Blue Highways: Langdon, North Dakota

Unfolding the Map

Hey Littourati!  What is burrowed in the ground, usually has two brains, four eyes, four arms, four legs, is totally computerized, and when it moves will probably kill millions?  Give up?  A nuclear missile in a silo, of course!  William Least Heast-Moon (LHM) gets into a discussion about nukes with a resident of Langdon, North Dakota.  Let's think about that for a post.  If you want to target Langdon, triangulate your coordinates at the map.

Book Quote

"After breakfast in the city park at Langdon, a Nordic town of swept streets and tidy pastel houses with pastel shutters at the picture windows, a town with the crack of Little League bats in the clear Saturday air, a town of blond babies and mothers wearing one hundred percent acrylics and of husbands washing pastel cars to kill time before the major league Game of the Week, this happened:

"In the park, a man walking with a child saw me staring at a 'retired' Spartan missile that now apparently served the same function as courthouse lawn fieldpieces with little pyramids of cannonballs once did....

"'She's a nuke,' the father said with proprietary pride....

"'Make you feel good, don't they?  Proud and taken care of, like.'"

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 8

Bed and Breakfast at Tiffany's in the frost at Langdon, North Dakota. Photo by "bedandbreakfastattiffanys" and housed at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host site.Langdon, North Dakota

Once again, which has really been a rarity on this trip through LHM's book, I can say that I've been to the area of the country through which he is traveling.  You might wonder why I have visited this region of North Dakota.  It was because of a job that I had that required me to drive to Dunseith, North Dakota and check up on some people that I had placed in a volunteer position there in the early 90s.  I can't remember for sure, but I most likely went through Langdon to get to Dunseith.  My girlfriend, now my wife, went with me.  I certainly remember, on my return trip, traveling along North Dakota 5 until it met Interstate 29, and passing by nuclear missile silos.

Of course, they weren't marked as silos.  It supposedly wouldn't do us well if everyone knows where they are.  However, they are probably the worst-kept secret in the world.  As we passed by, we realized that they were obviously some kind of installation that was not related to energy-distribution or water-distribution.  Locals know where they are, and even our enemies at the time, the Soviets, knew where they were from satellite flyovers.  When we passed them, all we saw was a chain link fence surrounding a concrete pad with a kind of cap on top of it, and maybe a small utility structure.  There might have been an antenna of some sort as well.  Usually, a sign or multiple signs warned against entering and that the "use of deadly force is authorized."

On the nuclear missile, nuclear silo issue, I have been related with people who manned the silos, and who tried to get rid of them.  In the mid-1980s, I did volunteer work in Milwaukee, and came to know a group of local activists connected with the Plowshares Movement.  Plowshares took its mission from the biblical injunction:

"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

King James Bible Online (1769 version)
Isaiah 2:4

The goal of the Plowshares Movement, then, is to call attention to these weapons of mass destruction and eventually get them eliminated.  Toward that end a number of people began civil disobedience actions where they trespassed onto nuclear silos, usually by cutting through the fencing or locks, symbolically damaged the top of the silo by cutting wires or splashing red paint or even their own blood on the concrete lid of the silo, and then waited for the military to show up and arrest them.  Often the activists would get a minimum of six months in federal prison for their action.  In Milwaukee, I was friends with a guy who was close to our volunteer community.  After I left Milwaukee, he participated in a Plowshares action and received at least a year in prison.  The last I heard, he is out of prison and affiliated with the Omaha Catholic Worker, where he works on day-to-day issues of the poor and to bring attention to larger world issues such as nuclear weapons.

On the below-ground side, I remember reading how the silo actually works.  There are two military personnel stationed below ground at the silo at all times.  If it is still like I read, these members of the military, when they receive a transmitted code, must look up the code for the launch sequence and then each must insert a key and turn it at the same time to activate a launch countdown.  Should one of them balk, I had thought that the other has license to kill in order to make sure that the launch goes through, though the concept of the two keys is considered a safeguard against accidental launch and would not really lend itself to one killing the other.  This came home to me when I met Bob.  He had manned a silo while in the Air Force.  He was a nice, quiet guy from South Carolina who did on-call work for the university medical school where I have my daily employment.  Retired, he was soft spoken and I had trouble reconciling him with a person who literally had the fate of millions at his fingertips.

