One evening I’m making a chocolate malt and Shelley grabs my arm. “I think someone wants you in the family dining area,” she says. Oh no, I think. It’s my long-distance admirer, who’s taking a new approach. But no. It’s my mother. She waves as if I’m on the other side of the planet. The other waitress—the new girl—is trying to pour her a cup of coffee. “No, no, no!” my mother exclaims. “I want Kris. I want my daughter!”
I take the coffee pot from her hand. “I’ll get it,” I say. The girl is pissed. There are few tips to be had in the family dining area, and later—when my mother has left—I give her the five-dollar bill my mother leaves under the plate. Karma and Kurt sit on either side of the table and order grilled cheese sandwiches. My mother has the beef. “Sit down and join us!” she says, pulling my arm. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I’m working, Mom,” I say, crimson. I retreat to the back room, where Shelley is smoking just as fast as my mother is out front.
“That’s your family?” she asks.
I nod.
“What a nice family,” she says, and stubs out her cigarette in the last remains of her patty melt.
At the end of the summer I quit. It’s not the long hours or burned coffee or even the girls with questionable morals. It’s the palpable feel of loneliness, the edge of desperation. It’s the way the waitresses smoke in the back and the men joke out front and the drawer of the cash register bangs constantly.
WITH FUNDING from the National Institutes of Health, and in the face of growing opposition from nearly every side, Jefferson County health director Dr. Carl Johnson continues his studies on areas downwind from Rocky Flats. In 1975 and 1976 he and his colleagues find an average of forty-four times more plutonium in soil near the plant than had been reported by the State Health Department at the same locations, with some “hot” spots even higher, reinforcing earlier independent studies. Concentrations in the air and drinking water are also high.
Using data collected by the National Cancer Institute from 1969 to 1971, Johnson examines the relation between cancer rates and exposures to plutonium for people living near Rocky Flats. The study involves 154,170 people in the most contaminated suburban area and 423,870 in an unexposed suburb. He finds higher-than-average rates of cancer, primarily leukemia and lung cancer, in areas downwind of Rocky Flats. He also finds that in zones of increased contamination there is increased cancer. Johnson estimates 491 additional cancer cases, where the Energy Department (then called ERDA) had estimated only one. The excess cancers are mainly the same types found in excess among the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also believes that plutonium from the plant could increase the potential for birth defects in future generations.
Johnson’s findings are first published in Science in 1976. His data is confirmed by a panel of international scientists and published in Ambio in 1981.
The government responds swiftly. The DOE points to a 1976 ERDA report that questioned Dr. Johnson’s soil sampling method, claiming that the samples were too shallow. Although Martell praises the method as innovative, the ERDA report argued that only samples obtained by scooping deep into the ground will yield a “meaningful” measure of plutonium, contamination. Johnson stands by his results, emphasizing that surface particles of plutonium are more significant, as they are more easily inhaled. Plutonium typically moves around on surface levels. Studies have confirmed a concentration of 50 picocuries per gram of airborne soil in the Rocky Flats area. “In this arid, windy climate,” he writes, “a cubic meter of air may contain one or more grams of suspended dust.” Further, “in contrast to the Rocky Flats plant workers, who wear protective clothing, breathe carefully filtered air, are monitored frequently for radiation exposure, and have medical supervision, families downwind from the plant have no such protection.”
Some scientists question Johnson’s study. One complains that Johnson did not look at whether other factories in the area might also have released dangerous materials, though there are no other factories near Rocky Flats.
The debate is lost in a flurry of negative publicity. Before Johnson’s article reaches print, officials at Rocky Flats and the Colorado Department of Health publish a scathing editorial attacking Johnson in the Denver Post. The editorial claims Johnson’s methodology is “largely useless” and runs the risk of being “a cruel joke.” The carefully worded op-ed doesn’t deny the existence of plutonium in residential areas, noting that “[our] analysis does not say there isn’t cancer danger from Rocky Flats. Plutonium admittedly has drifted beyond the plant boundaries. What [our] analysis does say is that Dr. Johnson has not proved scientifically any connection with cancer.”
