Bomb Watching : The Atomic Bomb in Utah

Throughout the 1950s, the Federal Government tested hundreds of atomic bombs in the desert outside of Las Vegas. Unfortunately for my grandmother, Odessa "Queenie" Severson, an incredible woman who died of cancer, and probably also for my mother, who had to undergo chemo therapy, the nuclear fallout from these tests easily made its way to towns throughout Nevada and Southern Utah. My mom used to tell about how her family would actually go to watch some of these tests.

Well, this evening I was reading The Lonely Polygamist, a fantastic novel that is set in my mother's hometown of Virgin, Utah, when I came across this passage: "The only thing Royal and Golden did together, besides an occasional meal and attending church, was bomb-watching. Every few weeks before dawn they would drive up to Royal's favorite overlook on Egyptian Butte and wait for the great white-green flash to expose in an instant the whole broken desert plain, horizon to horizon. Once the mushroom cloud had gone up, lit from within by extraterrestrial fires, Royal would give his head a slow shake, overcome. "Oh look at her," he'd say, his voice moist with reverence, as if looking into the sweet face of a long-awaited newborn. "Isn't she a beaut."