The Girls of Atomic City (22 page)

★ ★ ★

Religious services were a major concern of the Project from the very beginning, as officials appreciated the extra weight that spiritual communities might bear in a brand-new town with no preexisting social connections.

The Chapel on the Hill was the center of much religious activity. That single space would eventually serve 29 different religious groups. Catholics claimed the lion’s share of parishioners, edging out the Baptists at number two with Methodists pulling in at third—a clear indication of just how many out-of-towners had moved into this Bible-belt region.

The Chapel boasted a packed schedule. Catholics started arriving at 5:30
AM
Sunday, Jewish services were at eight o’clock Friday night, and in between was an array of denominations and activities. (Colleen, Celia, and Rosemary still had the option of attending mass in
Father Siener’s living room, as the priest continued to set up an altar in his own abode on Geneva Street.) The Chapel also played host to Episcopal vespers and youth group meetings. The Baptists also met at the high school, as did the newly organized Christian Scientist group. Services continued to be held in various rec halls throughout the Reservation, though early morning services in these sometimes meant kicking a bottle or two out of the way and erasing reminders of the previous night’s diversions to make way for the present day’s devotions. It was not unusual for the marquee above the movie theater in Townsite to proclaim:
NOW SHOWING: Methodist Church.

Every area of what was now a bustling “factory-tropolis” with several distinct town centers had its own recreational activities. The Grove Center had its own rec hall, and a very popular skating rink that ran throughout the night. Happy Valley had its own amusement fairway called Coney Island, full of skeet ball and darts, where “Sugar Blues” blasted through the loudspeakers well into the wee hours of the morning in a part of the Reservation that knew no night—thanks to 24-hour floodlights.

Coney Island Workers, in their late teens to early 20s (some even younger, if they could squeak by without questions), awarded oh-so-precious cigarettes as prizes for winners of darts, air rifles, and coin tosses. It was an oddly magical setting, the playful suspension of responsibility in the shadows of the most massive industrial war plants ever constructed. It was a land of music and distraction for characters as diverse as the young pinboy on the duckpin lanes named Edgar Allan Poe (really) and a young college girl on break who relished every time she got the opportunity to page him over the loudspeaker. She and others like her closed up shop at 2
AM
and went out to drink homemade wine, or got a ride to the Plantation Club near the town of Rockwood to dance all night.

★ ★ ★

Venturing off-site was popular, as buses provided transportation to places like Norris Dam or Big Ridge Park. Couples packed picnic lunches, folded up a few blankets, and hopped on a bus or crammed in a car.

As housing continued to be tight, some singles were assigned to group houses, which were ideal spots for quick and informal roll-up-the-rug dances. A house full of chemists might host a group of cubicle operators, perhaps none of them aware of what the others did day-in and day-out, though they might even work in the same plant. It didn’t matter: Beer tallies were kept on the fridge so that everyone paid their fair share, and romance blossomed on the small porches that some of the C and D homes in Townsite offered.

For any and all activities, finding some alcohol to imbibe posed a bit of a challenge—but not too much for such an industrious collection of young people. Yes, there were one or two small taverns on-site, but none was anyone’s first choice. They were crowded and offered only 3.2 percent beer, a staple of military life and Army posts during wartime, which some considered a deterrent to bootleg booze.

“The sale of 3.2 beer in the post exchanges in training camps is a positive factor in Army sobriety,” the Office of War Information stated in a report cited by the Brewing Industry Foundation in the April 19, 1943, issue of
Life
magazine. “. . . In dry states and in states where there is local option, the military faces the problem of bootleg liquor. Bootleggers cannot be regulated; legal dispenses can be regulated.”

Off-site outings could be made to places like the Ritz Club in nearby Clinton, where the occasional visit from CEW guards sent drinks scattering to the floor and sometimes resulted in a quick wink and offer of cash from the proprietor. Clinton Engineer Works and this part of Tennessee were technically dry. Ah, but this kind of prohibition had long served to bolster one of the state’s most significant, if illegal, industries: moonshine.

