Tom Hungate: We’re rolling.
Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin and I’m conducting an oral history interview with Jerry Tallent on June 15th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerry on his experiences working on the Hanford site. Before we begin, Jerry, could you say your name and spell it, please?
Jerry Tallent: My name is Jerry Tallent. And that’s J-E-R-R-Y, T-A-L-L-E-N-T. And you’ll have to excuse my speech.
Franklin: That’s okay. Thank you very much. So, I guess, let’s start at the beginning. Tell me how you came to Hanford.
Tallent: I was running a D8 Cat up on Rattlesnake Mountain for a guy—a friend on the ranch. I was raised on a ranch.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And he came to me and said, you’re the one that drives the D8. And I said, yeah. He said, I want to dig some petrified wood out of Rattlesnake Mountain. So we hauled up the Cat and I dug a bunch of petrified wood. Anyway, when we got done with that, he said, your dad’s leaving the farm. Is you gonna to run it? I said, no, I’m gonna get out. He said, I’ve got a job for you at Westinghouse Hanford in the 308 Building and you’d be working with plutonium. There it is. [LAUGHTER] I went to work for him and I worked inside 308 Lab. I think it’s all gone now, finally. The last building, they had to clean it up—clean the fuel up in it. But I worked there for about eight or nine years. And then an engineer I had, named Bobby Eschenbaum, she wanted me to come down to 305 Building, because, she said, you got a lot of brains. [LAUGHTER] That was a long time ago. [LAUGHTER] So I did. I left 308 Building and went to work for her. The pictures I got there are the stuff I designed and built. I did a lot of it back in our machine shop. I got in trouble with the machinists’ union out there. [LAUGHTER] But they ended up saying, okay, it’s a prototype and if you want any more built, we have to build it. No problem. So they patted me on the back and left, but, boy, they all showed up in force. They were after me. Because the technicians and engineering technicians weren’t union, and the metal fabricators were. So I was stepping on the metal fabricators’ toes. But then they realized it was all R&D—research and development. So they—it’s okay. And I had them build some stuff for me. We became pretty good friends, you know.
Franklin: Yeah.
Tallent: Yeah, it was after a while, I’d go into their building and—hey, how you doing? [LAUGHTER] Help me out all they could.
Franklin: Wow, that’s great.
Tallent: So that was pretty good. But, yeah, I enjoyed it. We had a couple of problems in the building. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Can you elaborate on the problems?
Tallent: Well, one of them, they sent me downtown to radiation specialists. It was—
Franklin: Was that at the time, or recently?
Tallent: No, no, that was at the time I was working out there. We worked in gloveboxes.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And we had some plutonium from Arco. As a matter of fact, it was from Karen Silkwood. [LAUGHTER] That sound familiar?
Franklin: It doesn’t; I’m sorry.
Tallent: It doesn’t?
Franklin: No. Karen Silkwood?
Tallent: Karen Silkwood was from Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And there was a show about her. She defied them, so they—I’d get in trouble with them. So they sabotaged her and said she stole plutonium out of the building. Well, there was no way. You can’t—that stuff, if I had a can of it in here and you had a radiation detector in the corner, it’d go off scale, you know.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: So, anyway. It was a sabotage deal. Because she was—what do you call it—telling on them.
Franklin: A whistleblower?
Tallent: Yes, yes, she was kind of a whistleblower. And I said no.
Franklin: And so you had some plutonium from her?
Tallent: Well, they’d send it up here.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Tallent: And thank you for getting back on the right track. Anyway, I dealt with her, and we went to open up the can and re-can it and put it in our vault. Well, we opened up the outer can. Of course, it’s in a bag, and then another can, which is in another can. Well, we opened up the outer can, and took out the inner can, and the plastic bag looked like it had been on fire. It was burnt to a crisp around the plutonium.
Franklin: Oh!
Tallent: Yeah, that’s what we said: oh! And my lead that was with me, I looked across and I said, Bob, we’d better get a radiation monitor inside. And he said, well, we got a detector here. And I said, yeah, well, okay. And about that time, I looked across. His gloves were black. And all of a sudden, on his arms, I could see white. And I said, don’t move. Your gloves are rotting off on your arms as we talk.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And I looked over at the door—and the alarm going off, and I looked over at the door. I had two radiation monitors standing there. They come running in with masks on, put a mask on me, and put a mask on Bob. I do have a little piece of plutonium in my lung.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: In my left lung. It’s just a tiny nodule. And Hanford, downtown, said that’s the best place to have it, is in your lung. I said, oh yeah. [LAUGHTER] But they said, no, because as soon as it goes into your lung, your body protects it from you and puts a nodule around it. So I said, okay. So it hasn’t bothered me since ‘80s and ‘90s. I’ve got COPD and emphysema. But that don’t have anything to do with that tumor that’s in there.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: Anyway, that was one incident, and then another one was just in our lab, just on normal. One of the guys that was working with us, he’s dead now. He died of cancer. One of our guys was opening up a can with a can opener. And you know how sharp the lids are. Well, he cut his glove, so he hollered for help, and I ran in with a couple of masks. You had masks always in your drawer, in a bag. If they weren’t in a bag, then you couldn’t use them. But they are always in a bag. And I tore open the bag, and put one on me, and tore open another bag and took it in, and put on him and hit the button for the radiation monitors. And they come in, and they looked in, seeing masks, and—oh boy. [LAUGHTER] So they come in, and what they do is cut the—I’m shaking. They cut the sleeve off your arms and pull them down and then cut the tape on your gloves—your gloves are taped to your arms. You got rubber gloves on. And they’re taped to your arms, so they cut that off. And then slide everything off, and leave it in the glove, and then tape over the glovebox—over the opening.
Franklin: Right, right, okay.
Tallent: So nothing gets out. And you’re on negative air. It was—you know—if I had to do it over, I’d work out there again. It’d be no problem. Can’t work there now; it ain’t there no more. But just a few minor things here and there. We’ve had a few after that glovebox. Their gloves deteriorate and fall off. We got into the habit of changing them out once a week.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: To keep them from—you get plutonium in there, it deteriorates rubber fast. And we tried the lead-lined—rubber lead-lined gloves, but they were so heavy. So you work in them for 15 minutes, you’re exhausted. So my lead and I, we threw them out and said to hell with them. [LAUGHTER] Shoved them into the glovebox and put on new gloves. Everything—nothing comes out. [COUGH] I’m sorry. Nothing comes out. Everything goes in, and then gets bagged out.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: With a sealer.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: You get a fork to pull everything, put it in a bag and then pull it out and put it on this table and it puts a seal across it—a double seal. So it was—it was safe. And then we put it in a waste—radiation waste. That’s what they’re working on out there now.
Franklin: Right, all that stuff.
Tallent: All our crap. [LAUGHTER] Well, not all ours, but—it was stored down in the basement at 308. Not many people—I don’t know if I was supposed to say that. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Well, it’s gone now, so—
Tallent: If I get a bunch of Feds come to my door—[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: No.
Tallent: There was a big room downstairs in the basement that held all these barrels of waste—radiation waste. Do you mind?
Franklin: Oh, no, not at all. Take your time.
Tallent: And once in a while, a radiation monitor would grab somebody to go down the basement with them. Because they can’t go alone—a monitor can’t go by themselves. So I had—[LAUGHTER]—a lady monitor that kind of liked me a little, and she would always grab me to go down the basement with her. And we’d check them for seals and leakage. We did hit one that was leaking. So that was taped off right away, and no problem. But when we’d go to ship—that was one thing that got me. When they’d go to ship plutonium out, a black Chevy Blazer would come in, and then a truck behind it—and there’s another one I might get in trouble for.
Franklin: Oh, no, it’s all documented.
Tallent: A black Chevy Blazer would come in and then a truck—an unmarked truck—and then another black Blazer. And they’d pull up to our loading dock, and there’d be one Blazer on each side of the loading dock. And the truck’d back up to the loading dock. The back doors would open up to them Blazers, and here’s a guy or a woman sitting there with a machine gun. [LAUGHTER] And there’d be three or four people—one of them a gorgeous lady that carried machine gun. I wouldn’t want to say anything bad to her. [LAUGHTER] She had a machine gun, and she stood guard, and she was not friends with anybody. And don’t come out on the dock. The only one allowed on the dock was the one with the truck—with the forklift.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And everybody else stayed inside—or else.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And they’d load that up, close the doors, lock it, and I said, what happens if you got hit? I asked one of the guards, because she’d come in for a drink of water, thank God. And I said, what happens if you got hit? And she said, that truck—the minute that they don’t have the code to get into that truck would fill instantly with foam. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So then it would—
Tallent: It would just be foam, instantly. And they couldn’t get it out. It’d take them a week to get to it.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: So I said, well, that’s pretty amazing. It was pretty interesting.
Franklin: Yeah.
Tallent: And, like I said, shortly after that is when I went down to 305 and started R&D on the other equipment. But I enjoyed working in the hot lab.
Franklin: The hot lab, you mean 308?
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: You mean 308?
Tallent: That was 308, yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Hot lab.
Tallent: I enjoyed working there, but it got to the point it was just too—[SIGH]—political. And that’s as far as I’m going to go with that.
