21. ST MARY’S INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH INCIDENT REPORT
Competition entry by Bhadrika Love
A Sticky Situation
Date: January 15, 1919
Location: Nevada (final state to ratify the amendment) BOSTON -T.F.
Purpose: observe the impact of a nationwide ban on alcohol
Waiver rationale: limited alternatives, since few countries have attempted such a foolish prohibition.
Reporting Historian: Susan Doherty (Tom Fengstrom remains on indefinite leave)
Summary:
My partner, Tom Fengstrom, changed the location, citing safety (Boston being “on the fringe,” rather than in the center, of America). This seemed to make sense at the time. I had no idea that his actual motivation for this entire jump was a passionate – and extremely well-hidden – obsession with American history. Much of which, apparently, happened in Boston.
We planned to visit a bar, to hear opinions about the looming threat. When Tom eagerly picked one founded in 1795, I just thought he was taking “well established” very literally. His enthusiastic comments about Daniel Webster and Paul Revere having drunk there seemed odd, but I thought he was just telling the staff that previous customers had shared positive reviews.
There were few patrons, none discussing the proposed law. We left, and Tom began to behave oddly. He stared slack-jawed at everything – not even trying to blend in. He even paused to stroke random buildings!
When Tom saw a decorative circle of paving stones, he exclaimed “the Massacre!” and threw himself to the ground, gibbering “This is where it all began.” Startled, I stumbled into a woman pushing a pram, jarring the pram and waking the child, who began to howl. The mother scooped up the crying baby and glared at me.
I started to apologize, but we were both distracted by Mr. Fengstrom rising from the ground, reaching towards her like a strangely reverent Nosferatu. He grabbed the monogrammed cloth wrapped around the infant and pulled it towards his face, as if to kiss the decorative JFK stitched into the corner. Apologizing profusely, I tried to drag him away, but he became almost hysterical, broke free, and ran off.
I finally overtook him near the harbor. The sight of a well-dressed woman chasing a gentleman was drawing unwelcomed attention. Between that and Mr. Fengstrom’s bizarre behavior, I did not behave as professionally as I typically would have. Instead, I grabbed Tom and slammed him against the wall.
Except it wasn’t a wall. It was a massive tank, bigger than most of the buildings nearby. At least fifteen meters tall, metal, and… sticky. It was painted brown, so they weren’t obvious, but the wall was covered with dripping rivulets of a thick, sticky substance. A few yards away, two children were scraping the wall, collecting the goop into tin cans.
When Tom struck the wall, I heard a deep, painful groan, and thought at first I had injured him. But the sound kept growing — a deep, rumbling moan unlike any a person ever made. Then it faded, only to be replaced by a new groan, from another section of the tank. We backed away, frightened, but the urchins laughed. “Don’t pay it no mind,” one said. “It always moans like that, ’specially right after a new load.” Not reassured, Tom and I hurried back towards the pod. We had gone just a few blocks when there was a series of loud bangs, as the walls behind us appeared to be hit by machine gun fire.
I have seen movies about organized crime during alcohol prohibition. It’s why we jumped to the day before the law passed, when American cities were not yet war zones. Clearly, this caution had failed. “It’s Al Capone!” I exclaimed.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom snapped. “Alfonse Capone ran the mob in Chicago, not Boston, and doesn’t take over from Johnny Torrio until 1925.” I began to suspect that my partner was far more invested in American History than I’d realized.
The groaning noise resumed, louder, and increasing to a roar. I looked back, and where we had stood just a few minutes before there now rose a wall of brown liquid, a tsunami of… something. Moving faster than any wave should, it crushed everything in its path. Houses were ripped from their foundations, the elevated train knocked over, vehicles flattened. We ran, and almost made it. Just a few yards from safety, the wave overtook us. It was only about a foot deep by this point, but this wasn’t the gentle slap of a shallow wave at the beach. The liquid was so heavy it knocked us down, and at that point…. It stopped being a liquid. We were toppled by a fast-flowing wave of liquid, and found ourselves embedded in a thick, sticky mass, like flies in amber.
The new R&D intern later explained this phenomenon to me. He’d filled a child’s pool with white liquid, slightly thicker than milk. He then climbed on a chair and jumped in, but landed on the surface as if on a solid piece of plaster. And then slowly sank. He explained that this was “Oobleck” – corn starch mixed with water to form a non-Newtonian fluid. Oobleck is a sheer-thickening fluid that becomes solid under pressure, while our tank must have been filled with a sheer-thinning fluid. The contents of the tank was thinned by the extreme force of the rupture, while the liquid in his pool solidified every time he tried to take a step. I left him to figure that out.
The tank had been poorly made years before to hold molasses – which was distilled into ethanol to make munitions for the War. It was well known to leak – they even painted it brown to hide this. It had made concerning noises for so long that people no longer found them concerning. Now the war was over, and the only other market for ethanol was about to be banned. So the owners were rushing to distill as much alcohol as they could, before Prohibition put them out of business. The tank was filled to capacity, which combined with recent temperature changes to create overwhelming pressure, causing it to explode. The force of the rupture shot rivets out like bullets, flung the metal plates in all directions, and caused the molasses to thin and flow extremely fast. Until it stopped moving, and returned to a viscous, near-solid substance.
Just to be clear: this was not my fault. Yes, I pushed Mr. Fengstrom roughly against an aging and poorly constructed tank, but there is no way my frustrated shove had any significant effect compared to the weight of 2.3 million gallons of molasses.
It took us hours to escape the last few yards of thickened molasses. People tried to help, but anyone stepping into the goop became another person needing rescue. Besides, others were in far more need of aid – 150 people were injured, and 21 died, many by suffocation. I realize that the wardrobe department was extremely distressed by the state of our clothing, but we were lucky to only lose our shoes.
And yes, the technical section was understandably upset to find every surface in the pod is now persistently sticky. But it barely smells like cabbage anymore! Judging from the reports of North Boston smelling like molasses for decades, that’s a benefit that might last.
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The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 is one of the bits of history you hear in Boston that you're sure must be made up, but isn't. I hoped an event being both surreal and tragic would fit here. And then, researching it, I got to learn about sheer-thinning fluids! And that Prohibition wasn't just a convenient reason to jump to that date, but actually related to the event (albeit tangentially).
Gotta love Jodi Taylor - even entering a contest on her site ends up being educational.
As for the two children in my story.... poor children in the nearby neighborhoods were known to collect the dripping molasses, and two of the victims (Maria Distasio and Pasquale Iantosca) were 10 years old, though they were actually scavenging firewood at the time. I learned about them, too.