total solar eclipse – Author Sarah Angleton

August 15, 1969 was a mild, warm day near the small town of Bethel, New York. It was the perfect day for a leisurely drive down State Highway 17B. By leisurely of course, I mean about an eight hour drive to move about ten miles with nearly half a million of your closest friends.

Just like in the classic children’s book Go Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman, the place everyone was going on that pretty day in the middle of nowhere, was a great big party—in this case, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that was to take place for “three days of peace and music” on a 600-acre dairy farm.

I have lots of friends who made the drive and took the pictures. This isn’t one of theirs, but they all look pretty much like this. Image by Dane from Pixabay

The weather didn’t stay nice, of course. The sky grew overcast and there was a fair amount of rain to try to soak into an already somewhat saturated ground. By the end of the event, which rain delays pushed into a fourth day, there was an awful lot of mud. And the road snarl to get there was bad enough the performers had to be brought in by helicopter. Nearly fifty-five years later it still makes the top ten list of all-time worst traffic jams in history.

But people who attended seem to think it was a pretty good time. The whole thing sounds like an absolute nightmare to me, but then my perfect day would more likely be spent on a dairy farm in the middle of nowhere with no one but the cows and a book. Well, maybe a few people could come with me. And I’d want at least three books. Also, no traffic.

There are probably a lot of things I’d choose not to do just so I could avoid traffic. Earlier this week I made just such a decision when a swath of my state experienced a total solar eclipse. From the vantage point of my driveway, the moon’s coverage of the sun was somewhere close to 98%.

If you do like to avoid a rush, you can still get a free advance digital copy of my new historical mystery by joining the launch team by April 15th: https://forms.gle/psi7ctZ6fNK88dbB9

A lot of people got pretty excited about the idea of traveling a smidge into the area of totality. I do mean a lot. The news reported that drive times doubled and even more than tripled in parts of the state. In many places, traffic completely shut down during the eclipse itself with motorists donning cardboard eclipse glasses and staring up at the sky.

Of those I know who traveled for the event, most say it was well worth it. I’m sure it was. If I hadn’t experienced a total eclipse seven years ago, I might have been excited enough to travel, too, but the traffic in my driveway was no thicker than usual.

At nearly 98% coverage of the sun, the sky grew noticeably darker, the air got cooler, the insect noise shifted a bit, and my dog grew a touch antsy. I had a pair of cardboard eclipse glasses and I did stare up at a sliver of the sun. Then I had a lengthy conversation with my four-year-old neighbor who was wearing a Spider-Man sweatshirt just in case the eclipse gifted him with superpowers.

It didn’t, which was disappointing for both of us. But the day was mild and warm, perfect for standing on the driveway, looking up at the sky, and avoiding traffic.

In my corner of the world, we have a very exciting event coming up. If you’re in the US, and particularly if you are anywhere along the line from about Salem, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina, you’ve probably heard about the total eclipse we’ll be witnessing on Monday, August 21.

It’s a pretty big deal, worthy of donning goofy-looking glasses and taking a few minutes out of your day to say, “Huh. It’s really dark out, which is definitely kind of weird.”

The reason we’re all so excited is that a total solar eclipse hasn’t been visible in the Continental US in 38 years. It’s also pretty cool that the path of totality will hit nine different states with more than 10 million people living within the moon’s full shadow. Another 28 million people live within 60 miles of that path, and everyone in the US should be able to see at least a partial eclipse.

eclipse glasses Steve — I was going to model the glasses myself, but they were pretty goofy-looking. Instead I enlisted the help of my buddy Sock Monkey Steve, who never seems to mind looking goofy for a good cause.

Though not all of St. Louis is directly in the path, a good chunk of it is, including about 1.3 million residents, and the hundreds of thousands of people that will be clogging the roads to get to the perfect viewing spot, causing all the rest of us to be late for work.

And why not? It’s not like this happens all the time. In fact, St. Louis has not seen a total solar eclipse since 1442, when St. Louis didn’t exist yet, so technically, I suppose it’s never happened in the city before. It’s an event that’s worth experiencing, and one that’s certainly worth remembering.

Because you never know when it might come in handy to call on a memory like that. Like, for example, if you happen to have the unfortunate experience of getting conked on the head only to wake up in the court of King Arthur in June of 528, it would be useful to know that on the day the king has decided to execute you, you will be in the path of totality of a historical eclipse.

This is what happened to Mark Twain’s 19th century Connecticut Yankee Hank Morgan. A man suddenly out of time and facing public execution, Hank drew on his knowledge of the disappearing sun to convince the court he was a great magician, even greater than Merlin, and that were he not given back his life, he’d never allow the sun to return. It’s an amusing scene in which Hank has to use some misdirection and not all that clever stall tactics to get the timing to turn out right, since he doesn’t know precisely how long the eclipse will last. But it eventually all works out, and Hank gets to live on to destroy history another day.

Bing_Crosby_-_Connecticut_Yankee — If you ever find yourself in this situation, don’t panic. Just remember your eclipse dates. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court trailer, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I know Hank’s story is not exactly historical, but it was written in the 1880s so maybe you can cut me a little slack on this one. The scene also may have been inspired by an actual historical event from February of 1504, when Christopher Columbus used some old-timey Google magic to convince the natives of Jamaica to continue supplying his shipwrecked crew long after the actions of said crew had pretty much convinced the natives they didn’t much want to.

Because Columbus knew something the natives didn’t know, that the full moon was planning to hide behind the earth for a little bit on the night of February 29. All he had to do was to claim this temporary disappearance as a sign from his angry God. Suddenly he had a native population that was more interested in helping the crew survive until help arrived.

Lunar Eclipse — Columbus’s old-timey Google magic came from a widely used almanac by astronomer Johannes Müller von Königsberg (or Regiomantanus). By Camille Flammarion – Astronomie Populaire 1879, p231 fig. 86, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And if it worked for Columbus, it might work for you someday, because even though to the best of my knowledge no one in the real world has yet been conked on the head and been transported to sixth century England, plenty of elements of science fiction have come more or less true. Really, I think it’s safest to be prepared.

But just in case you ever do find yourself in that situation, you should know that Mark Twain, who did not have the advantage of Google (or evidently an almanac), got the date wrong. There was no total solar eclipse on June 21 of 528. Hank’s plan wouldn’t have worked and he would have gotten himself burned at the stake.

But there really is going to be an eclipse on Monday. If you’re in the path of this much anticipated solar event, get yourself some goofy-looking glasses (from a reliably safe source) and enjoy because it’s going to get really dark out, and it will definitely be kind of weird. Then maybe brush up on your eclipse history, because you never know when you might get conked on the head.