Wasn’t my department. But since you asked, I do remember something. Must be forty years ago now. Steve and I were new. The white hats were off somewhere, so we spent the morning playing broom hockey. Used a pint we dug out from a fan mount. Jack Daniels, Black Label. Sometimes we found them part full, but this was empty and open. Except maybe half a teaspoon, dried to a syrup.
I remember it was hot that noon. I was sitting outside on the loading dock, leaning on the corrugated steel. The steel felt cool in the shade. The explosion had to be loud, but I don’t remember. I think I saw an orange flame. Then maybe the top two thirds of “The Largest Blast Furnace in the Western Hemisphere” disappeared in that black disaster smoke. Just like you see on TV.
What I really remember is the coke. Pea sized. Coming down all around me and bouncing on the concrete. I remember my hard hat was lying upside down with a sandwich in it. Pickle loaf with American cheese. Then I was standing inside the loading dock with the hard hat on my head and pickle loaf mush on my hand.
When I looked back, men were coming down the stairs along the outside and running toward the road. A line of light shirts under a black cloud. I finished lunch later, inside. Went back for my chocolate milk. Bought a Butterfinger at the canteen. I have forgotten who died. No one I knew. But I remember those pellets of coke, dropped around like petrified bunny shit. We swept coke balls out of the parking lot all afternoon.
Mike Smetzer has been published in New Letters, West Branch, Cottonwood, and Hanging Loose, among others, and has two chapbooks: A Quiet Man and Teaching the Clergy to Dance. Some of his published work appears on his writing website, mikesmetzer.wordpress.com.