(iii)
A thick haze settled over Donora in late October ’48 as the DHS Dragons took the field. Fans said the game was all but invisible in the smog, that the only way they knew these stout boys had scored a touchdown or recaptured a fumble, was to listen for cheering from the front rows. No one could explain the loss. Donora was famous for tough football players and hearty steel workers, but by the beginning of the next week, funeral homes had run dry of caskets.
Women hid in their homes and locked their children in bathrooms. Men still waited in line to punch in at the Zinc Works, despite the toxic cloud at its shores. The rational commented on headlines that read, “Atmospheric Freak of Nature.” The terrified clutched to their chest the papers that read, “Act of God.”
Local veterans frantically tore through cellars, attics, and closets, searching for old rucks and mildewed gasmasks. They panted and trembled, waiting for the sound of mortars; for the order to come across the trench (over the top, boys!); for blisters in the lungs.
(iv)
In 1952, London accidentally coined the term smog. For two weeks in the first part of December, coal fires burned to keep cold air at bay, and the fumes took residence in the streets and eventually the homes and lives of locals. The price of a warm home was high for some. Days worth of Singin’ in the Rain and High Noon showings were cancelled because of lack of visibility in the theatres. Hopeless romantics wandered the streets, grief-stricken when they discovered that florists had run dry of flowers, that funerals had taken precedence.
It was a bloody inconvenience for those who held tickets to the much sought after production of The Mousetrap. The stage was invisible, the roads even more so. Londoners declined outside hospitals, undetected by nurses who couldn’t even see the ends of their own wards. The daily death toll rose as high as 900.
To everyone’s great relief, Queen Mary was unaffected
A thick haze settled over Donora in late October ’48 as the DHS Dragons took the field. Fans said the game was all but invisible in the smog, that the only way they knew these stout boys had scored a touchdown or recaptured a fumble, was to listen for cheering from the front rows. No one could explain the loss. Donora was famous for tough football players and hearty steel workers, but by the beginning of the next week, funeral homes had run dry of caskets.
Women hid in their homes and locked their children in bathrooms. Men still waited in line to punch in at the Zinc Works, despite the toxic cloud at its shores. The rational commented on headlines that read, “Atmospheric Freak of Nature.” The terrified clutched to their chest the papers that read, “Act of God.”
Local veterans frantically tore through cellars, attics, and closets, searching for old rucks and mildewed gasmasks. They panted and trembled, waiting for the sound of mortars; for the order to come across the trench (over the top, boys!); for blisters in the lungs.
(iv)
In 1952, London accidentally coined the term smog. For two weeks in the first part of December, coal fires burned to keep cold air at bay, and the fumes took residence in the streets and eventually the homes and lives of locals. The price of a warm home was high for some. Days worth of Singin’ in the Rain and High Noon showings were cancelled because of lack of visibility in the theatres. Hopeless romantics wandered the streets, grief-stricken when they discovered that florists had run dry of flowers, that funerals had taken precedence.
It was a bloody inconvenience for those who held tickets to the much sought after production of The Mousetrap. The stage was invisible, the roads even more so. Londoners declined outside hospitals, undetected by nurses who couldn’t even see the ends of their own wards. The daily death toll rose as high as 900.
To everyone’s great relief, Queen Mary was unaffected
by Ed Casey
Ed Casey is a Masters student at UNT. He spent many years working in the private sector, being beaten into a cold, hard state of denial until he returned to school. He lives with his three unruly ferrets, a rabbit, and his fiancee (though they try hard not to live in sin). He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.
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