From Euclid Creek Book Four by Michael Ceraolo

from Euclid Creek Book Four

        September 24, 1950

It was called Black Sunday,

two decades before the suspense novel

of the same name was written,

and the cause of such a moniker

had started days earlier

and was reported in the next day's paper

on the front page,

right under the bold headlines

about the Korean War news

"Canadian Forest Fire Smoke Clouds Darken Ohio"

said the headline

                          (in those quaint days

when the headline actually foretold

what was in the body of the article)

"Dense yellow clouds of smoke,

wind-borne to the Great Lakes area and beyond

from forest fires sweeping hundreds of acres

in northern Alberta"

(also northern British Columbia,

in what would become known as

the Chinchaga fire),

"blotted out the sun in Greater Cleveland

yesterday afternoon"

The smoke was first seen here at 8 AM,

and a local preacher that day sermonized

the end of the world would be signaled by

"an orange glow and a flash of light"

(followed by the smoke-darkened skies

that were beginning to appear?

No word about that,

                              nor

whether those who heard the sermon

hurried home

to prepare for and await the end)

"Skies swept with weird shades

of copper,

               ochre,

                         sandy pinks,

                                            blue and gray

wrought a fearsome touch to the spectacle"

"The darkness began to settle about noon

Skies became blackened at 1 p.m."

"The stadium lights were turned on

for the Cleveland-Detroit afternoon baseball game"

(starting time 2 PM,

with an announced attendance

of 35, 092;

the Browns were in Baltimore,

shutting out the Colts)

"Landing lights went on at Cleveland Airport

at 2:15 p.m."

A meteorologist at the local station

of the Weather Bureau

made several emergency radio broadcasts

to let people know what was happening

in the skies overhead

"Not until shortly before 3

did they begin to brighten"

and things return to a semblance of normal