Boron Ca

For people who live next to a rocket test site, it is not unusual to hear an explosion or to see a rising cloud of smoke on the horizon. But residents of this isolated Mojave Desert mining town Friday were soon tipped off that something was wrong at the Astronautics Laboratory. Ambulances hurtled down 20 Mule Team Road toward the laboratory entrance at Rocket Site Road.

For more than half a century F.O. Roe, a former Army drill instructor with a steady gaze and a poker face, has watched the fortunes of this sun-blasted town ebb and flow. He's seen the 58 Freeway bypass and isolate the community, the steady exodus of the young as they seek their fortunes elsewhere and the increase in crime he attributes to newcomers from Los Angeles. Each blow has staggered the Kern County town, but none has knocked it off its feet -- until perhaps now. "I think if the cards are not played right on this, it could be what breaks the back of this little town and kills it," he said, as he sipped coffee in the back room of the Emporium, his general store.

For more than half a century F.O. Roe, a former Army drill instructor with a steady gaze and a poker face, has watched the fortunes of this sun-blasted town ebb and flow. He's seen the 58 Freeway bypass and isolate the community, the steady exodus of the young as they seek their fortunes elsewhere and the increase in crime he attributes to newcomers from Los Angeles. Each blow has staggered the Kern County town, but none has knocked it off its feet -- until perhaps now. "I think if the cards are not played right on this, it could be what breaks the back of this little town and kills it," he said, as he sipped coffee in the back room of the Emporium, his general store.

For people who live next to a rocket test site, it is not unusual to hear an explosion or to see a rising cloud of smoke on the horizon. But residents of this isolated Mojave Desert mining town Friday were soon tipped off that something was wrong at the Astronautics Laboratory. Ambulances hurtled down 20 Mule Team Road toward the laboratory entrance at Rocket Site Road.