I also had that trouble when I met another man named Bob who worked had worked at one of the national labs in New Mexico.  Bob is another quiet, gentle unassuming man who was passionate about his Catholicism and passionate about peace and justice.  In his 80s, he put together a proposal and saw it through so that now a pilot project is testing how villages in Africa can grow food with better irrigation.  After a few times of speaking with Bob, he told his story.  His initial job at the labs was coming up with a better system to defend Europe in case of a Soviet invasion across the border.  All the models said that a full scale invasion could not be countered by NATO without the use of nuclear weapons, so Bob and the rest of the people on his team came up with the fastest and most effective way to put these nuclear warheads into play.  At some point, the labs spun off his business about the same time that he realized that what he was doing was incompatible with his faith, and so he sold out that side of the business to partners.

My father was a person who felt that nuclear weapons saved his life by forestalling an invasion of Japan, and thogh my father-in-law is more circumspect in saying it, he also argued that millions of lives would have been lost in such a campaign.  For years we lived under the protection of a nuclear umbrella.  So I understand how people might see nuclear weapons as safeguarding their way of life, like the man quoted by LHM. 

But when I visited the Trinity Site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was exploded, I saw a sight that signaled the diversity of the U.S. feelings about nuclear weapons, and perhaps the hypocrisy as well.  The site, located in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range and open only twice a year to the public, was off-limits to any kinds of demonstration.  But here and there in the midst of the space, encircled by a chain link fence, where a stone obelisk marked the fateful detonation, small groups prayed silently together.  Some were pacifists praying for world peace and an end to the nuclear insanity.  Others were evangelical Christians, praying for America and the greatness that conquering the atom stood for.  Some might have been praying for Armageddon, in keeping with their faith that the last battle will herald the Kingdom of God.  Others, blissfully ignorant of these groupings, posed for pictures next to the obelisk and looked for trinitite, slightly radioactive glass fused from the sand when the plasma of the blast seared the desert. 

That blast, which raised a terrible, yet beautiful, flower from the desert floor, caused even its architect, J. Robert Oppenheimer to tremble a little before its might and wonder what type of horrible genie was released from its bottle.  "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," he said, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita.  In our silos in North Dakota and other states, on submarines cruising the oceans, and in Russia, China and other places, many destroyers of worlds still sit waiting for a time when they might be called to wreak their horrible vegeance.

Musical Interlude

Another double-shot, Littourati!  About the time that LHM was pondering nuclear missiles in North Dakota, Iron Maiden was writing 2 Minutes to Midnight, referencing the Doomsday Clock and the launch of nuclear missiles.  Around this time also, Nena was penning 99 Luftballons, about an accidental nuclear launch because, of all things, red balloons.  It's the height of anger, fear and hysteria in Cold War era music, and two very different styles!

If you want to know more about Langdon

City of Langdon
Facebook: Cavalier County Republican (newspaper)
North Dakota State University Langdon Research Extension Center
Wikipedia: Langdon

Next up:  Backoo, North Dakota

Blue Highways: A Radar Station in Western North Dakota

Unfolding the Map

I'm making another educated guess for this post as to where William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) found the radar tower in North Dakota.  How?  I examined Google Earth, found a likely "small flourish of hills" with a "fine, clear lake" beneath them.  I didn't see evidence of a radar tower, so either it was dismantled or because of national security Google airbrushed it out of the satellite photo.  I am going to look at the idea of early warning defense (on multiple levels) by first writing about Martello towers, which LHM mentions in his quote below.  If you want an early warning about where we are located, use your inner radar to locate the map.

Book Quote

"In a small flourish of hills, the last I was to see for hundreds of miles, on an upthrusted lump sat a cube of concrete with an Air Force radar antenna sweeping the long horizon for untoward blips.  A Martello tower of the twentieth century.  Below the installation, in the Ice Age land, lay a fine, clear lake.  Fingerlings whisked the marsh weed, coots twittered on the surface, and at bankside a muskrat munched greens.  It seemed as if I were standing between two worlds.  But they were one: a few permutations of life going on about themselves, each thing trying to continue its way."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 7

This is just a stock photo of a radar system. Photo at Al Arabiya. Click on photo to go to host site.

And this is an image of a Martello tower in Ireland. Photo at Wikipedia. Click on photo to go to host site.

A Radar Station in Western North Dakota

Martello towers.  In entering North Dakota, LHM stops after seeing a radar antenna and calls it a Martello tower of the twentieth century.  Of course, he is writing in the late 1970s or early 1980s as the
Cold War is still raging, and there is still an off chance that Soviet ballistic missiles could appear as blips on the radar screen in a surprise attack.  You might or might not know that North Dakota, along with Wyoming and Montana, houses a number of active-duty missile silos which puts those states on the front lines if nuclear war were to ever occur.   But what really interested me was the term for the radar station as a Martello tower.  I didn't understand the reference, and one of the things I find really exciting about reading is running across a term that I don't know and then trying to discover what it means.

