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Since the use of alcohol often grows from both boredom and tension, it is not surprising that Los Alamos buys as much liquor each year as an average town of twice its size. Says Charles King, former director of the Los Alamos Council on Alcoholism: "The people here refuse to admit they can lose control, and that leads them to deny they have to drink. Once they admit they have a problem, they use the same systems analysis as on the job to lick it faster. But we have one of the worst closet drinking problems in the country."
It exists mostly among bored wives, quite a few of whom hold doctoral degrees. There are more than 250 clubs and associations designed to liven up the leaden hours of the day. "But," says King, "their self-esteem is zero. They don't want to be a hindrance to their husbands. Wives never knock the Lab. There is reverence for the Lab. It is never the bad guy."
Like women in any affluent suburb, the women resort to real estate selling, bank clerking, helping out in the school libraries. Says Marjorie Bell Chambers, member of President Carter's Advisory Committee for Women, who flies in and out of Los Alamos, where her husband is a physicist: "We have our stitch and bitch clubs, but our women get terribly upset about the lack of jobs."
Children are subjected to enormous pressure. They are bright, aggressive, tense, patronizing. Teen-agers laugh at openly intellectual classmates, called coneheads, who carry calculators on their belts, and at the "stomps," fraternity types who go about in cowboy boots. "Loadies" drink and smoke things, and any mixing with the Indians or "low ride" Mexicans down in the valley is slumming. "We are prejudiced against everybody," snarls one high school girl. "We are rich and white." Frances Mueller first realized the effects of this rarefied atmosphere when her children came back from college and whined, "Gee, Mom, you didn't tell us about poverty." History Teacher Betty Aiello once asked on a test, "What does World War II mean to you?" Two of the answers came back: "Nothing."
Teachers take up where parental frowns at a C grade leave off. Names of students accepted to college are published on the chalkboard — for all to see constantly. "If the children are abused at all," says Father Bruckner, "the abuse is psychological and emotional." One student, he recalls, requested that a class be given on "how I can have a real friend." A supercharged college-bound boy shocked his demanding father by announcing that if he had to live his life over again, he would like to try it as a Teddy bear — so he could be hugged. — Joseph Kane −Joseph Kane