Waylon 13

So Japan isn’t the only country with the bad sense to build nuclear reactors on the Ring of Fire – I saw one this past summer between Sacramento and Ione, California. My mom and I were driving to the California Indian Basketweavers’ gathering, and, right in the middle of these picturesque vineyards, we saw the unmistakable gray cylinder. We thought it was pretty funny that there were no signs on the vineyard – they didn’t want anybody to know they were growing their grapes so close to a nuclear reactor. I can just picture it: “And for dinner tonight we’ll be having salmon, cornbread, and a bottle of Radioactive Red.” We were pretty curious about that reactor though. Who owns it? What’s it called? Is it active? So we drove up to it. The only sign we saw, though, was the one that said, “Past this point you’ll be shot.” Knowing they’d have no qualms about shooting Indians with Oregon plates, we turned around. The law enforcement is pretty racist around there. There aren’t any motels in Ione, so outside of the nearest town with motels, the local cops set up a road block to perform sobriety tests on all the Indians coming in.