So here's the story about the Martello towers.  They were invented in the mid-1500s at Mortella Point in Corsica.  A small, round tower with very thick walls, they were built to serve as a lookout for North African pirates.  The towers initially served a lookout purpose.  They were garrisoned with a watchman who lit a fire at the top of the tower to signal when pirates were spotted.  This original purpose of the Mortella-type tower (it's name was later misspelled and changed to the Martello tower) is what LHM is referencing when he compares the radar station to the towers.  When I think of this use of the towers, my inner geek is reminded of The Lord of the Rings, when the signal towers are lit to call the Rohirrim to the aid and defense of Gondor.

Later, the Genoese expanded the use of the tower, turning them into small forts that could not only be used for lookouts, but also for defense.  The towers were tough and armed with cannon.  The British attacked the Mortella tower in 1794 with two warships and were unable to reduce it despite subjecting it to two days of pounding from the heavy guns of their ships (the tower eventually fell to a land-based force attacking from the rear).  The impressed British modified the tower design and built a number of them along the coasts of England, Scotland and Ireland to provide defense against a potential threat from Napoleon in France.  France itself built a number of Martello-style towers and again used them for communication and warning through the Chappe Telegraph system (an optical telegraph).

Eventually, the United States built its own Martello towers which can be seen in places like New Hampshire, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and New York City.  The Martello tower is also part of the insignia of a U.S. army infantry regiment.

In the use of communication, it is easy to see how the early use of the Martello tower can serve as a metaphor for today's long-range missile early-warning radar system.  Perhaps, if the combination of early-warning radar is combined with the instantaneous response of the Minuteman missiles in silos nearby, one can also extend the metaphor to the later use of the Martello towers as defense systems as well.  A lot of thought, bolstered by science and engineering, goes into these defense systems regardless of whether they are constructed of stone, morter and wood or if they are constructed of the highest-tech materials.  The idea is simple, provide early warning and defend the heartland.

I also think, however, of the defenses that are more close to home.  Martello towers can be metaphors for the defenses we put up in our own lives.  Security systems guard our businesses, vehicles and homes, providing warnings and defenses against fire, carbon monoxide, radon, and intruders.  Take a home alarm system.  An intruder breaks in, the alarm goes off, a signal is sent offsite to a center which calls police, and hopefully police arrive in time to apprehend the intruder.

How about even closer to home - our own personal warning systems and defenses?  These might be friends or loved-ones watching out for us, our so-called "wing" men or women who might signal that we should stay away from that good looking but unstable or unsavory character.  It might be our own consciences or inner-selves raising red flags about situations that we find ourselves in.  In response we may shut down, go into avoidance or, in desperate situations, launch countermeasures to protect ourselves.

No matter how far we extend the metaphor, we can find Martello towers that we've erected in all parts of our lives if we look.  And regardless of the level of analysis, they can be more or less effective depending on the situation.  Often our towers will give us plenty of warning.  Sometimes our towers will remain strong, holding off the attack.  We'll occasionally be surprised from behind where our defenses are weak.  Every so often a bombardment from something or someone will cause us some damage but at the end of the day, our tower will still stand.  And sometimes, a new weapon that we aren't expecting will render our defenses obsolete until we can upgrade them, usually through the lessons brought about by attack and sometimes our defeat.

In the end, advances in artillery technology rendered the Martello towers useless.  Able to withstand cannon shot because of their thick walls, they were done in by new rifled ammunition which allowed greater accuracy and destruction.  This too might serve as a metaphor.  Our modern Martello towers, our radar stations, are effective only as long as our radar can pick up incoming threats.  It won't be long before our stealth technology will be copied by other countries, and our current Martello towers, our current radar systems, will also become obsolete, at least until a new generation of Martello tower is conceived and implemented.

Musical Interlude

You can't have a post about a radar station, I don't think, without having Golden Earring's Radar Love as a musical interlude.  And it only fits better since the song references driving and is considered by Bill Lamb to be one of his top-10 driving songs of all time.

If you want to know more about...well...Western North Dakota or our nation's air defense system

Air Defense Radar Tutorial
Driving Tour of Western North Dakota
Modern Air Defense Radars
Online Air Defense Radar Museum
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Wikipedia: Ground-Based Midcourse Defense

Next up: Fortuna, North Dakota