One hundred years from now on this very spot there'll be a quiet park where the children can play
I don't get up at aaagh o'clock for everybody, just partisan songs, Yiddish theater, and the dead.
There were twenty-one dead of the molasses flood, wrecked by the shrapnel of the tank's burst brittle steel or the debris cresting its sticky, stiffening wave or suffocated outright in what Stephen Puleo in his definitive account called the dark tide; it splintered buildings, tossed cars, flattened streetlights, crumpled the tracks and trestles of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated. Photographs of the time show an almost absurd devastation of matchsticked houses and warehouses, sheared-off roofs decorated with buckled girders and dismembered wheels, livelihoods and lives all wiped across the smeary plain of what's now Langone Park. Everything glistens balefully. A hundred and fifty injured were recorded in addition to the dead. I assume the numbers come from the landmark class-action suit successfully brought against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, parent company of Purity Distilling which had built the tank in 1915 and maintained it so poorly from the start that local families were accustomed to collect their own molasses from the constant leak. It is not true that on hot days in the North End you can still smell molasses, although it is apparently true that for weeks after the disaster Boston itself was generally sticky.
Seven years ago,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I joked about baking molasses cookies for the centenary and eating them on Copp's Hill. Instead we joined a memorial organized by the City of Boston Archaeology Program and the Boston Parks Department. January 15, 1919 was unseasonably warm; it was one of the contributing factors to the perfect sugarstorm that was the Great Boston Molasses Flood. January 15, 2019 was bright and biting, the sky and the harbor the same pale streaked floe-blue and my fingers numb by the time we'd walked up Commercial Street from North Station. With the rest of the small crowd which included a_reasonable_man, we stood in a ninety-foot circle following the remains of the molasses tank, whose location and perimeter had been recently mapped by UMass Boston's Fiske Center. Boston Archaeologist Joe Bagley spoke briefly about the occasion before yielding home plate to Boston Parks Commissioner Chris Cook, who read the names of the dead and held a moment of silence. Together with Representative Aaron Michlewitz they laid a wreath of white roses at the center of the tank. And then everything broke up very quickly, because everyone was very cold. Probably due to our position against the third-base fence, we do not really show up in any of the coverage I've seen, but there were cameras everywhere, so if you see one person in a black hoodie and a green canvas coat and another in a leather jacket and a sort of fur-lined-looking hat, hello.
Afterward we wandered up the granite steps and switchbacks of Copp's Hill Terrace and then down into the North End, where we did not eat at Antico Forno because they opened half an hour later than we could stand to wait around in the cold; we walked to the Boston Public Market, where we had respectively shakalatkes, a bagel, and ramen, and collectively a nice conversation with the vacationing couple from Maine sitting across the table from us. Then it took me and Rob forever to get home because the new schedule of the 89 is awful; it has stripped out easily half the buses; they no longer run on the twenty-minute or even half-hour schedule that allowed us to get to Sullivan or Davis on a reasonable timetable rather than much too early or slightly too late or just not at all. That, too, is Boston. I guess.
I'm very tired, but I am glad we got up for this ceremony. It was the kind of magic that needed a critical mass to work: enough participants to form the circle, to map the space that failed and killed and to remember why we need regulations as well as heroes. I liked the commissioner's promise that the park would always stay open and safe for children, the best way he could think of to redeem it from tragedy. It was a good thing to be part of.
Someone had left a jar of molasses on the wall.
There were twenty-one dead of the molasses flood, wrecked by the shrapnel of the tank's burst brittle steel or the debris cresting its sticky, stiffening wave or suffocated outright in what Stephen Puleo in his definitive account called the dark tide; it splintered buildings, tossed cars, flattened streetlights, crumpled the tracks and trestles of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated. Photographs of the time show an almost absurd devastation of matchsticked houses and warehouses, sheared-off roofs decorated with buckled girders and dismembered wheels, livelihoods and lives all wiped across the smeary plain of what's now Langone Park. Everything glistens balefully. A hundred and fifty injured were recorded in addition to the dead. I assume the numbers come from the landmark class-action suit successfully brought against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, parent company of Purity Distilling which had built the tank in 1915 and maintained it so poorly from the start that local families were accustomed to collect their own molasses from the constant leak. It is not true that on hot days in the North End you can still smell molasses, although it is apparently true that for weeks after the disaster Boston itself was generally sticky.
