On one of my summer mountain bike excursions, I stopped to talk with a woman who lived in White Rock, a satellite town of 8,000 that makes Los Alamos look positively cosmopolitan. Oh, we moved here a couple of years ago because we like the outdoors and the West. White Rock is great. Not everyone adapts so well. These guys drink half a bottle of whiskey every night at a bar, then get up at 7 am and bike 30 miles up a mountain before coming into work.
Marital problems are conspicuous in such a small community.
One local woman married her first Lab employee at age 19 and then married three more in succession, each time moving up the organization chart. She's 45 now and divorced from a deputy director. One guy in my neighborhood was down in Espanola and some Hispanic teenager stole his 357 Magnum out of his car. Like an idiot, he chases after the kid and the kid shoots him with his own pistol. When he gets out of the hospital, his wife marries the neighbor and he marries the neighbor's discarded wife.