Hooch was available, if not entirely healthy, from a variety of sources. Drop a few bucks in a basket on a back porch and snag a bottle of homemade innards-stripper from a stash in the washing machine. Taxi cab drivers from nearby towns like Clinton and Harriman made a pretty penny escorting folks to off-site spots where some “splo,” a local and potent moonshine, could be bought. The more industrious families made wine and beer beneath their small, rickety,
mass-constructed porches: A little canned grape juice, some rationed sugar, and the magic of fermentation were all you needed to get the party started.

If obtained off-area, there was the matter of getting your booze through the gates and past the guards, who themselves enjoyed a serious cache of confiscated rotgut in the guardhouse. Inspection was expected, the passengers of any car knew that. As you approached the gate and slowed to a stop, passengers prepared to have their car and bags opened. The guards were on to most of the tricks by now: the bottles in the wheel well, a container carefully positioned on the floor between the long-skirted legs of a female companion. The more hilariously duplicitous buried purchases in the bottom of bags of odiferous diapers. (Sleeping babies in bassinets weren’t enough of a deterrent.)

That was the key: Put it somewhere the guards didn’t want to go. One surefire trick when returning to the Reservation after a quick trip to secure a fifth or two of Tennessee’s finest? Bury the bottle inside of a box of Kotex, carefully shielded by at least one or two pads.

★ ★ ★

August in East Tennessee is a sweaty panting mutt, breathing down a dust-caked neck that has been baked by the southern sun. And just when it seemed as though fall would never break through the swelter, it happened: On August 3, 1944, the US Army Corp of Engineers, those kings of colossal construction, outdid themselves. They opened the swimming pool, one that was believed to be the largest in the country. It was fed by a spring that had been dammed up to form a lake, and now the sides and bottoms were covered in concrete. Residents could dip into 1.5 acres of wet, wonderful swimming surface area, a cool 2.1 million gallons of water. Yet even cooling off on the Reservation wasn’t mud-free—swimmers could feel their toes sink into bits of muck at the bottom of the massive pool, but they didn’t care. Their hot, tired bodies bobbed in the fresh, brisk springwater, replenishing temperatures and restoring spirits, albeit temporarily.

Segregation forbade black Oak Ridgers from swimming in the pool and infiltrated most forms of recreation on the Reservation.
Black and white pin boys couldn’t work in the same bowling alleys, for example, if there were not separate bathroom facilities available. There was a recreation hall near the hutment area, where Kattie occasionally ventured. She liked getting dressed for a dance now and then, sure, but overall there wasn’t too much to do there beyond boxing matches and playing cards. Black residents could not attend the movie theaters, either, though there were now several throughout the Reservation. Occasionally at the rec hall near the black hutment area 16 mm “race” films were shown. For 35 cents, viewers could sit on crates and watch stories—produced predominantly by white movie studios—about poor southern blacks making their way to the north for a new life. In the theaters in Townsite or Grove Center, it cost only 5 cents more to see first-run films, cartoons, and newsreels.

Church served as one of Kattie’s primary social activities, when it was an option. Black workers strove to find time and space to worship, some holding prayer band meetings in their huts, others reaching out to pastors in Knoxville, who came to preach in the rec hall, the cafeteria, or wherever there was room. Kattie eventually attended the “church on the side of the road” as her small congregation came to call it. It was a small, but adequate building that wasn’t being used for any other purpose. It was a gift, an oasis of peace and community.

But there were movements afoot to try and change the living conditions for black workers at CEW. Numerous contributions to the war effort had been made by the black workforce here in Oak Ridge as well as overseas in battle, and from the earliest of the Reservation’s days. Hal Williams, a black construction worker, helped to lay the first concrete slab at K-25.

One of the first actions of the Colored Camp Council was to pen a letter of complaint to the Army and Roane-Anderson. The earlier decision to forego construction of a Negro Village did not go unmentioned, but the primary focus of the letter was the current inequity between black and white housing for those with families. Family homes separate from labor camps and similar in amenities to the white family homes was requested, and the appeal made note of the patriotism and sacrifices of the black community.

“We feel that you, as a high official in the American Army in which so many Negro Youth are fighting and dying for democracy and the preservation of America, will sympathize with the requests of those of us who are laboring on the home front to supply the battle front . . . ,” read one July 1944 letter.

Those who signed the letter found themselves on the receiving end of a robust background check, but no new homes.

