European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 01, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse At great expense we have gathered on Ihli Mesa the largest collection of crackpots Ever to. Gen. Leslie grows. Manhattan project head. 1943. I feel very positive about this Community and its Lewis Muir los Alamos councilman 1978. By Sid Moody associated press Here Are no atomic c a washes no bomb burgers. No commemorative statues. The Only military pres ence at los Alamos n.m., is an outpost of col. Sanders by. Ret. So. You say. That turgid heralding Cloud More a cabbage than a mushroom is Only in the mind. Or in a folder of pictures the local photographer titles " but that Cloud is Here. The clean winds from the Pine dark Jemez mountains have not blown it away. In so Many curious ways the bomb s Penumbra phantoms the streets of the town where it was born. Outwardly los Alamos is Middle Amer Ica. Upper Middle America. Little leagues. Lions clubbers. Mcdonald s. Two motels. $100,000 houses among the Ponderosa Pines. Across los Alamos Canyon a Gulf dividing two worlds. Is the Hill the labs where they devise and fabricate atomic weapons pry open the atom to Battle cancer to extract its Energy to keep America going. But As a town los Alamos is almost a lab curiosity a town of 1,200 created by one of Mankind s epochal discoveries. Town of scant crime. Few unemployed. No Auto dealers. No funeral Home. schools. Frustration. Bureaucracy. Individual brilliance. Boredom. A Hospital with two emergency entrances one for blood and broken Bones the other for radiation mishaps. A wealthy town struggling for funds. An uncommon town much of it mutated by the bomb. There is Little guilt. We re proud of the part we played inthe nation s says Roger Perkins a physicist who Heads the Effort to tame the a bomb s inferno with lasers to pro Duce electricity. He Speaks for Many. Outwardly los Alamos the poplars is a ranch House split level town of Manifest normalcy remarkable Only for having no slums nearer than the Dusty settlements of its closest neighbors the Pueblo indians who have been there forever. The 20,000 residents of los Alamos Are spread Over the eroded platform of a lava Mesa left by an extinct Volcano of which the Jemez Ridge in Back of town was once the rim. The town looks Down literally and some times figuratively to the Rio Grande Valley 1,300 feet below and across to the Calendar Art Sangre de Cristo Range. Los Alamos site of an obscure boy s i cobol was Sei tied by scientists and toe . Army corps of engineers who came la 1m3 with one purpose to build a bomb. The site was picked because it was Remote and because or. J. Robert Oppen Heimur head of the scientists was familiar with the area from previous pack had once said it would be Nice to Combine new Mexico and physics. Overnight the peaceful Mesa became a real life movie lot of Barracks laboratories explore Ives huts trucks wives Security horse patrols was free thinking physicist regimented soldiers Short order Cooks. Two russian spies a disc jockey rho played borrowed family re cords. Maps were recruited for babysitting As was Klaus Fuchs. One of the spies. The other machinist David Greenglass openly applauded communist Russia and sub scribed to tie Liberal Nev York paper pm Edward tinier. A Tomb Pioneer enraged neighbors by classical piano far into the nigh. For Security reasons los Alamos became a nun place. Residents were visitors outside los Alamos museum View casing similar to the bomb dropped Over Hli los Alamos 1uncommon town mutated bythe bomb Barilka a nameless hence could t Cash checks in Santa be apply for fishing licenses have their marriages announced in the new Pap or much less dissolved in court. In spite of. Or because of it All the first atomic explosion detonated with the help of civilian Railroad signal switches and a hand Stopwatch took place july 16, ims in the new mexican barrens of the Tornado Del puerto journey of death. They had done it in just 28 months. Hiro Shima and Nagasaki Perli aps portents of armageddon to come nonetheless ended world War ii. The scientists began leaving the Hill to return whence they had come. Potje 14 the stars and stripes they had not come to make lot Home. In considerable part through of Oppenheimer s successor Bradbury the los Alamos oratory last escaped com Ion and resumed fabricating nuclear weapons. Some 1,200 labor in atomic lab buildings spread out beyond Bridge
