Twenty-odd people were killed in Boston's North End. We have discussed before, under the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, why some tragedies enter the popular imagination while others are quickly forgotten. I think in this case, the specificity of the molasses is key. The news likely was reported at least a bit in other parts of the country, and in New England it would have been big news all week.
The interpretation now is that it was forgotten because it was a poor immigrant neighborhood and Who Cares About Them? It is believed that we buried news about greedy capitalist bastards and their victims back in the day. Yet I doubt that is the case. It would likely have had a comic side even then, which might have given the story legs, but at root, people in Birmingham or Davenport or San Diego would have thought we don't have any molasses tanks here, and none of my relatives lives near a molasses tank. Nothing to worry about.
"It CAN'T happen here!" "Nothing even similar will happen here!" Meteor strikes welcome here. Never say never; Fate will getcha when you least expect it.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that in the summer some parts of Boston's North Side still smell like molasses.
ReplyDeleteI went to the "font of knowledge" to learn what happened in 1919, and noticed that the very next day "The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition, is ratified."
ReplyDeleteWithin the next month the League of Nations was founded (presumably initiating avalanches of deep-thinking punditry), and there was a major strike put down with Federal troops.
Lots of stuff to occupy the "mind" of the newspapers nationwide... and, as you point out, most of us don't have a tank of liquid sugar uphill from us.
Isn't "mo lasses" more young women?
ReplyDeleteForgive me, it just came out.
ReplyDeleteYou don't think of molasses as potentially harmful. It's like the Ghostbusters scene with the giant Pillsbury Doughboy or Sta-Puff Marshmallow man or whatever he was.
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