule, but we ruled debate and Psi Chi . . . so it was a while before I heard anyone refer to me this way.
Maybe I didn’t hear it, because I didn’t really pay attention like I should. I also didn’t read the newspapers like I should . . . or I would have seen the headlines “three legged frogs hopping out of Oak Ridge” every time there was a slow news day. I didn’t know that the shaved edges on the trucks meant they were missile trucks. I just thought about half of all trucks looked like that. (See “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” in the archives for more fun missile truck facts!)
Most people who lived in Oak Ridge had either grown up there or their parents had moved in. But wait! You say. That’s every town. No, over half the town was transplants. And those that had grown up there, well their parents were some of the first transplants. No one had lived in town for more than two generations, that was all it took to be a ‘local family’ in Oak Ridge.
But in that short time, the surrounding towns had learned to keep their distance. They didn’t come swim in our lakes (smart move. We had mercury.) They didn’t come shop in our stores (who knew what radiation was lurking?) and they didn’t move into town – even for that great education system.
It was only much later that I found out many of them were most afraid of toxic dumping. And though it was true that the labs made a lot of toxic trash, and barrels of radioactive waste were gotten rid of each day, there was no reason not to move to the city! We learned our lesson with the mercury pools! Calling us ‘night lights’ was really just plain silly.
In fact, when I was finally called that to my face, I responded with this: “Where are you from?”
“Harriman”
“And you think I’m a night light? You don’t realize that we designed that stuff? We sure aren’t burying it in our town! Where do you think we put it, Mr. ‘I grew up in Harriman’?
How I Learned to Love the Bomb – Part 1
http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/09/learned/
How I Learned to Love the Bomb – Part 3
http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/09/learned-3/
Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS
Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -
Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!
How I learned to love the bomb – part 1
At this point, you’ve probably already figured out that I have always been weird. I was raised this way. It’s not just the fact that my father is a nuclear physicist working in the Appalachians and my mother is a lawyer who would make us kids argue points and win cases to prove it was not I who left the towel on the bathroom floor. (There was a version of ‘if the glove does not fit, you must acquit’ in our kid-court long before Dershowitz used it for OJ.)
Though that surely would have been enough to turn me to the geek side, I got an even bigger dose: I grew up in Oak Ridge.
Alright, I admit that if you don’t know about Oak Ridge that last statements lacks gravitas. So let me explain how this helped warp young little me.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is best known as ‘the town that built the bomb’. Yes, THE bomb, dropped on Japan, ending WWII, blah blah blah. Though that’s the phrase most use ‘THE town that built the bomb’ is a misnomer – there’s also Oak Ridge’s sister city Los Alamos in New Mexico. Los Alamos built the hardware and Oak Ridge did the software. So it was really two cities that built the bomb, but the citizens of each claim to be from ‘The town’ that did it.
What this means (in terms of weirdness) is that the city didn’t grow the way others do. It was created. The Appalachians were virtually empty (a few squatters and landowners were run out for the greater good), and the mountains provided secrecy. This city did not start as a cluster of houses on good farming land. No, the streets are alphabetized from one end of the town to the other. One of the more heavily traveled streets is named after states – yes ‘states’ in the plural, because the road keeps changing names. It is believed that the roads were specifically designed to be confusing in case the town was invaded, which may explain the circles off of circles and things like that.
The location and the roads aren’t the only things that make the town weird though. Despite the fences around the city – from when you could only get in with a security clearance – there are plenty of other things that would make the average citizen frown.
Oak Ridge shares with its sister Los Alamos the distinction of being the city most often ranked with the highest number of PhDs per capita in the US (though in recent years this has been changing). This is because the government shipped them there to build the secret bomb! When the war was over and the city was opened to families, an education system was begun that became the best in the state. (Though being the best in Tennessee is a dubious honor, it is also one of the best public programs in the country.) It is reported that the citizens of Oak Ridge have never turned down a tax increase for education in the entire history of the town. And I can tell you numbers from my graduating class support this.
~360 graduates, ~180 on the Dean’s list (3.0 GPA or better)
17 National Merit Scholars (That’s 5% of the graduating class compared to the national average of less than half a percent!)
It’s really just crazy! As weird as I was, I kinda fit in. One of my earliest memories is of asking that childhood standard “Why is the sky blue?” Three hours later I said “Thank you, Daddy, I think I get refraction now.” (That wasn’t necessarily a polite ‘thank you’, I was tired of listening to how light bends – I was four.) But I think I may not be the only kid from town with that memory . . .
Growing up geek led to some issues when I went off to college and learned that not everyone took 6 AP classes their junior and senior year of high school. I was aghast to learn that some schools only offered 3 – 5 different AP classes at all. (In Oak Ridge you could pick and choose about 3 years worth of curricula in AP!)