★ ★ ★

Celia got the mud off of her shoes as best she could, scraping here, knocking there. She didn’t want anyone in Knoxville to be able to tell that she had come over from behind the fence.

Trips to Knoxville were a treat. A nice dinner might be followed by a stroll up and down Gay Street for some window-shopping or a visit to one of the bigger department stores to seek out stockings or soaps and, if you were splurging, a nice outfit. The Miller’s in Knoxville far outshone the one in Townsite. It was all worth the drive, worth cramming everyone into a single car. If you had a car and gas ration coupons, you had five passengers. You could bet on that.

But many who lived at CEW had begun to notice a trend. The Knoxville shopkeepers, many of whom stayed open late on Monday nights
specifically
to serve those individuals coming from CEW, were often unfriendly.

The relationship between the Clinton Engineer Works and their immediate neighbors was a testy one. Things hadn’t exactly gotten off on the right foot, with nearly 60,000 acres of land being taken from people whose families had lived there for ages. Though many people from surrounding areas worked at CEW, the suspicious and condescending “you’re one of
those
people from
that
place” strained the fabric that tenuously held this hodgepodge of communities together. Socializing did occur, professionally and personally, as the communities forged a reluctant yet unavoidable partnership. Still, locals complained about the outsiders who lived and worked at CEW. Some were sure that the CEW was getting more than their fair share of rationed goods, for example. What else could all those trains be carrying in there all the time?

Everything’s goin’ in . . . Nothin’s comin’ out . . .

Others had very specific issues with their strange new neighbors, openly accusing people from the Reservation of stealing vegetables out of their gardens or snatching eggs or even entire chickens from their yards. There were foxes behind those fences and now they were coming into the henhouses.

Local companies, too, were angered by the Project, as workers were drawn away by greater pay. As early as 1943, the Project was offering as much as 57.5 cents per hour for laborers, far exceeding the normal rates in Anderson County, and draining factories like the Bacon Hosiery Mills, in Loudon, dry of workers. Textile mills needed laborers by the thousands, but there were none left to be found. Farm equipment had been bought by the military, the best schoolteachers, too, had been lured to CEW. Employers on the outside wanted to know what was going on behind the barbed wire. It couldn’t be a mere war project, but more likely some New Deal socialist experiment, and they let their representatives, like Senator McKellar, know that they deserved to know the truth. They did not hear the truth. No one would until the job was done.

To many in the surrounding areas, including Knoxville, those who lived on the inside had wallets bursting with money and ration coupons, and stores filled to the rafters with rationed goods to be purchased with ease.

And Knoxville salespeople had learned to spot Oak Ridgers a mile away by a telltale sign: mud.

Celia would often walk into stores like Miller’s or George’s and stand at the counter, waiting to be helped. She grew more and more annoyed as she watched other customers stroll up after her only to be served first. The first time it happened, she didn’t think too much of it. Just a fluke, she thought. But now it seemed to be turning into a pattern. When she finally mentioned it to her friends, other women complained of being turned down for service entirely when requesting a particular item, especially one that was rationed.

“Do you have . . . ?” they’d ask.

“We’re saving them for civilians,” the shopkeeper might say.

No matter the pains Celia took to wash the mud off her shoes—her
civilian
shoes—she never surmounted this obstacle. Maybe it was her accent. Maybe it was her friends. Somehow the shopkeepers always knew she was one of those people from that government place.

★ ★ ★

Celia was finding her financial independence tricky at times. She had begun insisting that she and Henry go dutch when they ate together. He had refused to give in at first, always reaching for his wallet to pay as they made their way to the end of the cafeteria line or when the check came at a Knoxville restaurant. He was not accustomed to letting any woman, especially a girlfriend, pay her own way. The X-10 worker was charming and forthright, traditional and generous. Broad-shouldered and built low to the ground, Henry
adored
the new pool—he had as formidable a personality as he did a broadstroke. But Celia was no pushover. She had been a workingwoman for several years now. Celia was, as she had explained to Henry time and time again, earning her own money, thank you very much. She was able to pay her own way. If they were going to continue eating together as often as they were—which they did most every night now—he should let her pay her fair share at least some of the time. Henry was stubborn, but then again, so was Celia.