Franklin: Sure, okay. I understand.
Tallent: You had to put in guaranteed overtime. And it wasn’t for any reason. You just had to be there. Bring your cards and your Playboys. And I’m not that kind of person. If I’m there, I’m gonna work. So.
Franklin: Interesting.
Tallent: There’s another one to be after me.
Franklin: No.
Tallent: Be a bomb at my door. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I’ve heard—funny. Those stories circle around, so you wouldn’t be the—there’s no harm in sharing that stuff.
Tallent: Well—
Franklin: Oh, yeah. Please, feel free. You mentioned—the first incident you mentioned, you mentioned your guy—your lead, Bob. What was—do you remember his name?
Tallent: Bob Henry.
Franklin: Bob Henry, okay.
Tallent: Yeah, he’s long-dead now, I’m sure. He was a good old boy for a while. Then him and I got into it over this mandatory overtime. He took a week’s vacation and I didn’t work it. So he told a supervisor, the manager of 308. No more raises, no more that kind of stuff. So that’s when this Bobby Eschenbaum that was an engineer in 308 for a while, she heard about it, and she said, I need you. Come to work for 305.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: So I did.
Franklin: What year did you start at Hanford?
Tallent: Oh, boy. ’73, ’74, somewhere.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: Yeah, I left the ranch. We sold out.
Franklin: And where was the ranch?
Tallent: On the Yakima River just outside of Richland.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: My dad and his partner which owned the Richland Laundry were partners on it—Harvey Stoller. Him and his wife both got killed in a car wreck in California. It was right across from the West Richland golf course. That’s what I loved about it. When we weren’t working, I’d go down to the river and go fishing all the time. We had a heck of a bass hole down there. My mom and I, we’d go fishing there all the time. We’d go up on the upper end or down by the house. And went up on the upper end one time, and out of all things, she got a huge hit. And I said, that is one big bass! Come out of the water, it was a steelhead. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: So she caught a big old steelhead.
Franklin: Were your—where—so did you grow up on the ranch then? Did you grow up here?
Tallent: Pretty much. I lived in Kennewick for a long time. My dad worked in the shipyards, fixing them up during the war.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And he’d be one of the first guys going in, open up the hatches of these ships all shot up, come in. And he said he didn’t like that at all. That was ugly. He left there, and then he went to—heard about the dams. He was a carpenter. So he came to Kennewick and started working on the dams.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: He went to Alaska for a short time. Thought he’d try that out, because it was good money. All he did was sit on the Cat and haul sleds off the LSTs—materials—off the Aleutian Islands. They said, don’t get down. He’d go to get down. They said, don’t get down. That’s your home, right there, you just stay on that. You’re going to be working 24/7s. So he just slept on the Cat. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: Yeah! But that didn’t—they got all the stuff they needed there on the islands, so they—he come back here and started working, building the dams. He worked Ice Harbor—constructing the dams.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Tallent: Yeah.
Franklin: And so where were you born, Jerry?
Tallent: I was born Hamilton, Montana.
Franklin: Hamilton, Montana. And what year were you born?
Tallent: ’45. 1945.
Franklin: Okay. And—sorry.
Tallent: And then we moved here to the Tri-Cities in ’47 I guess it was. So I wasn’t much bigger than a—I was a little guy when came.
Franklin: Little sprout?
Tallent: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Yup.
Franklin: And then your family lived in Kennewick until they bought the ranch?
Tallent: Yeah. My dad got—he wanted to be his own boss again. And he’d always loved farming. He farmed in Hamilton—an orchard and all that. So he knew a lot about it. We raised 350 head of Black Angus—registered Black Angus animals. And just a few pigs and sheep and that to eat. But every once in a while, we’d get a barren cow and she didn’t have no calves, so she wasn’t worth nothing. So that was her downfall. She’d end up being on our table.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: Yeah. You know, about once a year. If we didn’t need any meat, they went to the stockyards—went to the show—sale. We sold them. We sold all the male calves. He’d keep an eye out for a good-looking bull, and we might raise a bull. But most all the males were sent to sale. And then the heifers, we would keep them and put them with the new bull, so there’d be no inbreeding.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: So that’s how we lived for years, ‘til ’73 or something like that, I believe. Then that’s when I got the chance to go out to the Area. And Dad says, I’m out of here. I’m retiring. He bought a big doublewide and some property out in Burbank by his one brother and retired out there. Ended up dying. He’d worked in the coal mine in Idaho and Montana, and died of black lung.
Franklin: As a lot of coal miners do.
Tallent: Yes, sir. But he still had a good life. I mean, he was 70-something years old.
Franklin: That’s not—yeah, that’s not bad.
Tallent: No. Mom died at 88.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: Years old. And she just died of old age. [LAUGHTER] She was like me. Too damn ornery to die.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] So, tell me a little more about—I heard some weird stuff about the 308—you said the hot lab. You said that they used a can opener to open the cans. Do you mean like an actual can opener, like a regular can opener, or was it like a specially designed can opener?
Tallent: No, just a can opener.
Franklin: Like, just a—one you buy at the store.
Tallent: Had a rubber handle on it, so it wouldn’t poke a hole in your glove.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And when—it comes sealed. And they would seal them, but then they’d be in a can in a can, and they’d have the plastic bag around them. But the last can—the first can that had the actual materials in it was a sealed can. Safety is not spared.
Franklin: Right. Well, yeah, it’s a pretty valuable product. So when you went to—you went with Bobby Eschenbaum to the 305 Building. So what kind of work did you do at the 305 Building? How was that different from the 308?
Tallent: Well, there was no material down there. It used to be a hot building, years ago, before I got there. It had, actually, a reactor in it—in the basement of it, from what I heard.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And what I understand. It had—that’s where the dismantling machine went to. It’d go clear down into that basement. It was about—probably 16, 18 feet deep.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: It was quite deep.
Franklin: So what kind of work was done at 305?
Tallent: All research and development lab. Just what them pictures show.
Franklin: Okay. Yeah, I’d love to get the camera on those pictures in a little bit so you could talk to us a little about that.
Tallent: Yeah. She said, well, we’re going to build a dismantling machine to hold the fuel driver assembly and somehow cut it open. So she gave me an endcap, and go to work. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: On the mechanism to hold it with, you know. We actually built clamps around it in two or three different areas, and they would rotate. The arms would come out, and they didn’t move, but inside the clamps rotated. So it would—and the base would turn. No, it wasn’t the base; it was the upper part. There’s a picture of the upper part. I designed the motor and had the gear built for that and put the motor on there and it worked amazing. It was great. I patted myself on the back ‘til I hurt my arms. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So for the non-real-technical people, what was the main purpose of that machine?
Tallent: The main purpose was to cut open the fuel driver assembly to get the fuel pins out. Once they’d been irradiated, they swell.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And some of them even burst open.
Franklin: Oh.
Tallent: Yeah. Which was—aw, shucks. But they were in a hot place; they were in a cell. They would—had to design something to cut these open to get all these fuel pins out. And I cannot remember how many was in there, but there was a bunch. You got it with them pictures, you can see them.
Franklin: Yeah, it looked like a lot.
Tallent: But there were configurations. The first row would be not as many as the next row, the next row, and the next row, and then it’d go back down again. To fit that octagon or hexagon or whatever it was—six-sided or eight-sided—fuel driver assembly.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And so I was—my engineer and I, we scratched our heads, and figured it out. He was a good guy, Pete Titzler.
Franklin: Pete Titzler.
Tallent: Yeah. I don’t even know if he’s alive.
Franklin: Sounds like he would—well, if he is, he sounds like he’d be really interesting to talk to.
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: If he is, he sounds like he’d be a really interesting guy to talk to.
Tallent: Yeah, he would be, he would be.
Franklin: So then you mentioned after—how long did you stay at 305?
Tallent: Well, it wasn’t—probably only three or four years.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: And then—
Franklin: Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Tallent: Then I went away.
Franklin: You mentioned earlier that you went to FFTF for a short time.
Tallent: Yeah, a short time.
Franklin: And you left FFTF, just because it was mostly desk work?
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: You left FFTF just because it was mostly desk work?
Tallent: Yeah, basically it was just gonna be—one of the guys really liked it. In the picture there. He went out there, and he liked doing that kind of stuff. But I want to be the guy doing the work. I want to, you know, run the metal arms or push the lawnmower—anything. I want to do something. I don’t want to sit on my backside and write notes and tell this guy what to do and tell that guy want to do. I want to do it myself.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: You know.
Franklin: So when did you—do you remember the year that you left Hanford?
Tallent: No. In the ‘80s—early ‘80s sometime.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: You’re making me reach way back there now. [LAUGHTER] I’m a feeble old-minded feller.
Franklin: No, your recollections are great. I don’t—I can’t get to the early ‘80s myself, either. That’s because I was born then. What did you do after you left Hanford?
Tallent: Well, I worked for this one construction company for a short time. I won’t tell you his name, because he didn’t like me because I was buddy with the lead. And he didn’t like me being friends with him, so he gave me all kinds of hell, and wouldn’t give me a raise and all that. So I walked off and said, keep your company. I’m going. Well, he—the last paycheck, he wouldn’t—I was going to get, he bounced it. They wouldn’t accept it. So I had a buddy of mine that owns the tavern in Richland, Two Bits and a Bite.