Years later, in 1990, a reporter from the Denver Post will uncover the fact that the DOE paid Rockwell a cash bonus for persuading the Post to publish the derisive editorial.
Further, ERDA’s own report revealed several previously unpublished facts: approximately 11,000 acres of land, including 7,413 acres outside the plant area, are contaminated with more plutonium than is considered safe by the Colorado Department of Health, and almost all operations at the plant create “small releases” of radioactive material leading to measurable doses in “all segments” of the environment.
The report also stated that trucks carrying about five hundred shipments of radioactive cargo to and from the plant each year leave measurable amounts of radiation along Colorado roads. Hundreds of radioactive shipments have traveled by plane as well. Over the past twenty-five years, plutonium and other hazardous materials have quietly been flown to and from Rocky Flats through Denver’s Stapleton International Airport and Jefferson County Airport on government aircraft, cargo planes, and—occasionally—passenger planes. Records going back six years show shipments of up to 4.5 pounds of plutonium were not always inspected by the Federal Aviation Administration to determine if they were safe for travel. Earlier records were lost or destroyed. When this news hits the papers, Felix Owen, Rockwell’s new director of information services at Rocky Flats, downplays it. “I believe it’s irrelevant,” he says. “A rehash of history isn’t too productive. All the flights took off and landed [safely].”
Citizen outrage is slowly growing. But in Bridledale and Meadowgate, all the neighbors agree: that Johnson guy must be a kook.
THE SMITH garden is still a constant magnet for our pony Barney, but we rarely see the Smith children. Tamara Smith was four years old when she moved to Standley Lake in 1978. She’d spent her first years on Rainbow Ridge near the old part of Arvada, not far from our first house, and when her family moves to Standley Lake, just down the road from us, her parents are as thrilled as mine were when we moved to Bridledale. It’s the home they’ve always dreamed of, the perfect place to raise kids. Just over the ridge from our house, Tamara’s house faces the lake with a full view of the mountains, and with eight acres there’s room for a big garden and a pasture for horses and cattle. The family is devout Mormon and they live off the land, growing their own vegetables and raising their own meat. One of the first things her father does is dig a well.
Tamara is like a lot of kids who live by the lake. She rides her horse around the water, loves to swim, and rides with the Westernaires. She likes to spend time outdoors, but she has to be careful. Like her four brothers and sisters, she has allergies, and it’s hard for her to be outside for any length of time. Tamara seems to have it much worse than the others. It upsets her that she’s allergic to the things she loves most. Her ears itch and her eyes water. If she tries to help load hay or feed the horses, her skin breaks out and she can’t breathe. When she comes home from her riding club, she has to stand in a steaming-hot shower to get her lungs to open up. She’s allergic to various foods and can never find a diet that suits her. She gets sick a lot. Her siblings tease her: if there’s something to get, Tamara will get it.
Jonathan Smith, Tamara’s father, is a tall, slender man with an authoritative presence. His voice carries across the field when Barney gets in through the fence. Doreen Smith is q
uiet and determined. They make an efficient pair. They believe in God and family and taking care of themselves, raising their children the way they see fit. They pay little attention to local newspapers or television, and they don’t like going to doctors. “We are not a doctor-going family,” Jonathan likes to say.
The Smiths intend to breed their cows and they put a bull out in the field. But none of the cows get pregnant. The same thing happens with the horses. The mares can’t conceive or carry a foal.
Tamara and her siblings eventually go to Pomona High School, the same school I attend with my sisters. She dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher.
Tamara’s older cousin Carol sometimes brings her children to visit the Smiths and their animals. Carol never lets her children drink the water because, she says, it might be contaminated. The Smiths don’t believe her. Tamara thinks it’s because well water tastes different from city water. City water always tastes a little better.