Seven years ago,
spatch and I joked about baking molasses cookies for the centenary and eating them on Copp's Hill. Instead we joined a memorial organized by the City of Boston Archaeology Program and the Boston Parks Department. January 15, 1919 was unseasonably warm; it was one of the contributing factors to the perfect sugarstorm that was the Great Boston Molasses Flood. January 15, 2019 was bright and biting, the sky and the harbor the same pale streaked floe-blue and my fingers numb by the time we'd walked up Commercial Street from North Station. With the rest of the small crowd which included a_reasonable_man, we stood in a ninety-foot circle following the remains of the molasses tank, whose location and perimeter had been recently mapped by UMass Boston's Fiske Center. Boston Archaeologist Joe Bagley spoke briefly about the occasion before yielding home plate to Boston Parks Commissioner Chris Cook, who read the names of the dead and held a moment of silence. Together with Representative Aaron Michlewitz they laid a wreath of white roses at the center of the tank. And then everything broke up very quickly, because everyone was very cold. Probably due to our position against the third-base fence, we do not really show up in any of the coverage I've seen, but there were cameras everywhere, so if you see one person in a black hoodie and a green canvas coat and another in a leather jacket and a sort of fur-lined-looking hat, hello.Afterward we wandered up the granite steps and switchbacks of Copp's Hill Terrace and then down into the North End, where we did not eat at Antico Forno because they opened half an hour later than we could stand to wait around in the cold; we walked to the Boston Public Market, where we had respectively shakalatkes, a bagel, and ramen, and collectively a nice conversation with the vacationing couple from Maine sitting across the table from us. Then it took me and Rob forever to get home because the new schedule of the 89 is awful; it has stripped out easily half the buses; they no longer run on the twenty-minute or even half-hour schedule that allowed us to get to Sullivan or Davis on a reasonable timetable rather than much too early or slightly too late or just not at all. That, too, is Boston. I guess.
I'm very tired, but I am glad we got up for this ceremony. It was the kind of magic that needed a critical mass to work: enough participants to form the circle, to map the space that failed and killed and to remember why we need regulations as well as heroes. I liked the commissioner's promise that the park would always stay open and safe for children, the best way he could think of to redeem it from tragedy. It was a good thing to be part of.
Someone had left a jar of molasses on the wall.
no subject
Someone had left a jar of molasses on the wall.
It does sound like a good thing. I'm glad you could go.
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
no subject
Shakalatkes are the invention of Inna's Kitchen: they are shakshuka served over latkes. They're great.
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
The jar of molasses is excellent.
--And the occupations of the dead: "laborer, teamster, homemaker, child..."
Thanks for going, and thanks for sharing about it!
no subject
I think a major reason the survivors and families of victims won their class action in 1925 was that it wasn't like there hadn't been warning signs. It's the sort of thing that's cutely dilapidated about a neighborhood except for the people who live there.
Thanks for going, and thanks for sharing about it!
You're welcome! It was important to me to.
no subject
no subject
Thank you. I'm glad to share.
no subject
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-great-molasses-flood-free-talk-walking-tour-tickets-54320026662
but I'd have to leave quite early in order to get to Old North in time for practice. My current plan is to buy a small bunch of flowers and leave them by the plaque.
The (elderly even in the 1980s) late former sexton at Old North, Al Mostone, remembered the event.
no subject
You're welcome! The ceremony may not have been very publicized off Twitter; I mentioned it to my mother and she was puzzled that she couldn't find mention of it ahead of time in the Globe.
My current plan is to buy a small bunch of flowers and leave them by the plaque.
I like that.
The (elderly even in the 1980s) late former sexton at Old North, Al Mostone, remembered the event.
What did he remember of it?
no subject
(I couldn't, due to conflicts.)
no subject
You're welcome. I was glad to be able to.
no subject
no subject
You're welcome! It was simple and it worked.
no subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5sYoUnp5A0
no subject
That's really cool!
no subject
no subject
I can see how it might have created the ghoul equivalent of glazed donuts.
no subject
no subject
The city did it well.