All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Generally Speaking, Think on this...

Pumping Gas

August 2006, Photograph by The Day, New London, CT

Rider on the Storm

HURRICANE AFTERMATH

"If New Englanders noticed the obscure news stories . . . telling of a tropical hurricane crossing the South Atlantic, they probably thought, 'Too bad for Florida,'".

But on September 21, 1938, that "obscure" cyclone roared north, slamming the U.S. Northeast coast with 120-mile-an-hour (190 kilometers an hour) winds and a storm surge that left parts of Providence, Rhode Island, under nearly 14 feet (four meters) of water. Eighty-eight percent of the New England Power Association's customers had no electric service—including this New London, Connecticut, gas station. Then, according to the April 1939 Geographic, where this photo appeared, "Yankee ingenuity" rode to the rescue. "Hundreds of automobiles were stalled for lack of fuel on New England roads until somebody thought of this solution," claimed the picture's caption. —Margaret G. Zackowitz

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