Black and green clouds rolled into the city, punctuated by scratches of lightning. And then the wind started to blow. It sounded like thousands of bird wings flapping; it got very dark, and there was a very fast wind, filled with leaves and dirt. The clouds funneled down, and in less than 15 minutes, a tornado had chewed up 250 city blocks, leaving collapsed buildings and fires and dead people and dead horses everywhere.
This is Lafayette Park a few months before the storm, when it still had a lake with fountains; the tornado blew all the water off the lake, sent the swan boats into actual flight (they landed in the street, miles away), and collapsed the bandstand with the gold dome. It shredded the Victorian gardens, symmetrical as argyle, leaving nothing but tree stumps and stuff too heavy to blow away—an iron bridge, two Revolutionary War cannons, a statue of Thomas Hart Benton. Despite the high button boots and the boating clothes, there’s something about this picture (maybe the kid rubbing his eye?) that makes it feel so contemporary it’s almost banal. Or it would be, without the corrosion of the emulsion. It’s like the photo started to try to erase itself, or was prognosticating damage. Or maybe it was trying to draw us an uncanny cavern, the kind of place where a mad bear or a land wight might live. All to say to us this: Most days will be unremarkable, filled with cooking and driving and licking bill envelopes shut. But be ready for the rift, the fault line, when the dullness of mowed grass and dry afternoon sunlight will seem like the most precious thing in the world.
Anonymous photographer; from the collection of John and Teenuh Foster
