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
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