Franklin: Oh yeah.
Tallent: Yeah. Yeah, he’s a good friend of mine. We lived together for a while. Anyway, he had me do a bunch of work there for him. I remodeled his kitchen for him. And then one day, this guy comes in and says, hey, Jerry. I’d met him through this other construction company. I said, yeah. He said, I got a bathroom remodel, and I can’t do it. You want to do it? I’ll give it to you. And I said, no, but you and I can do it. Well, I don’t own nothing, you’ll have to show me. And I said, let’s get to work. That was in the early ‘90s. Him and I been buddies ever since. Now he’s—I can’t do anything anymore, and he’s decided to—he takes care of all the Head Start schools around the Tri-Cities. Richard Meyers is his name. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. He comes by—in fact he was there this morning—he’ll come by and spray my weeds and weed it and clean the filters on my fish pond, and—man, he’s just a wonderful fella.
Franklin: Oh, that’s great. And where do you live now—do you live in Richland?
Tallent: Yes, I do.
Franklin: Okay. So, let’s see here. We’ve talked a bit about Hanford as a place to work and your kind of challenges there. Is there anything else you’d like to say about working at Hanford? Is there any special challenges or rewarding aspects of your work?
Tallent: It was all very rewarding. I wouldn’t ever deny it—I’d do it all over again.
Franklin: Really?
Tallent: Yeah.
Franklin: That’s great.
Tallent: I’d do it all over again. Now, speaking of reaching back into the past for memories, I’m going to ask you about some—to do that again for me. What are your memories of any major events in the Tri-Cities, like plants shutting down or starting up, or any local events? I guess that’s kind of a two-parter, so we can just start with stuff at Hanford.
Tallent: Well, I know that all the barracks out here went away and the trailer courts on the right-hand side, they all went away after—you had all these construction guys. I’ve seen pictures of those at the DOL office, they’ve got all these guys at the dinner table, the big long tables in the barracks. I remember when Kadlec Hospital was just a barracks. Now it’s huge.
Franklin: Yeah, it is.
Tallent: And getting bigger.
Franklin: Yeah.
Tallent: It’s really a mess right now. I had to go there yesterday, and they’re making the hospital bigger, but there’s no more parking than they had. There never was no parking before!
Franklin: Yeah, I drive by there every day when I go—
Tallent: Yeah, it’s like the park down here in Richland. They built that big theater there, but there’s no place for anybody park to go to it. Oh, I’ve been here forever. I remember in Kennewick—the road to Kennewick was Columbia Drive. And that’s how you got to Pasco, was on Columbia Drive. That was the only way you could get from Kennewick to Pasco.
Franklin: Oh, right.
Tallent: Yeah. Yeah, it was. That was pretty interesting. My uncle, he also lived here. He drove bus at Hanford. He drove a bus—everybody that was working out there, he would pick up in Pasco and drive them to Hanford to work—bus driver.
Franklin: Wow! And when did he start doing that?
Tallent: Oh, gosh. I’m sure in the ‘50s.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Tallent: Yeah, ‘40s—somewhere in there.
Franklin: Did you have any other family that worked at Hanford?
Tallent: I guess my real dad worked here for a short time. I have—the man and the woman that raised me was really my aunt and my uncle. But they raised me since I was in arms. My real dad and mom was having marital problems, and they said, here, hold on to this, we’ll be right back. [LAUGHTER] And they ended up going through a big [dispute], and my real mom says, the woman that raised me, she didn’t have any kids, and I didn’t have the heart to take you back. I just met her a few years ago.
Franklin: Really?
Tallent: Yeah, my real mom. She was wonderful. I got to see my dad. I went back to a one-and-only family reunion. And it was quite a story. We were back there—my son and my daughter went with us. And—no, it wasn’t my daughter. My son and his wife and my granddaughter—she was—my daughter-in-law was carrying my grandbaby. And we went back there to the family reunion, and my real dad, he come up to me. My dad was dead—my real—the man that raised me, my uncle. And he said, your mom wants to meet you. I said, my mom? She’s dead! No, you got her confused with who I married afterwards. She’s still alive, and she wants to meet you.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: So, I got to meet my real mom. And it was a good thing, because she was well up into her late 80s.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And she lived in Arizona, and she went back to Arizona and died, right after the reunion. But we were at this community center, having lunches and drinks and everything, and my real dad come up to me. Now, this is the first time I’d seen him in years. He come up to me and said, you drinking Rainier, huh? And I said, yeah. Oh, come up to the bar. He was drinking a Rainier. He drank Rainier just like I did. I said, that is—we never socialized together, and you drink Rainier just like me. Yep. My favorite beer. We weren’t done that. He said, how about a hard drink? I said, yeah. He said do you like Black Velvet? I said, that’s the drink I drink. So we both drank beer and the hard booze the same brands. That was just—it just drove me crazy! I said, I can’t believe this!
Franklin: Yeah, that’s really something.
Tallent: Yeah. We live clear across the country from each other and we both drink the same drinks.
Franklin: Well, you know, the apple doesn’t fall from the tree—fall far from the tree.
Tallent: Yeah, not far from the tree, yup.
Franklin: So what was it—so you mentioned you first moved to Kennewick and then you lived kind of in West Richland area. What was it like growing up from a really small child in the Tri-Cities? You know, it’s kind of a special place next to Hanford.
Tallent: Yeah, Kennewick was—Dad built the house we moved into. We had lived up above, up the hill from it. And he had this pasture—he’d always loved animals. He had the pasture below us and on the side of our property. So he decided he’d take this old concrete slab that used to be a barn and build a house. So he got that done. He’d get off work, go down and work until midnight. God, he was just—endless hours of work.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And he got that house built, and I helped him—[COUGH]—Excuse me.
Franklin: It’s okay.
Tallent: Helped him hang the cabinets and put up all knotty pine inside—knotty pine panels. It wasn’t the four-by-eight sheets; it was the one-by-six—or half-inch-by-six. And we put up all this stuff. Made room for a fireplace and he decided he wasn’t going to put in a fireplace, so we put in a window there instead. Built that there, and I loved it there. I had a good buddy up the hill. He ended up being a Vietnam hero. We used to go bike riding all the time when we were kids and run up and down the roads and get into little trouble. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: And this was in Kennewick, or in Richland?
Tallent: Yeah, in Kennewick.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: But then Dad decided that he’d had enough of this little place. I met this guy that’s got a big ranch and he wants me to come out and look at it. And I said, well, I want to finish school here. It didn’t happen.
Franklin: So what school did you go to in Richland?
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: What school did you go to in Richland?
Tallent: Col High.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: Columbia High in Richland the last two years. And I was a real derelict. Because I was—all my friends were at Kennewick.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: Everybody I run around with, girlfriends, boyfriends, all were in Kennewick. And I couldn’t get to hardly meet anybody here in Richland. I just—they all had their different little cliques.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And so I was kind of a loner, so I did a lot of school skipping. [LAUGHTER] I’d go to Kennewick and walk the halls with all my buddies. And then they started checking for—where you from? I was in—I went to the study hall. [LAUGHTER] Went to study hall with them. I was sitting there and talking, and all of the sudden there was a hand on my shoulder. Who’s your homeroom teacher? [LAUGHTER] Out the door!
Franklin: Oh, jeez. So what was it like to grow up in the Tri-Cities during the Cold War? Was it—did you ever have—I mean, did you know what was being made at Hanford when you were growing up, or when did you first start to realize--
Tallent: I—
Franklin: --what was going on onsite?
Tallent: Yes, I did. I did know that it was for the Manhattan Project. I never missed that show.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Tallent: That was a good series. I knew that they were building reactors and everything out there, yeah. In fact, from 308 Building, right across the driveway there was the old PRTR building, which was one of the first reactors. 309, I think it was called. And that was a gutted-out reactor. It had a round dome on it.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: We went over there and visited that, and they’d give us a tour. This is what was there, and this is where it was at, and all this stuff. It was pretty interesting.
Franklin: So what—did you ever—so you would have been—born in ’45, so you would have been kind of a kid in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. Do you remember special emphasis on the Cold War, you know? Or preparations—especially being so close to a major, you know, nuclear weapon—you know, site for nuclear weapons fuel.
Tallent: Yeah.
Franklin: Do you remember any—what was kind of—what was it like to grow up in that? Was it scary, or was it just normal, or--?
Tallent: It really didn’t bother me. It worried the heck out of my mom. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Really?
Tallent: Yeah. I guess it’s—the Korean War, she wouldn’t get away from the radio. We didn’t have TV.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: She wouldn’t leave the radio and read every newspaper while all the problems of the Korean War. And after the Korean War, I was getting close to the age. And then here come Vietnam. You’re not gonna go to Vietnam. You’re not gonna go. [LAUGHTER] I said, Mom, I’m gonna sign up. No, you’re not. And I snuck out and my buddy—he became a war hero; he was on a chopper—rescue chopper—and went down, and he saved all of his buddies. Hung them up on the—he dove down in the water I don’t know how many times. And they already had a loaded bunch of—shot-up or—you know, crew from another helicopter.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And they were—so he lost most of them. But his pilot—his captain said that if it wasn’t for him, a lot of people wouldn’t have been there.
