“Around 1900,” she said, “a local mystic predicted the creation of Oak Ridge and the role the city would play in World War II.”
“Some hillbilly a century ago knew about uranium enrichment and plutonium production? So that’s where Fermi and Oppenheimer and Einstein got the idea?”
She smiled. “Well, he didn’t go into details about the physics and chemistry,” she said. “John Hendrix was his name; he was a preacher who was considered a bit of a crackpot. He also drank a bit, they say.”
“Helps the sermons flow more trippingly off the tongue,” I said. “Or gives you more knowledge of sin, maybe.”
“The story goes,” she went on, “that John Hendrix heard a voice telling him to sleep in the woods and pray for forty days and forty nights.”
“That’s a lot of praying,” I said.
She nodded. “On the forty-first day, he emerged and told some people at a little country store that he’d had a vision.” She took down a well-worn book—Back of Oak Ridge—and opened it to a page near the front. “Here’s what he said: ‘There will be a city on Black Oak Ridge’—that’s the ridge where all the World War II housing was built—‘and the center of authority will be on a spot middle-way between Sevier Tadlock’s farm and Joe Pyatt’s place.’” I was about to ask who Sevier Tadlock and Joe Pyatt were, but—as if reading my mind—she held up a finger to shush me. “He said, ‘A railroad spur will branch off the main L&N line, run down toward Robertsville, and then branch off and turn toward Scarboro. Big engines will dig big ditches, and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things, and there will be great noise and confusion, and the earth will shake.’ But here’s the best part, where he talks about Bear Creek Valley, where the Y-12 Plant was built: ‘Bear Creek Valley someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be.’” She paused just long enough to let that sink in, then read one more line: “‘I’ve seen it. It’s coming.’”
She closed the book slowly, then looked at me over her glasses, her eyebrows rising to ask, Well?
To my surprise, the words had sent a bit of a shiver along my spine. By this stage of my life, I had become a bit of a skeptic when it came to matters of metaphysics. I dealt in scientific and forensic facts—grim facts, at that—and the comforting words of organized religion ignored a lot of suffering. My faith had also been pretty thoroughly undermined by the unmerited suffering and death of my wife Kathleen a few years before. Nevertheless, I had to admit that occasionally I encountered phenomena that science seemed unable to explain. This prophecy appeared to be another of those.
“He said that in 1900? Forty years before the bulldozers showed up?”
“Somewhere around there. And he died in 1915, so it’s not like he saw it unfold, then stepped forward after the fact and claimed, ‘Oh yeah, I had a vision about this a long time ago.’ It’s been pretty well documented that he came out of the woods wild-eyed, talking about factories and engines and winning a big war.”
“And the bit about Tadlock and Pyatt?”
“Their farms straddled the little hill where the Manhattan Project headquarters was built,” she said. “During the war, it was a huge wooden building nicknamed ‘the castle on the hill.’ In the 1970s, DOE—the Department of Energy—built a concrete and glass building on the same site. So it’s still what Hendrix called ‘the center of authority,’ even today.”
“And the railroad spur?”
“Goes right past his grave,” she said. “Within a mile or so of the Y-12 Plant.”
I nodded. “Sounds like Hendrix got it right,” I said. “A lot more specific than the psychics who call up the police and say, ‘I see a body in a dark, damp place.’ Did he predict the Friendship Bell, too?”
She laughed—a musical laugh that reminded me of pealing bells—and I felt another tingle along my spine. “No, he didn’t look that far ahead,” she said, “though it seems like he should have, since he talked about great wars.” Seeing my puzzled look, she explained. “There was a big controversy about the bell,” she said. “The Peace Bell, most people call it. Some locals thought it was a slap in the face of everyone who’d worked on the Manhattan Project. Too much like an apology. There was even a lawsuit by some folks who claimed it was a religious shrine, and shouldn’t be on public property. The controversy seems to have died down by now, though.”