In the beginning was the word, and the word was at home in the world, a guttural, twangy, rasp of a word, a name, a place, a space, an instance.. a tense, tenuous string of coincidence, fact, rumor and dread. The days passed for the infant as moments in the early cold war nursery and they became a rhythm of daily routines, a smiling and attentive mother and her comings and goings became the ground upon which other less-frequent visitors walked. A grinning, bright-eyed and mischievous older brother was seen often, at times with another child, becoming a first friend and confidant, sharing the features of the southeastern Indiana bordertown landscape around the postwar tract home with the toddler. Later there would be other siblings, but still the word was there, if not intelligible, seething, gurgling, then splitting, multiplying, replicating, and displacing the warm, firefly-laden air with a sodden geopolitical necessity.
A father who worked too much, curly-headed and whistling, smelling of musty yeast and malt, piggy backing, strong, college educated and confident. Of the generation that had won World War II, he exuded a faith in science, industry, and small town, main-street republican ideals, even though raised a Roosevelt Democrat in the Depression Midwest. This faith in science, technology, and capitalism was lived out in his work, his friendships, and a budding atheism. His rangy gait spoke of an Indiana small town childhood, home alone or roaming the fields and creeks of Putnam County, trapping small game for good money, and now hunting rabbit, squirrel, and birds in season with a 20 gauge double-barrel, or fishing the backwaters of the Miami and Whitewater Rivers along the state line. At work they spoke of courage and a work ethic for someone so brainy, a willingness to get dirty if it meant getting it done. He knew the word, knew of those who knew it, and understood it as necessity and an important feature of the regional labor and professional job market. It registered, lodging in the left temple, set itself aright, and waited in the mind of the man, waited for the moment when it would open, blossom, and split in its stinking, guttural substance, in a chain reaction of pathological semiotics.
In the beginning was the word and the word was a place, appropriate and appropriated, secure and insecure, at home among these Christian people yet alien in its ethos (or lack of same), shining with technical brilliance and bereft of sense..
I was born in a small town in southeast Indiana, near where the Miami River flows into the Ohio - we lived there till the late 1950's when we left the area. This place was near the nuclear munitions plant known as the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center - a uranium processing plant that operated from the early 50's through the late 80's. The plant produced enriched uranium that "fed" weapons plants in Oak Ridge, Hanford, and the Savannah River Site and was used in the production of nuclear warheads. Between 1951 and 1989 Fernald produced over 170,000 metric tons of enriched uranium. In 1984 the plant was found to have been releasing millions of tons of uranium dust into the air - contaminating the communities and environment around the plant. I remember there were frequent cargo planes in the area during my early childhood - my dad called them "flying boxcars" - they were C-119's likely moving processed materials in and out of the Fernald Plant.
In the beginning was the word and the word was a place, appropriate and appropriated, secure and insecure, at home among these Christian people yet alien in its ethos (or lack of same), shining with technical brilliance and bereft of sense.. and the word was Fernald.
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