December 2003

Clifford Stanley, unlike many of his neighbors, takes unequivocal pride in his nation's nuclear arsenal.

A resident of Albuquerque's Old Town neighborhood since 1997, Stanley welcomed the Redstone nuclear missile exhibit when it was installed next to Mountain Road at the National Atomic Museum in October. When his neighbors began to complain about the sixty-foot "weapon of mass destruction" that was visible from their backyards and front porches, Stanley defended the missile's right to peacefully coexist amid the hundred-year-old adobes.

"To me, this missile says 'freedom.' Every time I look at it I feel a warm feeling inside, a feeling of freedom," says Stanley.

Stanley, a part-time corrections officer, is also an avid gun collector, and calls himself an "aficionado of military history."

"The Redstone missile was totally kick-ass, for its time," says Stanley. "It could deliver a nuclear payload to targets up to 800 miles away. If it wasn't for the Redstone, we'd all be speaking Russian right now and living in the gulags."

Worried that the public outcry against the rocket's placement in Old Town might lead "unpatriotic liberals" to harm it, Stanley has taken matters into his own hands. He goes on regular patrols of the area, keeping watch over the sixty-foot missile, lest it come to harm.

"It's just a matter of time before one of these goddamn liberals comes along and tries to throw paint on it or something," says Stanley. "I just hope I'm there when they try it. The people who live around here have absolutely no respect, no sense of history."

This isn't the first time Stanley has had disagreements with his neighbors. In March of 1998, when Stanley was arrested for accidentally shooting and injuring a seven-year-old boy in his neighborhood, some of his neighbors unsuccessfully lobbied the courts to get him thrown out of his house and out of the neighborhood.

"It was an accident," says Stanley. "I was out with my 30-30, taking care of some of the stray cats that live around here and the kid jumped right in front of me. And then they were trying to get me out. 'Over my dead body,' I said. And you can't throw somebody out of their house because of an accident. What was Jeff [the injured boy] doing out that late, anyway? Where were Jeff's parents?"

In another incident later that year, Stanley nearly came to blows with several irate neighbors after he constructed a large sign in his front yard that read "Librels [sic] And Bicyclists Shot On Sight."

Has being surrounded daily by the kind of people who don't want to look at a nuclear missile every day when they look out their windows dampened Stanley's spirits? Has it changed his attitude towards nuclear weapons?

"Not a bit," says Stanley. "People got to learn their history. People should be proud of their country and its accomplishments."