The World Is on Fire. Joni Tevis
The tremendous monetary and other outlays involved (in testing far away) have at times been publicly justified by stressing radiological hazards. I submit that this pattern has already become too firmly fixed in the public mind and its continuation can contribute to an unhealthy, dangerous, and unjustified fear of atomic detonations. . . . It is high time to lay the ghost of an all-pervading lethal radioactive cloud (to rest). . . . While there may be short-term public relations difficulties caused by testing atomic bombs within the continental limits, these are more than offset by the fundamental gain from increased realism in the attitude of the public.
—Rear Admiral William S. “Deak” Parsons, 1948
In 1945, Manhattan Project physicists exploded the first atomic device, Trinity, in the desert outside Alamogordo; a little more than two weeks later, the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, and three days after that, Bockscar dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. Scientists predicted that the United States’ monopoly on atomic weapons would hold for at least twenty years, but in 1949, the Soviets proved them wrong, exploding a bomb named First Lightning. In response, Harry Truman authorized the building of Mike, the first hydrogen bomb, tested in the South Pacific. The logistics of testing so far away made the process costly, so a public relations campaign was conducted in order to convince Americans that testing closer to home—at the Nevada Test Site, an hour or so north of Las Vegas—was desirable and safe. By and large, the public got on board with this campaign, and although much of the evidence generated by the tests was kept classified for decades, the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission made it a priority to publicize some of the information. Broadcasts of the tests were shown on television, newspaper reporters and photographers documented them, and civilians were encouraged to witness the explosions.
In the summer of 1957, an article in the New York Times explained how to plan one’s summer vacation around the “non-ancient but none the less honorable pastime of atom-bomb watching.” Reporter Gladwin Hill wrote that “for the first time, the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada test program will extend through the summer tourist season, into November. It will be the most extensive test series ever held, with upward of fifteen detonations. And for the first time, the A.E.C. has released a partial schedule, so that tourists interested in seeing a nuclear explosion can adjust itineraries accordingly.”
Hill’s article suggests routes, vantage points, and film speeds, so that the atomic tourist can capture the spectacle. But is there anything to fear from watching an atomic explosion? Rest assured, he says, that “there is virtually no danger from radioactive fall-out.” A car crash is the bigger threat, possibly caused by the bomb’s blinding flash or by “the excitement of the moment, [when] people get careless in their driving.”
In the article’s last paragraph, Hill writes, “A perennial question from people who do not like pre-dawn expeditions is whether the explosions can be seen from Las Vegas, sixty-five miles away. The answer is that sometimes enough of a flash is visible to permit a person to say he has ‘seen an atomic bomb.’ But it is not the same as viewing one from relatively close range, which generally is a breath-taking experience.”
That summer, after winning the title of Miss Atomic Bomb, a local woman poses for photos with a cauliflower-shaped cloud basted to the front of her bathing suit. Thanks to trick photography, she seems to tower over the salt flats on endless legs, power lines brushing her ankles. With her arms held high above her head, the very shape of her body echoes the mushroom cloud, and her smile looks even wider because of the dark lipstick outlining her mouth, a ragged circle like a blast radius. Not only do Americans want to see the bomb, we want to become it, shaping our bodies to fit its form.
A studious-looking young man who totes his electric guitar like a sawn-off shot-gun.
—Review of a Buddy Holly performance in Birmingham, England; March 11, 1958
There’s a lot going on during that atomic summer. Buddy Holly, for instance. His career’s taken off by 1957, thanks to hits like “That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Everyday,” songs that combine country inflections with rock’s insistent rhythm. He looks ordinary, like someone you went to high school with; in fact, you were born knowing him, the bird-chested guy, sexless and safe. But look more closely: at the story of how he gets into a “scuffle” with his buddy Joe B., the bass player, before a show, and Joe B. accidentally knocks off Buddy’s two front caps. Buddy solves the problem by smearing a wad of chewing gum across the space, sticking the caps back on, and playing the gig. Or at the story of how he met dark-haired Maria Elena in a music publishing office and that same day asked her to marry him—and she said yes. Or look at this, a clip from a TV show he played in December of ’57.
“Now if you haven’t heard of these young men,” the hostess says, “then you must be the wrong age, because they’re rock and roll specialists.” The camera’s trained on Buddy, and he doesn’t waste time: If you knew Peggy Sue, then you’d know why I feel blue, giving it everything he’s got, and as he moves into the second verse, the camera on stage right goes live, and he pivots smoothly, keeping up. I’m staring back from better than fifty years out, watching as he follows the camera with a studied intensity magnified by the frenetic speed of his strumming. His fingers are a blur, but he doesn’t make mistakes, and as I watch the clip, I’m startled by the distinctly handsy look in his eye. This is not what I expected.
The whole song’s a revelation, from the rapid-fire drumming, to the stuttering Pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue, to the way his falsetto warps the words of the last verse. With a love so rare and true—you know he doesn’t mean a word of it. He’s just telling you what you want to hear, and that tamped-down sex—how had I missed it?—burns in his eyes. And there’s something about the way he stares at the camera that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Elvis, the Big Bopper, Johnny Cash all play to the audiences they have at the time, mugging for the camera and making the kids squeal. Jerry Allison, the drummer for the Crickets, said later that playing on TV made him nervous: “That was something different,” he said, “an audience that wasn’t there.” But watching Buddy, you’d never know it. He’s playing to the fans of the future—to the camera, to now.
First floor, living room. First floor, dining room.
Children at play, unaware of approaching disaster.
—“Declassified US Nuclear Test Film #33”
(Apple-2/“Cue”), 1955
Ever since I watched La Bamba as a kid, I’ve known about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson. It happened before my time; it was a foregone conclusion, verifiably historical. Knowing that, I couldn’t see Buddy Holly as anything other than a dead man walking, doomed to die young, tragic. But of course there’s more to him than that.
He was a writer, for one thing. The year before that TV appearance, he’d gone to the movies with his friends and seen a John Wayne picture. That’ll be the day, Wayne kept saying. Well, that was a nice line, and he wrote it down, to see if he could put it to use.
Not long ago, I watched The Searchers myself, trying to figure out what about that line had compelled Buddy Holly. The movie follows Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne, over the course of five years spent tracking a band of Comanche across the desert Southwest. He’s trying to find his niece Debbie, kidnapped as a child during a raid on her family’s ranch. Along the way, other riders join Ethan, but you wouldn’t call them his partners. He’s the one calling the shots, and he’s vengeful, cruel, and all the more dangerous because he has enough cultural know-how to really hurt his enemy. This image stays with me: when the group finds a Comanche warrior buried under a stone, Ethan opens the grave and shoots out the corpse’s eyes. “Now he’ll have to wander forever between the Spirit Lands,” he says, leaving the twice-blinded body behind.
For me, the movie’s most compelling moments are the early ones leading up to the raid on the ranch. In a low-ceilinged adobe room, Debbie’s mother scolds her older daughter for lighting a lamp and revealing their presence. “Let’s just enjoy the dusk,” she shrills, trying to hide how frightened