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    2 months ago

    Story time!

    In (I want to say) 1981, my dad packed us all in the 1967 Plymouth Fury for a road trip vacation to Hershey, PA, from Illinois. Since it was “on the way,” he decided that we should stop at Three Mile Island.

    I’m 11 years old, sitting in the left rear seat, right behind my dad. He pulls the car off of the two lane road onto a wide gravel drive that came up to a tall chain link fence gate topped with barbed wire. Apparently, we were going to Three Mile Island.

    There’s a uniformed officer there who steps up to the driver’s window, which my dad has rolled down. He’s standing to the rear of the driver’s door, like a cop would, which puts him right next to my window. The guy’s gun is out of his holster.

    “Turn the car around,” he says. Dad: “We were just coming to --” “Turn the car around.” “But we wanted to see --” “The observation deck is over there. Turn the car around.”

    Shortly after, there was a picture taken of me from the observation deck in my Reeses Peanut Butter Cups shirt with my arm “resting” on a cooling tower.