THE PRESENCE of my father takes on gargantuan proportions in our house, although he’s rarely there. I feel weighed down by his dark despair and the sense that his life is completely out of control, and by his glowering disapproval of us and our mother, of himself, probably. I can never see far enough into him to know what he really thinks. My mother, on the other hand, displays a forced daily optimism that seems to have little to do with reality. She is the queen of high drama, ruling from her olive-green bedspread with moans and sighs and rolling eyes. “What am I going to do?” she laments, clutching my arm or stroking my fingers. “Everything, everything is going down the tubes.”
But she knows exactly what she will do. Once the afternoon sun has filtered down to the bottom of her window blind, she’ll rise, put on some lipstick, and go down and make supper.
Caught in the crossfire of my parents’ war, I live for the afternoons when I can gallop Sassy out to Standley Lake, the wind blowing hard against my face as the ground blurs beneath her hooves. We gallop up to the dam and across to the other side of the lake. Sassy extends her neck and stretches out her body like the racehorse she’s always been and we run, run, run until her neck is soaked with sweat and foam and we’re both breathing hard.
I skip homecoming and prom. When my mother asks if I’d like to have a big party for my high school graduation, I feel a flash of anger. I’m a serious kid, and I live between the pages of books. In some ways it’s simpler with my father: I just avoid him. I can sidestep all the anger and fear by pretending he’s a strange, dark satellite to our odd little family. My mother, though, is at the center of everything. She needs me. She needs my siblings. What would happen to her if she were on her own? She tells us stories of how she sacrificed her childhood to take care of her mother during the Depression, and how she came home after school each day to boil potatoes and carrots for supper. She tells us how she went off to college—paid for by her spinster aunt—and had boyfriends. So many boyfriends, and look who she ended up with. So many missed chances! “I gave up everything to be with your dad,” she sighs.
There’s no money for me to go to college but I apply anyway. “Things will work out,” my mother says. “They always do. You never know what’s going to happen.” She believes in signs. She loves palm readers, fortunetellers, and omens of all kinds. She reads her daily horoscope and goes to psychics and buys lottery tickets. Every night she prays that her fortune will change. “Someday,” she says, “my ship will come in. And when it does, I’m going to share it with you kids.”
The outdoors is our salvation. Karma is always on a horse. Kurt spends afternoons with his friends at Standley Lake, jumping off the pipe and hitching waterskiing rides off the neighbors’ boats. Karin is happy to join him and, when she can get away with it at the local Stop-N-Go, brings a six-pack of beer to share. Sometimes late at night, when our dad has fallen asleep in his chair, Karin steals the keys to his beleaguered two-door Maverick and drives out to Rocky Flats with a boy and a six-pack. They’re both too young to drink; she’s barely old enough to drive. They sit on the old orange hood and crack open warm cans of Coors and make out for hours. The wide ribbon of the Milky Way spreads thickly across the sky. Sometimes the moon is nothing more than a thin curl of ribbon and other nights it’s as round and full as an orange. The other beacon in the night is Rocky Flats, whose lights shimmer on the silhouette of land almost as beautifully as the stars above it.
One day Kurt comes home sick from school. He complains of a headache, fever, and being tired. My mother, always the nurse, presses her fingers into his neck. “Your lymph nodes are swollen,” she says.
“At least it’s not a concussion,” he quips. He stays home from school but doesn’t get better. When she takes him to see our family doctor, the news is not good. “Kurt has all the symptoms of leukemia,” he says.
My mother is devastated. Kurt takes up permanent residence on the family sofa with his pillow and blanket. The medical tests are inconclusive. It doesn’t seem to be leukemia, but doctors can’t determine exactly what it is. He misses months of school, watching endless episodes of Charlie’s Angels and Love Boat. When Kurt finally returns to school, no one’s quite sure what he’s been suffering from.
Soon he’s back to his old high jinks. Kurt, too, swipes the keys for the Maverick—an uncertain prize, with its tattered seats and full ashtray, the tires as bald as bowling balls—and picks up a friend or two before driving out to the big hill on Ward Road where they bounce over the bumps at high speed in true Dukes of Hazzard style. Our father is furious when he finds out, and the keys never leave his pocket again. Kurt is resourceful; he learns how to hot-wire the ignition.
