Page 52 - WTP Vol. IX #2

The first brochure I pick up in Oak Ridge, Tennes- see, is for a Public Bus Tour. “Extended Season! Now March-November,” it reads. August has just be- gun. Tiny print at the bottom of the page says, “Must be U.S. citizen age 10 or older. Must have photo I.D. (18 years or older).”
When I ask, “Why now?” a woman behind a nearby desk tells me, “That’s how it’s been ever since the gates were opened in ’49.”
The second brochure I pick up mentions Ed West- cott, the twenty-ninth employee hired for the Man- hattan Project in Oak Ridge, becoming the official government photographer there from 1942 to 1966. I expect his photographs to be an extensive display of propaganda. Instead, Ed Westcott’s photos are an invitation to history without the viewer’s proof of citizenship and age.
Oak Ridge Tour Fact: E. O. Lawrence won a Nobel Prize for inventing the Cyclotron, the predecessor of the world’s first uranium enrichment processor at Oak Ridge.
Westcott Photo #1: The Perennials of Oak Ridge
The trellises in the photograph appear to be hand- made, vines and branches trained upward, beauty and comfort compatible, though temporary and brief like each sad emphasis on the end of this settlement no one mentions until privacy returns. Inside labo- ratories, riddles are whispered, answers unsolvable as the equation for heaven, but here, the stems climb their small increments of reassurance, leaves opening to drink up light. Annuals have been abandoned like promises of early surrender. In Oak Ridge’s second summer, fast-climbing perennials. Possible, now, to believe in the sensuality of shadows cast by the rise of roses, the ascension of morning glories, or, at least, the small contentment of the narrowing latticework become a sieve that magnifies the spell of early eve- ning before descending light diffuses into the indiffer- ent drift to darkness.
Oak Ridge Trivia: One of the advertised hiking areas is named “Top Secret Trail.”
In 1942, my father failed his army physical. “This bum ear is why we’re all here,” he said to me more than once. “I went for my exam with my friend Al. He passed, and I didn’t, and then he didn’t come back.” Every time he told that story he equated that out- come with the guarantee that he, too, would have been killed in action. And when his three brothers, all of them veterans, had opinions about the atom bomb, he stayed silent because, he said, he hadn’t earned the right to express himself about military decisions.
One of those brothers was the navigator on a bomber that flew multiple missions over Germany. When, as an eleven-year-old who was planning on applying to West Point, I asked, “How many missions?” my father said, “More than enough, and don’t you dare ask him.”
I never did. Talking about the war seemed more pri- vate than sex. The only time my uncle mentioned anything about his experience in the war was to say, after a Memorial Day parade a few years later, that there were clouds over the Japanese city of Kokura, or else somebody else would have gotten theirs from the B-29 that day instead of the folks in Nagasaki.
Oak Ridge Tour Fact: The gates closed on April 1, 1943. Always, throughout the war, the guards at the Oak Ridge gates demanded photo IDs, no exceptions.
Westcott Photo #2: Santa Claus Arrives at Oak Ridge
Santa’s made the trip by automobile. He’s working day-shift, the reindeer pastured, but his Chevrolet
is stopped like a spy’s. Although Santa ho-hos, the guards remain in character, serious as war while they rummage through two sacks, reminding him the red flag of his baggy suit requires a pat-down, including his shiny boots. He’s scuffling now, stumbling like a hobo, that sack unwieldy with stocking stuffers, foot- ing uncertain on the unpaved street as irregular as pieces of coal meant to terrify the worst brat polite. By the time he’s surrounded by children, he’s a mess of mud splatter, gasping brief white clouds like the ones the reindeer pant when the sleigh is miracu- lously loaded. Housewives on Saturdays, the Oak Ridge mothers have set aside an hour for Christmas among their chores. They’ve dressed for Santa Claus, the secret work of war set aside like a long novel, the place bookmarked by a small child’s crayoned draw-
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Oak Ridge: A Cantata
gary FincKe