Franklin: Wow. And so you never went to Vietnam then?
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: Did you go to Vietnam?
Tallent: No, because I was on the ranch, and I went to sign up with all my buddies—seven of them. You might remember Sam Francisco. You heard of him?
Franklin: No.
Tallent: Samson—Sam Francisco?
Franklin: Sam? Sam Francisco?
Tallent: Sam Francisco. He never came back. His body’s here now. His sister in West Richland wanted it back and they haven’t given it back to him yet—to her yet. But Jimmy was one of the few that made it back. We kind of—after—I signed up, but—I was a 1-A, and I signed up to go with them. And I didn’t have the brains Jimmy did to be a pilot—a Navy pilot, or on the choppers of that. You had to be pretty smart on your math. I don’t know how smart you had to be to run a gun, but—[LAUGHTER] But anyway, he got to go. And I was 1-A, and then they sent me a letter said, you’re a single son, and you’re on a farm. You’re not going.
Franklin: Mm.
Tallent: They made me a 4-F.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: So they wouldn’t take me. My mom, she was—ooh, mad at me. How come—where’d you get this? Well, I signed up to go with Jimmy to Vietnam. I told you, you’re not gonna go! [LAUGHTER] She wanted me to go to Canada or something. Don’t go! And I said, I’m gonna go with my buddies. I guess maybe it was a good thing I didn’t. Because I’d have been a ground pounder. I wouldn’t have been—you know.
Franklin: Yeah. Do you—can you describe any of the ways that security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?
Tallent: Well, I know you had to have a badge. I had a Q clearance, which was a top-of-the-line. I could go anywhere out there. You had to show that badge every morning, and then pass through the metal detector. If you didn’t—you didn’t get by if you had metal on you. One of the guys—his name was Arnie—he was in the Air Force, and his—he was the tail gunner. It wasn’t during the war, but he was a tail gunner, and the plane crashed. And he was in the tail. He ended up in the cockpit. And he had nothing but pins in his legs. He could walk all right; he played volleyball at lunchtime with us out on the grass. But he couldn’t pass the metal detectors. He had to have a special permit saying he had—
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Tallent: Stainless steel pins in his legs. Arnie’s something. Arnie Dupris.
Franklin: Dupris. And what did he do on—
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: What did he—did he work in the 308 and the 305 with you?
Tallent: No. He worked in 308, but I don’t remember—I can’t tell you where he worked.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: But—no, I’m the only one that went to 305 besides that one engineer. She became a manager and ran the 305 Building.
Franklin: Bobby?
Tallent: Bobby Eschenbaum, yeah. Her husband was an engineer. And I’m not sure where he went to. He was a nice guy, too. I got along with both of them good. [LAUGHTER] Oh. Bobby Eschenbaum was a little, short lady. She held a meeting—she was an engineer—so she held a meeting out in meeting room at 308, before we went down to—so she’s like this, and grabbing the table, leaning back in her chair and talking to us, grabbing the table. Missed. Poot. I was sitting closest to her. I grabbed her dress, pulled it down, and helped her up. She was pretty embarrassed. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, jeez. That’s awesome. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford—your work at Hanford, or what the role of Hanford in history?
Tallent: Well, there ain’t no future in Hanford, except way out there now. I’d say, go for it, if you get the chance.
Franklin: No, I mean, what would you like future generations to know about Hanford? Or to—when—
Tallent: Well, it was very instrumental in winning the war.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: It shortened up the war to Japan.
Franklin: Sure. What about the Cold War? And the nuke—arsenal and things. What about Hanford’s other role, after World War II?
Tallent: Well—boy, you know, all I know is they built fuel for reactors to go into reactors—light-water stuff, the enriched uranium reactors and plutonium reactors. But—I don’t know what else I can tell you about that. [LAUGHTER] Really.
Franklin: That’s okay. Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention?
Tallent: Well, I don’t know. You’re pretty thorough. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, thanks. [LAUGHTER] Emma, is there anything? No? How about could we take a few minutes and go through some of those photos?
Tallent: Sure.
Franklin: And then I can hold them if you’d like and you can make talk through them a little bit. Because those are really interesting; I’d like for the camera to see the things that you developed.
Tallent: Well, hold them up here or something.
Franklin: Okay, great. So how do we—
[NEW CLIP]
Tallent: Dismantling machine. Right there.
Franklin: And that’s you, right?
Tallent: That’s me.
Franklin: With all the hair.
Tallent: Yup, the fuzzy hair.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Tallent: I’m trying to remember what this is. This was part of the dismantling machine right there. And this turned. They would cut the top open.
Franklin: And just to be clear, the dismantling machine dismantled what, exactly?
Tallent: This. The fuel drivers.
Franklin: Okay, okay.
Tallent: It would take that all apart. This is all what’s in the reactors.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: There’s—I don’t know how many in the reactors. And we had—after they come out of the reactor, they would go in to this room. You can see down there below the concrete, this second story down there. But this would come up—this door would open, and this would come up and go in there. It’d rotate and they’d cut the top off. Boy. I don’t know what all—[LAUGHTER] But they would—here’s the steel arms that would—manipulators--
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: --that would grab ahold of it and help it. And I believe this took place so it could rotate—goodness sakes. That would rotate this guy more, instead of having to turn it by hand or something like that.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: That’s just a proof for the photographer.
Franklin: This one here?
Tallent: Yeah. That was just proofs.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: But there’s probably a picture of that. Once you’re out on the floor, you got to wear a hard hat.
Franklin: Right. This one is interesting, can you tell me what—
Tallent: That’s a glovebox there.
Franklin: So it’s supposed to be like that, right?
Tallent: Huh?
Franklin: Should be like this, right? Because—yeah, there’s the person.
Tallent: Yeah. That’s actually 308 Building. That’s the only picture I got. This was loading the fuel pellets. There’s fuel pellets in there.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: Holy mackerel. How’d I get that? [LAUGHTER] Anyway. The fuel pin is right there, and then that’s—you can see that bag?
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Tallent: That’s on the open room. So this is sealed up tight, and then I’m shoveling fuel into that fuel pin. Then you have a spring—goes in and then you plant them and then put the endcap on.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And then it gets welded—goes over to the welding lab.
Franklin: Wow. That’s—
Tallent: Yeah. That’s a—that was—that’s not ours.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: They—that’s what they were building for Three Mile Island, but it never happened. And they were wanting us to build a better one, because that one wasn’t very good.
Franklin: Mm. And that’s just another—
Tallent: Yeah. And I said, let’s design a better one. But it never happened.
Franklin: Tsk. Right. Okay, so here’s another one here with the—
Tallent: That was going to be a one-time deal. You’d build it, and then it stays in the bottom of the Three Mile Island.
Franklin: Oh, we’re talking this thing here—this robot.
Tallent: Yeah, because Three Mile Island, that’s where they had that bad accident.
Franklin: Right, right.
Tallent: There, and Idaho Falls.
Franklin: So what’s going on in this picture here?
Tallent: Okay. [LAUGHTER] Your guess is as good as mine.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Okay.
Emma Rice: It looks like there’s those arms there.
Franklin: Yeah, we have the--
Tallent: We were getting ready to—oh, there’s a clamp. Oh, okay. That’s ready to be taken off. It’s cut at the bottom, and see that there?
Franklin: Yeah.
Tallent: That’s grabbing ahold of the assembly, the outer assembly.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And it’s starting to lift it off. This is a—you can see it’s cut open. So, it’s not hot; it’s just all—you know. But this lifts it off, and down the hole that goes, and this lifts it off and then it rotates and sets it aside.
Franklin: Mm.
Tallent: And this is—that’s what I was working on, too. So it’s a little rough, but there’s all the pins on the bottom—the bottom fuel pins. And once you lift it off, then it shoves these pins—there’s locking pins that holds all this into place, and it kicks them out.
Franklin: So here—and this is kind of that hexagon or—upside-down? Oops.
Tallent: There you go.
Franklin: There we go. So this is that formation you were talking about, right?
Tallent: Yeah, see those pins?
Franklin: A six-sided—yes.
Tallent: They’re held into place. I’m shaky.
Franklin: No, it’s okay.
Tallent: I’m sorry.
Franklin: No, it’s all right.
Tallent: These pins are holding these into place, and once they get—my brain. [LAUGHTER] Not working good. Anyway, once they get the—oh, it is off of it. This is not the fuel driver assembly; this is a canister to hold these fuel pins. Then I’m not sure after that.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: So I’m at a loss.
Franklin: That’s all right.
Tallent: There’s all the people.
Franklin: That’s you right there.
Tallent: That’s me. That’s my secretary. That’s my engineer. And these guys are—no, that was one of my engineers. His name was Steve. This was Pete Titzler. This is the one him and I got an award for designing this stuff.
Franklin: Great.
Tallent: Yeah. And he was—this guy here was—
Franklin: This gentleman right here?