It becomes a pattern for all us kids as we grow older: chronic exhaustion, fever, and swollen lymph nodes, symptoms that no one can diagnose, symptoms that never really go away.
LOTS OF kids from the local high schools end up working at Rocky Flats.
Debby Clark is one of them. The Monday following her graduation from Golden High School, in 1973, will be her first day of work at Rocky Flats. She starts in the cafeteria, serving sandwiches on the line for $2.75 an hour. Most of the workers are older than Debby and they refer to one another as family. It’s a friendly place.
Debby lives at home with her parents, two brothers, and two sisters. When she arrives home from her first day of work, her mother meets her at the door. “What have you done?” she asks. “Did you do something wrong?”
“What?” Debby’s shocked. She never gets into trouble.
“One of the teachers called. They said the FBI showed up at school and they want to interview your teachers.” Her mother’s face is pale.
“I haven’t done anything,” Debby says, “except fill out paperwork.” The paperwork didn’t seem out of the ordinary for a new job. She’s not sure what goes on at Rocky Flats—until now she wasn’t even aware that it was a government facility. One agent asked a teacher if Debby was the kind of girl who partied a lot. The FBI interviewed the neighbors as well.
It’s not long before Debby is promoted to janitor, cleaning the main floor in the 881 building, including the computer rooms, offices, and labs. The labs are a mystery. She doesn’t know what they do at Rocky Flats. Everything is on a “need to know” basis. She’s instructed not to talk about her work, not to talk about what she does or sees. Her parents never ask.
A job at Rocky Flats is lucrative. Debby keeps an eye on the job boards and begins to think about becoming a radiological tester or a security guard, which pays more than being a janitor. She has friends who are security guards. It’s fun, they tell her. It pays well and you get a lot of overtime.
When Debby begins her security guard training, she’s one of only three women on the guard force. At five feet six inches tall and 125 pounds, with a long mane of red hair, Debby is the last person someone would peg as an armed security guard. But she’s learned to be tough. Some of the men give her a hard time at first. She doesn’t mind a catcall or two, but unlike some of the other women, she never runs to the boss. Sh
e can stick up for herself. She doesn’t think twice about getting in some guy’s face and making sure he understands her point of view. She learns how to shoot a gun and how to tear down and reassemble an M-16 in the dark. She’s trained on explosives. She learns about the various buildings at Rocky Flats and the routes the guards are expected to walk in each particular building. Depending on the time of day, they walk it one way and the next hour they walk it in reverse. They’re instructed to look for things that are unusual or out of the ordinary, and to check if anyone’s left out classified documents or forgotten to lock a safe.
As part of their final test for graduation, each class of new guards is expected to “pull an exercise” on the regular guards—that is, pose as terrorists and try to break into the plant. The regular guards never know when it will happen. Debby’s team waits until midnight to cross Indiana Street and sneak up to the border, where they split into groups and try to enter the plant from different places along the fence. One guy gets snagged on the barbed wire and is caught by a patrol car. But a member of Debby’s group gets all the way to the guard shack, wrestles the key from the guard, and opens the gate to let everyone in. For the fake terrorists, it’s a successful exercise. They all graduate.
When Debby figures out that Rocky Flats is part of the nuclear defense network, she’s proud. Her grandfather was a sailor in World War II and her father was a Marine. She believes in a strong defense.
Pulling fake terrorist exercises, though, eventually comes to a halt when one night a guard gets a little too excited and almost shoots a guard-in-training.
MY HIGH school graduation is a heady mix of pride and relief, my feelings of freedom tempered by the weight of my family. It feels as though the roots of our cottonwood trees are twisted around my ankles. I want to get as far away from Arvada as I can.
Two weeks after my graduation, a small item appears in the back pages of the Denver Post reporting that the radioactive element thorium has been found in the gonads, or sex glands, of three horses in Jefferson County. The horses belong to rancher Lloyd Mixon, on his ranch just east of Rocky Flats, not far from our property. Lloyd Mixon is the rancher who brought Scooter the pig to the Lamm-Wirth hearings.
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