And I'll Shake You

Wm.

April 13

Monday was a good day.

Martha, her sister Ruth, and I had driven to Indianapolis on Sunday afternoon to get in position for the total eclipse visiting much of the Hoosier State shortly after 3pm the following day. Georgetown reached over 90% of totality back in August 2017 and was slated for more or less the same this go-round. The experience in '17 was cool, but maybe not cool enough for me now--given that my next best chance to experience totality would occur when/if I'm 81, I decided to go for it, posting notes online for my Monday classes and telling the students to let me know if they had questions (guess how many took me up on that?)

By late Monday morning we were in Edinburgh, about 35 miles south of Indianapolis, where we had reservations at The Barn at Hamner Ridge, a spot that normally functions as a wedding venue. They had maybe a couple of acres of open space, allowing parties to spread out blankets and open pop-up canopies while setting up cameras on tripods. I counted about three dozen vehicles in the parking lot around 2pm, so I'd guess there were fewer than 200 people on site. (The size and density of the crowd was close to optimal--it was good to share the moment with others without worry of invading anyone's space.) We were among the first to arrive and made camp on one of the higher points, not terribly far from a line of trees.

A blow-by-blow of the afternoon isn't worth your time to read, but I will say that totality and the moments surrounding it were remarkable, even if I'm not able to describe them well. We were fortunate that the skies were mostly clear, only a few high clouds consistently hanging around. The temperature was in the low 70s but as the big moment approached it grew noticeably cooler. The increasing dimming of the sky was plenty eerie; suddenly we were in a twilight unlike anything I've experienced, with 360 degrees of "sunset" on the horizon. I had decided in advance to live in the moment and not spend our four-ish minutes in the shadows taking lots of pictures, but I couldn't resist snapping a few, poor as they may be. I won't be forgetting where I stood, or how it felt, anytime soon.

The end was notable as well, a tear in the fabric of the sky allowing blinding light back in our world; back on went the glasses. It wasn't long before it once again looked like any other early spring sunny afternoon. I knew better, however.

The eclipse was the best but not the only highlight of the day--Martha and Ruth had been treated to a true blast from the past on our way to breakfast. As we headed toward a diner a few miles south of town, wife and sis-in-law reminisced about visits to Indy back in the 60s and 70s to see their Great Aunt Margaret. She'd lived on U.S. 31, the road we were traveling, but neither could recall the exact location. Since this stretch has experienced extensive commercial development over the decades, neither figured the house could possibly still be standing. Wrong--Ruth looked out to her right at just the proper moment and recognized it immediately. After breakfast we circled back, found a spot nearby to park ,and walked close enough to take some decent pictures. They agreed it looked mostly as it had fifty years ago; subsequent research on Zillow allowed them to take a peek inside as well. An unexpected and welcome surprise.

Unsurprisingly, traffic was stop-and-go on I-65 through much of southern Indiana, even though we'd delayed our trip home by staying for the entirety of the eclipse and getting dinner nearby afterward. Construction just east of Louisville on I-64 slowed us further, so it was nearly 10pm before we arrived back home. Exhilarated but exhausted, I was ready to drop. There was still a song to play on my phone before climbing into bed, however. Scrolling Facebook during one of the idle moments early on at the Barn, I'd come across a photo in a friend's post. A TV screen in a karaoke bar, displaying most of the second verse of an amazing early 70s song that I've gotten into only in recent months. At first glance there's nothing to do with what we'd experienced, but then one twists the prism in just the right, weird way to let the colors of the rainbow spill out: we had just seen a big star get painted black for a short while. And maybe the last four words of the verse, the ones missing from that picture I'd seen, the ones comprising the title of this post, applied (though not in the way Alex Chilton meant) to the events of the day.