I'm trying to be brave, but I have to admit, the warning issued today by the Attorney General has me on edge. We are to be on guard against an unspecified threat of terrorism on an unspecified target, about which there is nevertheless "real and credible" evidence which has been unspecified to us. That kind of ambiguity is more unsettling than an announcement that the nuclear power plant in your back yard is about to melt down.

And believe me, I know. There is a nuclear power plant in my back yard. Pictured at left are the cooling towers at Three Mile Island, the generating facility in the Susquehanna River just outside Middletown, Pennsylvania which experienced a near catastrophe in March of 1979. The eastern bank of the island is less than half a mile off the western edge of Route 441 where it runs through Londonderry Township, part of the school district where I taught. My home is a little more than fifteen miles from the towers. (Fifteen miles is considered the "safe" distance, talked of as if there is an invisible shield which might stop the contaminated air.) But every day that week I was at my post in room H-13, about six miles from the plumes of white vapor that had become such a familiar sight.

Some weeks ago (in the Before time -- Before 9/11) I saw a documentary on the History Channel that outlined the events of those five or so days in 1979. I am more aware now of how serious the situation was, how close we came to a fully realized nuclear holocaust. Back then, however, I just went about my business, trying to continue with grammar lessons and literary discussions and research paper proddings while modeling calm and doing my best to keep the rumor mill in check.

According to the documentary, the owners of the utility were not forthcoming with accurate information. They minimized the risks and actually lied about the extent of the damage and kept local officials very poorly informed about the steps to take regarding evacuation of the area.

The "event" (as it was called in the press) began on a Wednesday. By Friday things had really heated up (you should pardon the pun). During a class change in the late morning I stood in the hallway outside my room and noticed that police were setting up barricades at the far end of the overpass at Route 322, where South Hanover Street becomes the Middletown Road.

It was warm that day. Part way through a discussion of how to determine when to use who and when to use whom a student asked if he could open a window. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was a guidance counselor. 

"We don't want to alarm anybody," he told me, "but Civil Defense has asked us to keep the windows closed." 

Back in the room I casually crossed the room and, while asking someone to try the first sentence in the exercise aloud, pulled the window shut.

"Mr. Rhoads told you to close the window, didn't he?" said one kid. "We're all gonna die!"

Things began to unravel from there. School was dismissed at one o'clock. That meant that my two afternoon classes, which had a research project due that day, would not meet. I had warned them that Absolutely No Papers Would Be Accepted Late. Most of them stopped by at my room and left their work. One girl touched me on the arm and said, "Goodbye."

At home I discovered that many people on Bradley Drive were preparing to leave. The advice was that if you had a convenient place to go out of town, you should go there. My husband (not Ron, the other one) came home and announced that he had made arrangements for us. My parents would go to my sister's house outside Philadelphia. He and I and his parents would go to friends of his in New Jersey. (His rationale was sound. My sister lives in an ordinary three-bedroom suburban split level. The New Jersey friends lived in a 17-room pre-Revolutionary War mansion with a guest suite over the garage.)

"I want to be with my family," I told him.

"You'll be with your family. You'll be with Mom and Dad and me."

"No," I said, "I want to be with my real family."

We separated a little more than three years later and were divorced near the fourth anniversary of the TMI event. Looking back, I can pin the start of the trouble, or at least the awareness of it, on that moment.

What happened at TMI back in 1979 was an accident caused by an equipment malfunction, the effects of which were then exacerbated by human error in interpreting the data. The event galvanized those who had always been against the use of nuclear power into renewed protests and calls for better and clearer emergency preparedness and disaster recovery plans.

It wasn't long after the events of September 11 that rumors began to circulate concerning TMI as the intended target of the hijacked plane that went down outside Pittsburgh. I heard from someone who heard from someone that we should be planning to go four hours away should evacuation become necessary. Last week we had a letter from the administration of my daughter's school informing us that the Halifax School District is the place that Lynn will be taken in the event of an evacuation order because it is at least "ten miles distant" as mandated by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

It was another beautiful day here in central Pennsylvania. I drove out to the school where I used to teach, visited several trees on the property that I am fond of, and then took the route I used to take home to my old apartment. It winds through some splendid foliage, and I wanted to get a last look at the colors and the light.

Finally, I stopped at Geyer's Church Cemetery in Middletown. It's soon the sixth anniversary of the death of the mother of one of my favorite students. This mother was two years behind me at Bishop McDevitt, and in 1995 she died of an aggressive cancer that gave her three weeks between "I don't feel so good" and "rest in peace." I had not realized until I made my condolence call that their house, where they'd lived since 1975, was literally in the shadows of the cooling towers.

I don't know how to be vigilant in the way Attorney General Ashcroft suggests. In the alternative, I'll keep on keepin' on.