Montreal Expos Quiz: Alright…before you give me a hard time,
remember, I promised to have a quiz on each major league team.
So grab a Labatt”s and try to get these.
1) Who is the career leader in hits? 2) Career leader in HRs?
3) Most wins, career? 4) Most wins, season? Answers below.
The following two stories are rather grim. Just chalk it up to the
editor”s “dark period.”
The Tornado of 1925
On March 18, 1925, a vast super thunderstorm cell developed
over southeastern Missouri. Eventually, a funnel descended,
touching down 3 miles north of the Ozark town of Ellington. A
farmer was killed. The first. There were to be hundreds more.
For three and one-half hours, the tornado stayed on the ground,
following a remarkably straight northeastern course. Cutting
through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, it traveled 219 miles, the
longest uninterrupted track on record.
Wallace Akin, currently a professor emeritus at Drake, was just 2
years old at the time. He was living in a house in the path of the
tornado and his home was lifted up and went sailing through the
air, Oz-like. Miraculously, he suffered only a minor wound.
What follows is his story on the full storm, as reported in
American Heritage magazine.
After Ellington, the tornado moved on, “sucking up huge
quantities of debris – dirt, houses, trees, barns – it ejected them
as deadly missiles along its route.” The twister varied in width
from one-half to one mile wide.
At 2:34 p.m., in the town of Murphysboro, Illinois, men were at
work, women at home, kids were in school. Then the storm
smashed into the city, killing 234 and injuring 623, while
destroying 1200 buildings. “Water mains burst, electric wires
fell and fires raged out of control.” 25 students died when the
school building collapsed.
“Some children crawled from under the debris and in shock
wandered home to find no house and, in some cases, no
neighborhood.”
One little girl found only an open field when she got to her
neighborhood. “In the middle of it was her decapitated
grandmother, still sitting in her rocking chair.”
When night fell, the fires in Murphysboro raged on so it was
decided to dynamite the city in an effort to stop the fires.
Imagine the horror for the survivors.
But back to Mr. Evil. The tornado moved on to DeSoto where it
killed 69 (including 33 schoolchildren) and another 31 in rural
areas before it reached West Frankfort, a town of 18,500. One-
fifth of the city was destroyed and 148 were killed. Then it was
on to Parrish (population 270), the last Illinois victim. Arriving
at 3:07, it leveled 90% of the town, killing 22.
It was in Parrish that school principal Delmar Perryman, worried
about the stormy weather, kept the kids in school. Someone was
looking down on Perryman. The school building was one of just
3 left standing.
Shortly before 4:00 p.m., the tornado crossed the Wabash River
into Indiana and accelerated to 73 mph! For the first time it
changed direction and made a beeline for Princeton (population
9,850). 45 were killed. At 4:30, the tornado finally lifted up and
dissipated. In all, some 700 were killed. [Akin didn”t provide
details on the other 100 or so.]
Remember, this was 1925 and there was zero warning system for
residents. But the humanitarian response was swift as railroad
crews along the tornado”s path got the word out. Trains carried
the wounded to as far away as Chicago.
The death toll was also high because few witnesses reported
seeing a funnel, they thought what was approaching was simply a
thunderstorm (the twister was so wide it probably blocked the
whole horizon). Meteorologically, the intensity and long life
suggest that it was located near the center of a deep low-pressure
system and beneath the core of a strong polar jet stream. Need I
add, heed tornado warnings.
Grozny
Human Rights Watch has just completed an account of a
February massacre in a neighborhood of the Chechen capital of
Grozny, perpetrated by Russian soldiers. There is no doubt that
there have been atrocities on both sides in this conflict, but the
bulk of the citizen deaths have been at the hands of Moscow.
Following is an excerpt from a report by Sharon LaFraniere and
Daniel Williams of the Washington Post.
“At the other end of the neighborhood, Asiat Chadaeva, a 32-
year-old nurse, learned from a (Russian) commander that people
had died. She heard him shout into his handset: ”Have you gone
mad?” Then he pulled her aside.
“”Our men have killed some old people by mistake,” he told her.
”Bury them quickly.””
“He had just hurried off in an armored personnel carrier when a
neighbor walked up with a sobbing 9-year-old girl, Laila. The
girl told Chadaeva that she, her mother and two other men had
been staying in the house of Avalu Sugaipov, around the corner.
“Her mother walked out of the house to greet the soldiers
because she thought they would not shoot a woman, Laila said.
She was immediately cut down by machine gun fire, as were the
others. Sugaipov managed to push Laila back inside the house
before he fell.
“Laila told Chadaeva she hid there under the bed, behind a sack
of onions. Then she heard a soldier say, ”Pour it.”
“”Wait, where is the child?” another soldier asked. ”Come out!”
“He pulled her scarf over her eyes as he carried her through the
yard, but she still saw her mother”s bloody body. In the street, he
gave her a can of pork.
“After eight days, a relative came to pick the girl up. A 10-year-
old boy came along.
“”They killed my mother,” Laila told him. ”Don”t cry,” the boy
told her. ”They killed my father and pulled out his teeth.””
Sewer Problem
In the June 12 issue of U.S. News & World Report, reporter
David Whitman has a tale of a nightmare that is happening
increasingly across America. Aging and overworked sewers.
We recently had a relatively minor problem in my own
neighborhood that could have been disastrous without the quick
work of your editor (ahem…fellow residents, you can thank me
later). But Whitman writes of Brenda and Mike Martin of
Atlanta, more specifically, the beautiful and affluent
neighborhood of Buckhead. So what did you do to celebrate the
millennium?
“On New Year”s Eve, the Martins detected a foul odor in their
elegant home…The sewer line on their street had become
partially blocked with grease from nearby restaurants, and a peek
down their basement steps confirmed the worst: Human feces
and…(editorial decision…I”m not listing the rest…just think
”stuff”) lay sopping on the floor.”
Being that it was New Year”s Eve, Brenda and Mike couldn”t
rouse a cleanup crew so Mike – “clad in hiking boots, plastic
gardening gloves, and a mask – mopped the raw sewage toward
the basement sump pump, threw down cat litter to clump the
debris, and shoveled it into a wheelbarrow.” [Note: Purchase
wheelbarrow and cat litter…have shovel…]
“That night, as the Martins and their two daughters huddled in
front of their TV to watch the ball drop in Times Square, they
could hear rats from the sewers burrowing inside the walls.”
Okay…aren”t you glad you read this edition of Bar Chat? And if
you have a sewer story you”d like to share, just pass it along.
Top 3 songs for the week of 6/9/73: #1 “My Love” (Paul
McCartney & Wings) #2 “Frankenstein” (The Edgar Winter
Group) #3 “Pillow Talk” (Sylvia…uhhh…uhhh)
Les Expos Quiz Answers: 1) Career Hits: Tim Wallach, 1694.
2) Career HRs: Andre Dawson, 225. 3) Wins, career: Steve
Rogers, 158. 4) Wins, season: Ross Grimsley, 20 (1978).
Monday, the Seattle Mariners quiz!!! As well as another Bar
Chat. A lighter one, I promise.
