The city of St. Joseph, Missouri isn’t very big, but it has made a national name for itself over the years. Home of the Pony Express and the point of departure for the Oregon Trail, it served as Missouri’s true gateway to the west in the 19th century. Jesse James lived and died there. In the 20th century, such notables as Walter Cronkite and Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, were born there.
No stranger to fame, St. Joseph put itself back on the map in the 21st century by being one of the best spots in the world to camp out for the 2017 total solar eclipse. Smack dab in the “path of totality,” St. Joseph was going to get a full 2 minutes and 38 seconds of the full eclipse—only a few seconds shy of the maximum amount for any spot in North America. Even better, history suggested that St. Joseph had a better chance of clear skies than almost anywhere else in the country. “For years, transplanted Australian Joe Mack plotted out where he’d plant himself for the 2017 eclipse,” the Kansas City Star reported on Aug. 20. “He’s retired these days to Durham, N.C., not far from where the path of totality will run Monday. But, historically, an August day in that region is clouded over 65 percent of the time. St. Joseph, by contrast, typically gets overcast just 5 percent of the time.”
I had never really had an interest in watching a total solar eclipse, but my wife was born and raised in St. Joseph and we hadn’t been back since Thanksgiving. So when a work event sent her traveling home for the weekend, it seemed like a good idea to join her and tens of thousands of people from all over the country and even the world to watch the eclipse.
In the days leading up to it, the town buzzed with anticipation. On Saturday afternoon, three women from a local Baptist church walked through Starbucks handing out free eclipse-viewing glasses. In a pizza parlor that night, I was asked if I had heard about the Arab sheikh who had rented out the entire parking lot of Menard’s for the eclipse. The sheikh, the story went, wanted to conceive a child during the eclipse because of a superstition that such a child would be endowed with great powers. Why the sheikh would need an entire parking lot to accomplish this task was unclear. But you know sheikhs, they love the life of luxury.
(On one hand, this story is what journalists like to call “too good to check.” On the other hand, it’s the kind of problematic “fake news” story we’ve been warned about floating around Facebook. Unfortunately, a quick Google search revealed it wasn’t true.)
With or without the copulating caravan, there was still a lot to be excited about. The main event is, after all, one of the natural wonders of the world. As Annie Dillard wrote in an essay about the 1979 eclipse, “A partial eclipse is very interesting. It bears almost no relation to a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as … flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane.” She described a sky of deep indigo and a landscape of platinum hues that have “never been seen on Earth.”
The only problem for the people of St. Joseph and their visitors is that in order to see the otherworldly colors, you need clear skies. And although the town historically has only a 5 percent chance of overcast skies, Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 was shaping up to be an unlucky day.
Over the weekend, the forecast changed from clear skies to partly cloudy to mostly cloudy. And as the total eclipse approached, the sky was darkened not by the moon but by rain clouds. It looked like the great eclipse of 2017 was going to be a total bust.
But in the minutes before totality, the rain stopped at our viewing location at Rosecrans Memorial Airport. The clouds didn’t break until after the total eclipse ended, but for two minutes and 38 seconds they did turn a deep indigo and there was a beautiful orange glow on the horizon, where there weren’t any clouds or umbras to get in the way. Moments after the total eclipse had begun, a little girl said to her mother: “Mom, it’s a miracle from God!” And so it was, even in obscurity: a testament to the beauty of creation and a reminder that our days on this earth are not long.
I later discovered that the next eclipse to run through my own hometown in Wisconsin won’t occur until 2099. I would need to live to 114 to see it.