Tallent: --Manager of all the other ones. Bobby isn’t in there.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: Oh, she—I don’t know. I can’t remember. She left or something.
Franklin: So here’s—it looks like another view of the arms there.
Tallent: Yeah, that’s—
Franklin: You’ve got some nice bellbottoms on.
Tallent: Yes, I had my bellbottoms. I was a hippy. On days off, I had a headband on, too. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So what are you doing here in this picture?
Tallent: You know, I was trying to remember that myself. I’m running the dismantling machine.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: I’m making it turn and go up and down on all that stuff. I never did that. They just wanted it for pictures, basically.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Just to have you pose?
Tallent: Yeah.
Franklin: Oh, I see.
Tallent: Get your hair done, and—you know.
Franklin: Yeah. So here you are again.
Tallent: Yeah. And this one was—this one was a—and they had to have room, so you had a two-story one. You had the gloveboxes down here and a glovebox down here, and you could go up to work on it.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And Greg is in there working on it. Just demonstration.
Franklin: What is HEDL stand for?
Tallent: Hanford Environmental Development Lab.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: How’d I remember that?
Franklin: I don’t know; your memory’s good.
Tallent: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That just came right off. Tell us about this photo.
Tallent: Okay, that—you tell us about it.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] You brought it!
Tallent: Oh, boy! You know, I—it’s a single pin. See, there’s wire wrapped around this fuel pin, too. That keeps them from touching each other.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: But I don’t remember what that—that was my baby, SN005.
Franklin: Right, you mentioned earlier when you showed this before that you had invented this machine here, right?
Tallent: Oh.
Franklin: Or you worked on it, or--?
Tallent: I helped invent it.
Franklin: Helped invent it.
Tallent: Yeah, I helped invent this whole—that whole guy, wherever it went to—the dismantling machine.
Franklin: Yeah, we saw that earlier. Well, I think we have maybe some of that here.
Tallent: Yeah.
Franklin: Right? Over on this side, over here.
Tallent: Yeah.
Franklin: Wow. That’s just kind of part of the crew there. Oh, no, you said this is the group of—
Tallent: Them’s the group of foreign people. The—I don’t see a Japanese fella. Maybe that’s him. But there’s French and German and they all wanted to see it work. They were all excited about it, so we had to put it on display. It was kind of a last-minute thing for me. All of the sudden, they come up to my office, my desk, and say, hey, Jerry. Come on down. We’re gonna—you’re gonna be on the show here. They filmed it all.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: And he said, we have all these foreign delegates here that want to see this thing work. And I said, oh, you’re kidding me. Get somebody else! [LAUGHTER] I didn’t want to—this is the first thing they had. This actually is an auger. And that would cut that open. And—that’s right, I—this thing is floating on air. It weighs probably 800, 900 pounds. And it’s floating on air and you can move it back and forth. But see that—those there?
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Tallent: Those are stops. These come out, and center it up.
Franklin: Huh.
Tallent: And they had to be set just right. There’s two on each side. When the machine would turn it on, these would come out and center up the machine so it’d hit it right on the corner and cut that open.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: But that’s when they said that they didn’t like that, because of all the shavings.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: It left great big chunks of stainless, and they were going to be irradiated, so it was going to have them all over the floor. So I said, okay. Back to scratching their head and finding out. That’s when I discovered stainless steel and copper don’t like each other.
Franklin: And can you tell us again how you kind of helped develop this new process for getting these open?
Tallent: Well, Pete and Steve Dawson? I think his name was Steve Dawson. Anyway, Pete come to me and said, hey. He explained to me that all these shavings on the floor were gonna be irradiated. You’d turn off the light and you’d see shavings everywhere, and they were hot. So let’s develop a method for cutting them open that has no shavings.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And he said, how about a cutting torch? They had a lot of smoke, and they don’t want the smoke. So I tried—that’s when I tried the TIG welder. Well, TIG welder didn’t do much but leave a weld on it.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Tallent: So I asked Pete. I said, what won’t stick to that stainless steel? He said, copper. Get me some copper rod. Okay. Went and got me some copper rod and I—that’s what I told you earlier, I mentioned—it just popped open.
Franklin: So you’d just weld that to the steel and then it’d—
Tallent: It bust that wide open—
Franklin: Pfft. Wow.
Tallent: It’d split. Just enough to relax all the fuel pins inside.
Franklin: Okay.
Tallent: To where they’re not—because the fuel pins would expand after being irradiated.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: And with that being busted open, it would relax it so you could—
Franklin: Pull the fuel pins out.
Tallent: Pull the—yeah. Pull this off, pull the driver assembly off, so you could get to the fuel pins.
Franklin: Wow. That’s really ingenious.
Tallent: Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] That is pretty cool. So what—
Tallent: I was just—scared the heck out of me the second time I did it. Because when I used the copper, he said, well, do it again. I’ll get you another chunk. Got another chunk, and he stood right there and we were watching it and it got to the end and it just popped and jumped off. And we both jumped back.
Franklin: Wow.
Tallent: He said, you got an award coming.
Franklin: Wow. Yeah, you said you got like a $500 bonus or something?
Tallent: I got a $500 bonus, and that was quite the deal.
Franklin: That’s great.
Tallent: And Westinghouse got the patent.
Franklin: Ah, of course. [LAUGHTER]
Tallent: [LAUGHTER] Nothing—not allowed to have the patent.
Franklin: Right, because you’re a government contract.
Tallent: Yeah, that government. This was a different style of steel arm there, the manipulators. We could change them out to go to them big ones or the little fingers.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: They got little fingers on that? No, it’s got the bigger on one that.
Franklin: I think it’s the same kind of—
Tallent: Yup.
Franklin: --Steel arm. That’s another duplicate.
Tallent: That’s just about all.
Franklin: I guess we got one more left here.
Tallent: Yeah. That hippy on the left.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] So what are—what’s being—do you know what’s being—is this a glovebox in here?
Tallent: Well it—
Franklin: What’s being watched here?
Tallent: Well, it would be the glovebox looking at the dismantling machine here, and that’s through six feet of glass. And that’s just the wall—it was pretend there, but out there, FFTF, it was real. But this would be six foot of concrete with steel BBs in it. I mean lead BBs. And lead—plutonium doesn’t like lead.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: So it don’t want to go through the wall anyways.
Franklin: Right.
Tallent: But even at that, it’s six foot thick. And then the glass is six-foot thick. And looking through that all day long would drive you crazy. I mean it’s just hard to look through.
Franklin: Hurt your eyes?
Tallent: Yeah, I mean, six foot of glass. Back then I wasn’t wearing glasses, was I?
Franklin: It doesn’t look like it. Well, Jerry, thank you so much for your oral history and for going through all these pictures with us. It’s been one heck of a time.
Tallent: It was a great ride!
Franklin: Thank you so much. We’re gonna really—we’re gonna digitize all of these and we’ll have them with your—we’re gonna digitize them all and we’ll have them with your oral history. And this will, I think, really be a great resource for students and scholars.
Tallent: Yeah. No problem. You can hang on to them.
Franklin: Great.
Tallent: Just don’t lose them.
Franklin: Well, I promise you that. We will not lose them.
Northwest Public Television | Buckingham_Steve
Robert Bauman: We're going to go ahead and start if that's all right.
Steve Buckingham: Okay.
Bauman: So if we could start by just having you say your name and spell it for us?
Buckingham: Okay. It's John Stevens Buckingham is the full name, and it's S-T-E-V-E-N-S, B-U-C-K-I-N-G-H-A-M, just like the palace.
Bauman: All right. Thank you. And today's date is November 13 of 2013--
Buckingham: November 13, 19--2013.
Bauman: 2013.
Buckingham: 2013. [LAUGHTER] I'm still in the last century.
Bauman: And my name’s Bob Bauman, and we're doing this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So if we could start maybe by having you tell us how you came to Hanford, what brought you here, when you arrived?