Now combine this with my family – who were not from Oak Ridge until my parents moved there for my Dad’s job when I was small. On my father’s side, my grandparents were disappointed in my uncle whom my grandfather once referred to as a ‘dropout’. It was only years later that I came to learn meant said uncle didn’t finish his Master’s program. Or maybe it was his PhD. Drop-out! Ha!
You can see that I didn’t really stand a chance. I was a mathlete in a school of mathletes. And I loved it maybe because it was what I knew. But I am continuing the tradition with my own kids. My daughter, at age four, had a visiting teacher at her summer school point to a butterfly puppet and ask the students to name parts of the butterfly. My girl said ‘Proboscis’. And my eight year old son answered my Dad’s question about conductors versus insulators with not only ‘It’s a conductor’ but big eye roll at being asked such an inane question.
You know what they say: You can take the girl out of the town, but you can’t take the town out of the girl!
How I Learned to Love the Bomb – Part 2
http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/09/learned-2/
How I Learned to Love the Bomb – Part 3
http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/09/learned-3/
Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS
Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -
Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!
Smells like Oklahoma
I was young when I married the first time, and so I can blame some of my naiveté on my age. The first time I went to visit my in-laws I noticed an odd odor to their hometown – a smoky smell with just a hint of nail polish remover. I tried to be polite and not say anything, but I didn’t sleep well.
The second time I visited, the town had a slightly different odor – this time more of a sulfur smell. Easter brunch just goes down better with a lingering scent of rotten eggs in the air. This time I did mention it, Did anyone else notice that? (I had to ask, I was afraid I had a brain tumor). I was brushed off with pithiness like ‘I don’t really smell anything’ ‘Oh, you get used to it’ and my favorite: ‘That’s the smell of money!’
Later that evening it was explained to me that the smells came from the local plant. It was one of those towns with one major industry and a full third to half the town worked for the company in some respect. Not that I thought that made the odor any better.
Then I was directed into the kitchen and to the refrigerator where I was offered wine. What I saw was a small magnet asking residents to report any odd smells or smokes to certain toll free numbers. I was asking ‘shouldn’t we call?’ when the wine glass was shoved into my hand and I was smiled at like I was a little nuts. No, we shouldn’t report this, these are regular smells!
I left town three days later with a raging headache and vague unease. But I went back for Halloween, when I commented on the fact that at least the plant had a sense of humor. I said this because we were all standing in the back yard with our wine, looking up at the sky and the smokestack that was belching out a thick orange smoke. I asked if the plant celebrated all the holidays this way and what color was Christmas going to be?
I was laughed out of the yard. I know that even though I haven’t seen any of my former in-laws for about fifteen years they still tell about how funny it was when I asked if the plant celebrated all the holidays. My bad. Apparently thick, orange smoke is a normal occurrence there.
Not that I can complain. My hometown is Oak Ridge, Tennessee, ‘the town that built the nuclear bomb’. Yes, the plant in my hometown is a nuclear reactor. Once a year Knoxville or Chattanooga reports about the radioactive frogs that are hopping their way from Oak Ridge. Folks in the surrounding towns refer to all us Oak Ridgers as ‘night lights’ due to our supposed ability to glow in the dark.
So, who was I to complain about a funny smell and ever changing smoke colors? Later, a college friend explained how she had grown up in Iowa and to her the odors of pigs were ‘the smell of money’. It seems I was just naïve. Most every place has an odd odor here or there, and that one phrase seems to make it all okay.
I have come to believe that the phrase ‘The Smell of Money’ roughly translates to: ‘We know it stinks but we can’t do anything about it, so breathe deep and be glad there’s food on the table.’
Years later, a cross country trip with my friend Eli made me realize that I shouldn’t have harbored such thoughts about my in-laws (living with that smell!). It seemed each time we crossed a state border the odor changed – and they were mostly foul. There were a few paper mills, an odd clinging smoky smell and haze in one area (a coal refinery?), but mostly places smelled like manure.
After passing from one state to another, it became a great game to try to recognize the major industry by odor. We correctly identified the pigs and horses, but goofed a factory that I could have sworn smelled like a litter box. It didn’t say ‘Tidy Cats’ all over the plain side of the building, so I lost that bet. We both also goofed beer, which you would think would smell good, or at the very least like, well, beer. All of this is a misperception.
To this day though, we wonder what that was in Oklahoma. I have smelled it a few other times since then and it always makes my head snap back. Still, I am never quite able to identify it. I only know to use the lesson I learned in my first marriage. I smile and nod, and while I may think to myself ‘Ah! That smells like Oklahoma!’ what I actually say is “Yes! That’s the smell of money!”
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