JENN BLAIR

My Father, Nearing Eighty, Recalls

jobs he’s never mentioned once before.
Driving a truck during pea harvests over
in Idaho and the summer of ’67 when he
and my Uncle surveyed the whole valley
in a county truck, checking off streets
and bumping along the shale driveways
of isolated farms to conduct a survey
funded by the Civil Defense. Their task:
inventorying how many structures had
basements people could use as makeshift
shelters in case of nuclear fallout. Pressed,
he has no memory of ever talking directly
to residents. Maybe some who happened
to be outside? At a family BBQ a few days
later, I try to follow up with my Uncle:
How did you all know what to put down
if it wasn’t clear and no one was home?
Appearing thoughtful, he sets aside his slaw
and beans to form his hands into a make-shift
dousing rod: “Well, we’d look and look
and then—” his already prone to trembling
fingers suddenly begin wildly shaking as he
laughs, retrieves his plate. What he and my
father do recall: money. 2.50 an hour. 100
a week. Enough for textbooks plus a whole
semester of community college. They knew,
even way back then, how lucky they were.
They’ve spent their whole lives in this valley,
my Uncle in three houses with basements
and my father in one house without one.
When the weather allows, they make plans
to golf then dine at the country club on nights
when there’s fresh crab from the coast. Out
on the course, they might discuss television
shows, upcoming surgeries and procedures,
or the most recent friend they’ve lost but I’m
pretty sure they never (as the brochure advised)
pause to scour the ground for tell-tale particles
of radioactive fallout. Only the ball. Two figures
in a small orchard town east of the Cascades and
a ways below the Canadian line still working on
their swing at dusk—still hoping that 'till the end
comes, there will be just a little more time.