Buckingham: Okay. Well, first of all, I'm a native Washingtonian. I was born in Seattle, grew up in Pacific County. Went to Washington--graduated from high school in 1941, and went to Washington State College, at that time, in chemical engineering. Well, of course you know the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th of that year. I was able to finish off my first year at Washington State, and came back, the second year, the sophomore year, there were just mobs of people on campus recruiting for military. I tried several of them. I tried to get into the Navy V-12 program, but my eyes were not good enough. But I was able to get into an Air Corps program that they were looking for meteorologists. So I signed up for that. I had to get my dad to give me permission, because I was only 18 at the time. [LAUGHTER] But I was able to finish my sophomore year. I had just begun my freshman, my first semester, and I had just started the semester, my second semester, when I got the call to report to active duty. And the program that I had signed up for was this pre-meteorology program. And actually, it was kind of a neat situation. I was sent to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. And it was a little bit of a cultural shock, coming from a rather conservative Washington State to go to Reed College. We could smoke in classes. We could go up to a girl's room in the dormitory. [LAUGHTER] And they sang rather interesting songs on campus, too. [LAUGHTER] But Reed has very high scholastic standards, and I think the best math professor I ever had, I had at Reed College. But we went--we just had almost normal college classes: math, and physics, and geography. It was an interesting experience. Well, after a year at Reed, and also being in the military--because I think we must have had about--we had, what, two flights of cadets there, and we were all in uniform, of course. And after one year they decided they had enough meteorologists, so most of us were looking around for another program to get into. And I applied to go into communications, because I had a lot of physics background by then, and was accepted in that. They sent me to—oh, gosh, I can't even think. It was North Carolina. It was the first time I'd ever been down to the South, which was another cultural shock. [LAUGHTER] To see separate drinking fountains for black--colored and white. That's where we went through, essentially, Officers Candidate School. But the communications part of it was spent at Yale University in New Haven. That was about—oh, I think that was about six months that I was there going through communication. We had to learn all about radio and communications. But there is where I got my--I was commissioned, then, as a second lieutenant in the Air Corps. And about the time that I--just before I finished there, one of my friends had gone up to Yale University--to Harvard, because they were looking for people to work in radar. Well, why not? [LAUGHTER] So I applied, and was sent up to New Haven--not New Haven, up to Harvard. And there we went through a very intensive training on electronics, getting all the background on electronics. I used to kind of laugh. If you dropped a pencil on the floor went to drop to pick it up, you'd be behind three months. [LAUGHTER] It was really intensive training. And after that training, then they sent--most of us went downtown in Boston and worked on the top floor of a building that overlooked the harbor, developing radar they were working on. And that was really kind of interesting. But that was kind of temporary. That was just to give us some practical experiences. So that--then when that part of the training was over with, they assigned me to the 20th Air Force, which was the big bombers that were getting ready to go to Japan, and sent me to Boca Raton, Florida. And that was kind of another goof-off. We were just--we had to go on training exercises, flight training exercises once a week. So I got to fly all over Florida, all over the Caribbean. [LAUGHTER] Just goof-off things. It's really kind of almost embarrassing, because we'd go fishing and stuff like that on the boat, because they'd always had to send a boat out in case a plane went down in the ocean, and so we could go out on the boat and fish. While I was at Boca Raton, then the Japanese surrendered, and the war was over. Well, what are they going to do with all of us that had been trained? [LAUGHTER] I went out to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and they were bringing B-29s back from overseas. And all we did was remove the radar equipment from B-29s and stash it someplace. Well, I guess they decided they really didn't need us anymore. So I was able to be discharged and get back to the Washington State College to pick up my second semester sophomore year. Well, I had accumulated so many credits in going to these other colleges. So I went and talked to the dean, and he says, well, why don't you just switch to chemistry? Get your degree in chemistry or general, and then come back for a master's degree. Well, I had been on the East Coast for two years, and I did not like it back there. Being a--my mom and dad lived out in Pacific County yet, and I wanted to get home. I had two job offers when I graduated from college. One was in Troy, New York, and the other was here. General Electric was--had on the campus quite a bit of recruiting people, because they were getting ready to develop a new separation process called the REDOX process. And they were looking for people with scientific background, chemistry and so forth, to work there. Well, I grabbed the opportunity, and I arrived here on the 26th of July in 1947. I remember the day. [LAUGHTER] And that was really--it was very interesting, because Richland was--GE was really operating under the old DuPont system yet. It was the organization was still the one that DuPont set up during construction. We were in the technical department. And I was sent out to the 100 Areas, waiting for my clearance to come through, and we were just analyzing the water that went through the piles. And then when my clearance came through, they sent me to the 300 Area where they were developing this new separation process, this REDOX process, and we were doing the analytical control for REDOX process. And that was--of course, the development was using just uranium and other chemicals that didn't have any of the radioactive, really highly radioactive material other than uranium. But it was really very interesting, because a whole new line of metallurgy was being developed there. The metallurgy in—old metallurgy was stuff like smelting, and electrolytic, and stuff like that. Well, the chemical separation process they used out at Hanford was a carrier precipitation process, which did not allow them to recover the uranium. So this is why they were developing this new solvent extraction process, so they could cover both plutonium and uranium simultaneously. That was really quite a remarkable new metallurgical process that they were really developing here at Hanford, because how do you contact organic and aqueous phases, and stuff like that? And what kind of a contact? They had all kinds of ones that they were working with there in the 300 Area, and it was really very interesting. We were doing all the analysis for it. And then I was there maybe a little over a year, and they decided we needed to have a little experience with “real” material. [LAUGHTER] So they sent several of us of to be shift supervisors, out of the 200 Area, and the 222-T and 222-V Plants. That's where we got to work with real material. And it was just another training program. They were still--they had begun construction on the REDOX Plant. And about that time, then there was a little bit of an accident down in Texas, where a ship loaded with ammonium nitrate blew up and practically wiped out the city of Texas City. [LAUGHTER] And that was what we were using as a salting agent in the REDOX process. Well, that set the REDOX process into a big delay. What are you going to do with--we can't use ammonium nitrate. It's just plain too hazardous. They began looking at new salting agents at that time, and it took, oh, maybe six months or so before they finally came up with a new salting agent. Well, we just kind of fiddled around a little bit out in the labs. They were closing the business phosphate process labs. They combined them into just one lab. So several of us just kind of floated around doing other work that was kind of related to the REDOX process. For a while, I was in standards, where we were making radioactive standards they used to control the counting machines and all that kind of stuff. And it was not that interesting. Well, I had an opportunity then to go into an organization that was still there in the old 3706 Building in 300 Area. It was called process chemistry. And they were the ones who were working on the chemistry of the REDOX process. It was just--to me, it was just an absolute perfect fit, because I liked to monkey around with experiments and do research type stuff. And it was a neat bunch of people that we were working with. Some of them I still kind of chortle when I think of some of the stuff they pulled. [LAUGHTER] But I was able to move into that, and I was the third person to move out to 222-S, which was the laboratory for the REDOX process. And that's where we were, for our final laboratory was out there. And I stayed in that most of my working career. I did take a couple years to go over to work on writing the waste management tech manual, because they were--that was another process. We got to work in every new process that came along. We concentrated a lot on the REDOX process, because that was new. And then that chemist down in the Hanford laboratories discovered tributyl phosphate, so that opened up the whole new PUREX process. That had to be developed. And all the chemistry that went in to that development, we worked with. And then they decided they had to do something with the waste, and there was an outfit came in that was going to separate out fission products out of the waste. And we were going to have a big fission product market. Well, we separated out a lot of strontium-90 and cesium-137. And the strontium-90 was all right, because they could use that as a heat source for places where they didn't have much sunshine, deep space probes and so forth. The cesium, unfortunately, the capsule we set someplace leaked, and we had a little bit of embarrassment. That had to be cleaned up. So Isochem had taken--that was when the companies had separated into all these different companies. And the waste management just kind of petered out. We still had waste management we had to do something with. So I continued just working on it, but went back to the process chemistry laboratory. I finally ended up manager there for several years until I retired. But it was a real experience, that's all I've got to say. I feel like I was very fortunate in being able to work with so much new technology. And I think one of the more interesting ones was, we were recovering--out of our waste, we were recovering neptunium-237, and I had set up a small demonstration process in the laboratory. And for three years, I was the total source of neptunium-237 in the whole United States. [LAUGHTER] And that 237, when we first started doing it, we actually would convert the 237 to an oxide, and mix it with aluminum, and make a fuel element out of it that we stuck in B reactor to make plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 is a very unique isotope of plutonium. It is non-fissionable, but if you get a ball of it about the size of a golf ball, it's generating so much heat, it'll actually glow red. So they use it as a heat source for deep space probes. So we were working on snap programs and all this is really fascinating new technology. And I just feel very fortunate that I had been able to have a finger in some of this stuff that's really far out. We were looking--you know that one time they were going to convert that big building next to the FFTF into a facility just to process plutonium-238. That was another program that didn't ever develop. But we kind of had fingers in just an awful lot of stuff over the years. Some of the stuff I kind of laugh about. There was a--they developed silver reactors to remove iodine from our off gases coming out of the plant, because of the iodine contamination. And one of the silver reactors at the PUREX Plant blew up. [LAUGHTER] Well, it was not serious. It was all contained. But we had to try to figure out, why did that darn reactor blow up? Why did they have a reaction in there? And I still remember one of the old chemists, Charlie Pollock. He was the one who was in charge of it. But I still remember him making mixtures and putting it outside the lab door on a hot plate and standing behind the door to see it, was he going to pop? [LAUGHTER] We did an awful lot of innovation like that. It was just really--I think we did have a good time mucking with this stuff. I jokingly say that--every Monday we would have what they called a process meeting where the chemists and the process engineers would get together to discuss what we're going to do this week. And I always said we just got together to see how we're going to screw the plant up this week. [LAUGHTER] There was so much new technology, and every week somebody would come up with a new idea. They were the biggest pilot plants in the world, really. [LAUGHTER] Both the REDOX one and the PUREX one, just developing these processes. The whole--you know, when we first came here, we were living in dormitories. And the men's dormitory was on one side of town, and the women's was on the other side of town. We'd meet in the cafeteria. [LAUGHTER] And I still recall, when we were working shift works, we would gather in the cafeteria after swing shift, and we'd still be in there talking, or doing something with the guys who would come in for breakfast to go to work on day shifts. [LAUGHTER] Graveyard was always hell, because you didn't have time to do anything but sleep and eat. [LAUGHTER] And swing shift was kind of bad because the movie house, the movies didn't start until 4:00, and so we could go to any movies or anything. But it was tolerable. We formed an organization called the dorm club, where we went on--made a lot of camping trips, had a few beer busts. I tell about, I was social chairman for a while, and I found a big bargain on beer, Pioneer Beer. It was made by the breweries that they opened when they were doing construction during the war. It was not very good beer. I think I had five cases hidden under my bed in the dorm for weeks until I got rid of it. [LAUGHTER] But most of us met our spouses at that time. And it was really a unique situation early on in the late 40s and early 50s, because almost all of us had been in the same boat. We had started college. We'd been called into active duty during the war. We'd finished active duty and returned to college to finish our degrees. So we all had had the same type of experiences. Some of them were pretty hairy. In fact, I well remember one of my roommates was telling about being in the Philippines, and sitting on his bunk during one time, and said a big old snake crawled up between his legs. [LAUGHTER] I think I would have been of the roof and never come back down if that had happened to me! [LAUGHTER] But you know we had all had similar experiences, and it was our first time, really, that we were making any money that we could do things with. We could buy cars, and bought cars. So we went on just all sorts of trips. We learned--most of us learned to ski. And those ski trips, that was still was fairly new in the State of Washington. There was a rope tow up in the Blue Mountains at Tollgate. And, oh gosh, I think a season ticket cost $5. [LAUGHTER] And we would—went down, and I think we initiated the chairlift at Timberline, down at Mount Hood. We went to a lot of places just when they were first opening. So, in fact--
Bauman: How long did you live in the dorms, then?
Buckingham: Well, let's see. I lived in the dorms several years, and then an acquaintance was able to get an apartment over on George Washington Way, and he asked if I wanted to share this apartment with him. You had to share. [LAUGHTER] You couldn't just live in one by yourself. So I then lived in that apartment for a couple of years, until I got married. Then we had a B house. [LAUGHTER] And that's where we were living when they began selling Richland out. And we were junior tenants in the B house, and way down on the move list, so there wasn't much chance of getting a decent house. My wife and I bought a lot over in Kennewick. And we didn't have much money, but we had a lot of energy, and we did an awful lot of building our own house. I think--I'm still living in it 54 years later. [LAUGHTER] So—but it's been--Oh, I don't regret a day of the work that we've done here. It's been challenging and interesting. After I retired from full time, I did a lot of part time work. I helped—was declassifying documents and I was a tour director, taking people on tours of Hanford. And I worked at the old Science Center down on the Post Office, before that became CREHST over there, where it is now. And the Visitors Center out at Energy Northwest, I worked there. And the FFDF Visitors Center. So it's been a wonderful life, really. [LAUGHTER] Fun.
Bauman: I wonder, when you arrived in--was it July 26th of 1947? What was your first impression of Richland, or of the place here?
Buckingham: [LAUGHTER] Well! When I graduated from college, when my folks came over to graduate, and we came back through here. And I still remember going on the old highway, looking over, and seeing the stack of the old heating plant that used to be downtown in Richland, and thinking, oh gosh, do I really want to come here? And it was a little different. Of course I had worked in very highly classified stuff during radar during the war. So I was used to the classification. But Richland was really different. You just didn't talk about your work at all. You kind of knew what your buddies did. And there was the separation technology people, there was the pile technology people, the fuel technology people. You kind of knew what they did, but that's all. You didn't really know any details. And you never talked, we never talked about it.
Bauman: You talked about the chemistry of the REDOX process. Could you explain sort of what that means, in terms of REDOX, what the process was?
Buckingham: Yeah. The fuel is dissolved, of course. They take the jackets off with sodium hydroxide, and then you dissolve the fuel in nitric acid. And then they used this solvent, it’s an organic solvent. The stuff we used was Hexone, for what the chemical name is methyl isobutyl ketone, which is a paint thinner. And to make sure that we could extract, this Hexone would extract uranium and plutonium from aqueous phase into this organic phase. Well, you needed to add a salting agent to be able to improve that extraction. These were done in what we called columns. They were packed columns. They used some stuff called Raschig rings, and they were about 40 feet long. The feed would come about the middle of the column. The organic things would come in at the bottom of the column. And then there'd be a scrubbing agent came in up at the top of the column, and that would scrub some of this stuff out. Oh, it was a complicated process. Then we would oxidize the plutonium--or we would reduce the plutonium through a three valence state, and that wouldn't extract. And that was the separation column. And then you'd have to run both of these stuff through similar columns to clean it up. It was—really, it was kind of a marvelous process. It was a whole new metallurgical processing. It was something that hadn't been done, really, until we did here at Hanford. So just developing all these little techniques was quite a chore. And it worked!
Bauman: Then you said you were shift supervisor in the 200 Area?
Buckingham: Yeah, in the laboratories.
Bauman: In the laboratories. So what sort of work did that involve at that point?
Buckingham: Well, that was, then, that process chemistry that we were doing. But whenever there was an upset with the columns, there was all sorts of things, like the columns would occasionally flood, and they would just emulsify, and they couldn't get the organic and the stuff to separate. But why was that happening? And things like that. Sometimes the chemistry would get off a little bit, or we would get a carryover for some reason or other. It just—it worked, and it worked very well. But we were able to recover both the uranium and the plutonium. So we weren't putting uranium out in those old waste tanks. Then, you know, when we developed the PUREX process, we used the tributyl phosphate in a more dilute phase to go back in and recover that uranium we had stored from the old bismuth phosphate separation process. So you name it, we did it! [LAUGHTER] I kind of jokingly say that--you know, when DuPont was building this place, the war manpower boards told them where they could recruit, and they did a lot of recruiting in the South, because that was not highly industrialized. So that's why quite a few Southerners came up here to work. Well, Southerners are rednecks. [LAUGHTER] They can make anything work. And I really, I sincerely think it's a lot of the ability of those people to be able to do things, why this place even succeeded. And when you stop to think that that original construction and everything took place in 14, 16 months, it's just mind boggling.
Bauman: Given the sort of materials you were working with out there, why don't you talk about safety issues? Was safety emphasized quite a bit?
Buckingham: Oh, you betcha. You know, DuPont was a stinker on safety because they made gunpowder. You've heard the story about them getting criticized for making big profits doing gunpowder during World War I. So when they took over the contract here, they said they'd do it for cost plus $1, and they only received $0.80. [LAUGHTER] I think that's kind of an interesting story in itself. But DuPont was really--boy, if you saw something was unsafe, that was corrected right now. You didn't need to continue working in the unsafe condition at all. And I kind of laugh a little bit about. I think we were safer out at the plant than we were in our own homes. We'd have these dumb safety meetings. Once a week you had to go through a safety meeting. Sometimes they were boring as hell. [LAUGHTER] But the other thing was that when we didn't have any accidents for a certain length of time, we'd get a prize. I still have some of the prizes we won over the years. That was another thing. When GE was taking over, we could get GE--we could buy GE products at employee cost. You wouldn't dare buy a frying pan unless it was GE. [LAUGHTER] So there were many little advantages.
Bauman: I wonder, of the different things you worked on at Hanford, what were some of the most challenging aspects of the work you did, and what was some of the most rewarding?
Buckingham: Well, I think one of the most rewarding ones was this neptunium-237. That was really a fun project, because about once a month we'd have to start up this little pilot plant, and you had to run it 24 hours a day for about a week to separate out this 237. That was a very challenging and very rewarding project, because it had a lot of interest. That, and the fact that it was also highly classified. They kept changing the classification, I think every month, you'd have a new name for it. One time it was Palmolive. [LAUGHTER] Let's see, what were some of the others? Birch bark. You never knew what you were supposed to call it from one month to the next, because it was a very high-priority thing. Also, when we had--they begin shipping most of it back to Savannah River, because Savannah River could make the 238 easier than we could here at Hanford. But I would separate out this 237, and I'd have to deliver personally to the mint car. That was the car that took the plutonium down to Los Alamos. I'd have to take that 237 up in a cask and put it on that mint car. [LAUGHTER] So there were a lot of little things like that. Some of the challenges, we had some technical problems over the years that were real problems. Like we had a ruthenium problem out at the REDOX process that was a little bit of a challenge. We spewed some plutonium out on the ground out there. And plutonium is kind of a nasty stuff, because it doesn't absorb. It migrates towards the river fairly fast. So there were a few of those little things that were a bit of a problem. Also, then, during the Cold War, when production was so critical—you know you just didn't shut down for hell or high water. And we were running out of waste storage space. We came up with a way we could treat the waste and make it crib-able, so we could put it just to a crib, an underground crib, like a dry well. And that was kind of a dumb thing to do. [LAUGHTER] But it was necessary, because we had to get plutonium out, somehow or other. And we didn't have waste storage space. It takes too long to build a waste tank. And some of the interesting little things is some of the crushers found that nice salty stuff down in the soil, and we had an awful lot of hot poop spread around in the desert at various places. [LAUGHTER] Some of those challenges were kind of challenging! We didn't get too involved in it, but somebody was getting involved in it, and we always knew who it was.
Bauman: So the situation where you said that you sort of spewed a little bit of plutonium, was that at PUREX? What happened with that situation?
Buckingham: Oh, they were recovering americium from the plutonium down at 234-5, and they had a criticality event down there. That was a very challenging situation. I happened to--the engineer who was in charge of that was a good friend. He was at a Boy Scout—at a heat down along the river, and they went down and got him, and brought him back, so we could do some work out there. But that was really kind of scary. That's the only really serious incident. That and Mr. McCluskey’s, when the glove box blew up in his face. And I always blame the union on that, because the union was being very stubborn about settling the strike, and that's why the column had sat with this acid on it for so long. Then when they started it up, it took off.
Bauman: Are there any other incidents or things that happened during your time working at Hanford that really stand out to you? Humorous things, or serious.
Buckingham: I can't think. I can think of several humorous situations that occurred, particularly when I was a punk kid supervisor out there in the 222-T Plant. We had quite a few women workers out there, and I swear, I think those women used lay awake at night to see how they could embarrass me. [LAUGHTER] And this one—the hot water tank was in the women's restroom, and it had a check valve in it. Well, the toilets were all these pressure-type toilets. And this one woman went in to use the toilet, and the check valve didn't check. She burned her bottom. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Oh, no.
Buckingham: And I had to take her to first aid. And she was not at all hesitant about telling me exactly what had happened in detail. [LAUGHTER] I about died having to write up the accident report! Had employee been instructed on the job?, and stuff like that. [LAUGHTER] But I still chortle about that.
Bauman: Yeah. You talked earlier about how during the peak of the Cold War, there was focus on production, production. At some point, that leveled off, and there was sort of a decreased emphasis on production, and of course, eventually, a shift toward cleanup. But I wonder if that sort of shift away from really high production, how that impacted your work at all? Did that change?
Buckingham: It didn't seem to change it an awful lot. Those are very complicated processes out there. There not just simple processes, and they seem to have a tendency to something always going wrong. Like we had a situation of the columns flooding. And it was detergents that was put in through the Columbia River, up in Spokane and Wenatchee, up above us. Our water treatment system didn't remove this detergent. It was a phosphate detergent, and there it came through with our water purification stuff that we were doing. I think it gave us a bit of a headache for a while, of why there were these columns flooding all the time, and little situations like that. They seemed to come up, they'd crop up at weird times. Or a piece of equipment would fail, and how do we do it. Just—if you ever go out to the area, as you pass the old PUREX Plant, there's a tunnel that comes from the end of the PUREX Plant almost out to the highway, and there's a vent out there. And that tunnel is full of equipment that failed in the PUREX Plant that they shoved it into this tunnel and left it there. That's got to be cleaned up someday.
Bauman: I was going to ask you, President Kennedy came to visit in 1963 to dedicate the N Reactor. Were you present that day? Were you able to see--
Buckingham: Oh, you betcha. They took us—anybody who wanted to go in a bus down to the place where they were going to have the dedication. My wife, and her sister, and my two kids came out. And I don't know how my daughter ever found me in that crowd down there, but she spotted me somehow or other. [LAUGHTER] We were so far back you could hardly see him. But that was the first time they actually allowed people to come on the project, too. So it was really—I think my wife and her sister said they sat for an hour waiting to get through the barricade before they could come out. They were both quite amazed at what they saw when they got out here. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Right. And as you look back at all your years working at Hanford, how would you assess it as a place to work?
Buckingham: Well, some of the companies were much better to work for than others. I really enjoyed working for General Electric, because that's the company I first came to work for here. And Arco was a good company to work for. Isochem was just kind of iffy. They were very small—and I don't--they didn't quite have their act together yet. Some of the other later companies, I thought were just, nah. That was one of the reasons I quit when I did. I quit a little early. I took retirement at 63, because I just couldn't stand the company that was here at that time. They knew how to build airplanes, but they didn't know how to run a chemical plant. That shouldn't be in here. I hope you edit that out. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] You did talk earlier about some of the technology that you saw. I wonder, are there any other examples? Or you could talk about some of the new technology that you saw develop during this time you were there?
Buckingham: Well, gosh, the technology was moving so fast. You know, they had this Fast Flux test--they built the Fast Flux Test Facility. That was all new technology. And the plutonium recycle reactors—that was all new technology. I'm just amazed at the technology that they were developing here. And it was all developed here. We didn't get a lot of credit for it, unfortunately. [LAUGHTER] And I feel kind of bad about that, because it was the cleverness of the people working here that developed some of this technology. Even up there in that--in what they called the old separation plant, the old bismuth phosphate plant, the design of the equipment in that is just very unique. It was the first time that high-level radiation radioactive material was being handled, and they had to come up with a technique of handling it. There was a crane operator--there was a big long crane that ran the whole length of that 800-foot building. He sat in a lead-lined cab behind a concrete parapet. The only thing he had was optics that he could see down into the cells. And how he could take those--you look into one of those cells down there, and it's like looking into a plate of spaghetti. There's so much junk in it, so much stuff in there, pipes. And all everything that comes in has to come through these connectors. And he, the crane operator, had to know which one he had to take off first to get in, and another one in behind it, or something.
Bauman: Wow.
Buckingham: And just the technology they went through, and the learning process. I don't know how anyone was ever to do it. I've talked to one old engineer that, fortunately enough, I could take on a tour one time. He came out here with DuPont during the early construction, and he worked on quite a bit of it. He was here, and they gave him a special tour. And I happened to be the one who took him around. It was one of the funnest days I had, because he told me all sorts of things about some of the stuff that he had worked on. He had helped design the cask carts that carried the fuel from the reactors up to the separation plants, and he knew the people who would design the connectors for the separation plants, and some of the design on the waste tanks. To me, some of the stuff that they were able to do here, it still just boggles my mind. There was an awful lot of smart people working on this place, that's all I've got to say. A lot smarter than me!
Bauman: One more question. I teach a course on the Cold War, and of course most of my students now were born after the Cold War ended.
Buckingham: [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: You know, I wonder, as someone who worked at a place like Hanford during the peak of the Cold War, what you would say to a young person who would have no memory of the Cold War at all, or much of an understanding, what it was like to work at Hanford?
Buckingham: It was a little scary, because we were surrounded by gun emplacements. And I still remember going home after shift one day, and there was some gun emplacements right at the bottom of the Two East Hill, and they were all raised, like they might be ready, had a warning or something. And you kind of wonder about that. And we went in, we always had to have these--in all of the buildings, we had supplies that we could hole up in case of an attack. And all of us had junk in our cars, an evacuation plan. I know my wife and I did. I had canned goods that I would put in the trunk of the car. And if we were attacked, she was to meet me at a certain places in Yakima, and we were going to head for the Willapa Hills. [LAUGHTER] The Willapa Hills are a very remote part of Pacific county. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Wow, so you did have preparations in place in case, because--
Buckingham: Yeah. And some people even built--there were a few bomb shelters built around.
Bauman: Well, is there anything else about your work at Hanford, or your experience there that we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to share?
Buckingham: Oh, gosh, there's so many things that went on. I could sit here and talk probably all afternoon about some of this stuff because new ideas would come up that I can't remember. Well, I can remember shortly after I had gotten into the laboratory down at 3706 Building, one of the women that I was working with, she and I did more uranium analysis in one shift than anybody had ever done. [LAUGHTER] We were very proud of that. We just hit every sample size as perfect. And it was--we just were boiling out uranium analysis like crazy. [LAUGHTER] I can't remember now, but it was--there were little incidences like that that were kind of fun. And for a while the coveralls that they were giving us had pockets on them to take the size. They were colored. And there were some of those women, I tell you. I like women, but I think some of those gals that used to work down there had a warped sense of humor. They loved to grab ahold of these pockets and rip. They'd rip the pockets off! Well, they came up behind me one time and grabbed the pockets, of and ripped, and the pockets didn't come off, but the whole seat came off. [LAUGHTER] That was when I was still single, and embarrassed very easily. And I had gotten a blue sock in with my white underwear. My shorts were blue! [LAUGHTER] Oh, they got such a kick out of my blue underwear! I could have slapped them, though.
Bauman: Oh, that's quite a story. [LAUGHTER]
Buckingham: One of the things that we did, I think we were a lot closer. We worked closely with each other. And we'd have wonderful--we'd call them safety meetings in the tavern. [LAUGHTER] They were just--We'd have a lot--we had a lot of parties. But they don't seem to do that anymore. I don't know why. We were more like a big family, and if anything happened to somebody, like a death in the family, we would all rally around them and do things like that, like families did. And Richland was really a very close little community back then. If anybody got into trouble, boy, you sure knew it.
Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming in today, and sharing your memories and experiences. I really appreciate it.
Buckingham: Well, I enjoyed doing it, because I think it was a very unique time in history. And I'm afraid that we're beginning to lose that, because my--now, I'm getting to the age where World War II veterans are dying off like flies. [LAUGHTER] So many of my friends have already gone, and it's just a little shocking.
Bauman: Right. Thank you, again, for coming in. I really appreciate it.
Buckingham: You're very welcome. Thank you for asking me.