Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [11]
The law of convenient epiphany would place the trigger for Isaac’s decision to become a meteorologist in the funnel of a tornado that swept into nearby Fork Creek Valley one Saturday night, lifted the bed of a sleeping child, and deposited the bed in an orchard one hundred yards away, the child still aboard and safe, the bed intact. Or perhaps in the great skeletons of lightning that clutched the sky so many August nights. These things played a part, no doubt. Lightning was barely understood, tornadoes not at all. To a boy in a land of ghosts and wild men, how could they not be alluring?
But other forces played on Isaac. He came of age in a time of broad technological awakening, in an America transformed by steam and telegraphic communication. He read everything by Jules Verne. Between bouts of plowing, while giving his mule, Jim, a rest, he would join Phileas Fogg and Captain Nemo on their elaborate adventures. Isaac loved science—his greatest dream was to write a scientific treatise on something, anything, as long as it resonated the world over—but he also loved the Bible, so much so that toward the end of his years in high school his friends urged him to become a preacher. At sixteen, he entered Hiwassee College in Tennessee, where he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, Latin, and Greek. A few friends had set their sights on becoming lawyers, and for a time Isaac joined them in reading the works of Sir William Blackstone, the eighteenth-century English jurist, but never with a serious desire to practice. “I first studied to be a preacher, but decided that I was too prone to tell big stories,” he later explained. “Then I studied Blackstone for a while and soon learned that I was not adept enough at prevarication to make a successful lawyer. I then made up my mind that I would seek some field where I could tell big stories and tell the truth.”
He chose the weather.
ACTUALLY, THE WEATHER chose him.
Gen. William B. Hazen, in charge of the U.S. Signal Corps since 1880, wanted only the best men for his new weather service. Smart men, moral men, scientific men, but above all, strong men capable of wading against a mounting sea of skepticism about the corps’ ability to report and forecast the weather. He wrote to college presidents asking them to recommend likely candidates from their graduating classes.
The president of Hiwassee College, J. H. Bruner, recommended Isaac.
“I accepted with pleasure,” Isaac wrote, “for it was just the kind of work I wanted.” General Hazen telegraphed instructions directing him to report to Washington on July 7, 1882.
ISAAC REACHED WASHINGTON’S Pennsylvania Railroad Station early on the morning of July 6. He was twenty years old and had spent his entire life in the hollows of Tennessee, but suddenly his world got much larger. Gigantic. The minute he stepped from the train he found himself standing where a president’s blood had flowed. A marker showed the exact place where President James Garfield had been shot one year earlier by Charles J. Guiteau. Guiteau was hanged the week before Isaac’s arrival. Now the platform was crowded with men whose great bellies and muttonchop whiskers spoke of power. Already the air was sticky and hot. It smelled of horses and smoke. The men wore black suits. They did not appear to suffer in the heat, but the air carried a certain added pungency. Never had Isaac seen so many people gathered in one place, amid so much noise and such a rich battery of scents. The whistles of locomotives shrieked; their boilers hissed. He heard an intermittent ringing and knew instantly