Bobby and the A-Bomb Factory

Bob Myers wrote a book about growing up a child of Hanford, Bobby and the A-Bomb Factory, that supplies not only a unique account on Hanford but also on the different American Indian nations in the area and the effect of Hanford on them. I happened upon his book the other day and promptly read his intimate, autobiographical account. My father was there conducting research on the low-level effects of radiation on miniature livestock, and he mentions this study, with which his father was also involved.

His family drank instant milk. That’s the kind of in-knowledge that only children of the area don’t have to explain to one another.

We both attended Jason Lee Elementary School but he was several years ahead of me and his family left the area several years before mine did.

As I said, there’s history worked throughout the book that is unavailable anywhere else on the internet.

And towards the beginning it has one of the better descriptions of the tumbleweed I’ve ever read.


Posted

in

by

Comments

5 responses to “Bobby and the A-Bomb Factory”

  1. Jim McCulloch Avatar

    Tumbleweed is an obnoxious plant, despite its romantic cameo in The Big Lebowsky. My wife’s ex husband built an adobe house in El Paso, which was constantly beseiged by tumblweeds. Burning them was useless, and nothing could get rid of them. They’d pile up on the road and if you drove through them they’d get caught under your car and would sometimes ignite from the heat of the muffler. And, as you probably remember, they are quite prickly.

  2. Idyllopus Avatar

    Tumbleweed is, you’re right, an obnoxious plant, so I don’t know why I feel a certain affection for it. I remember it getting caught under the car and caught in my bike spokes, caught in the shrubs and in fencing, and I well remember its prickles. But it also seemed to me the clown of vegetation. Vexing but often humorous.

  3. Jay Taber Avatar

    When I was around ten or eleven, my cousins, friends and I constructed a giant tumbleweed igloo with an underground entrance. Our unusual clubhouse did not last the summer, however. Unbeknownst to us, one day the least sagacious member of our group, Ralph, decided to barbecue some hot dogs inside, and we only got wind of it when the firetrucks and police sirens arrived.

  4. Idyllopus Avatar

    I’m wondering how you got the tumbleweed igloo to stay put and not blow off.

  5. Jay Taber Avatar

    they interlocked into a rigid porous mass

Leave a Reply to Jay Taber Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *