The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Four days for four minutes: On the road to the eclipse
It didn’t seem like four minutes. When the last sliver of sun disappeared and darkness stretched across the fields of Burnt Prairie, Illinois, my friends and I stared up at the black circle ringed by the solar corona.
The temperature dropped rapidly from the mid-70s. Crickets started chirping as a few stars came out, but near the flat horizon the sky was still blue.
Then, soon, a red point of light at the bottom of the sun turned into a curved line, then a yellowing crescent — and totality was over.
We folded our chairs and started the long drive back.
The April 8 eclipse fell on a Monday, just as in 2017. But totality for this one was supposed to last a whopping 4 minutes, 6 seconds in Burnt Prairie. The eclipse began 12:42 p.m. Central time, reaching totality at 2:01 p.m.
I dressed for the occasion: a black T-shirt bearing the phrase “eppur si muove,” — “and yet it moves.” It was supposedly muttered by Galileo when forced by the Inquisition to recant his assertion that the Earth orbits the sun.
I only had to drive 60 miles for a great view of the 2017 eclipse. At the time I worked for the Knoxville News Sentinel, so that Aug. 21 I tooled down I-40 and U.S. 27 for 90 minutes to a park in Spring City, Tennessee. I caught 2 minutes and 40 seconds of totality.
As the sun disappeared I recall feeling awed by the spectacle of such immense forces, beyond human control. Blotting out the sun!
The 2017 event was the first total eclipse visible in the U.S. this century. Three upcoming total eclipses will actually be visible in Georgia: 2045, 2052 and 2078, according to NASA.
I hope to make a couple more of those, but there are no guarantees; so I arranged for time off to travel for this one. Along the way I picked up two old friends, Chad Watts and Mark Kinney.
Viewers in Atlanta should have seen the moon cover about 80% of the sun.
But I wanted to see it all, so I planned a 1,150-mile round trip.
Saturday I made the 5-hour trek from Sandy Springs to Bowling Green, Kentucky. I ran a gauntlet of highway patrol speed traps in Georgia and Tennessee, and a traffic jam on Monteagle turned the five-hour trip into six.
Chad and I went shopping for an insulated cooler bag, bottled water, snacks and just-in-case sunscreen. I reminded him to bring a chair and a hat, figuring if we arrived at the start of occlusion we’d be out there for about an hour and 20 minutes.
Repeated construction slowdowns lengthened our drive to Louisville. We passed one billboard advertising a small Indiana town as a great place to watch the eclipse.
Mark had put out a call on social media for anyone going to watch the eclipse. So we picked him up and struck west from Louisville on I-64 until the highway intersected with the centerline of totality.
That occurred, more or less, at Burnt Prairie — population 35 and shrinking, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Reports warned of heavy traffic and exorbitant hotel charges, but I found rooms for normal prices. Chad and I spent a pleasant afternoon poking around Louisville, where I lived for a couple of years.
Local TV news blared at the hotel’s breakfast Monday morning, warning people to have emergency supplies handy during the eclipse.
“They’ll be screamin’ in the streets tonight!” said a hotel employee, as the TV anchor went on to warn of afternoon traffic jams.
North of Evansville, Indiana, we hit heavy clouds and thick fog. We worried the eclipse would be invisible. But the sky cleared as we crossed the Illinois line.
Three hours before the eclipse we were just 20 miles from Burnt Prairie, so we stopped for omelets and pancakes at the Family Diner in Grayville, Illinois. All the other customers seemed to be locals. A family came in wearing local T-shirts commemorating the eclipse.
Grayville was not on the centerline but was well within the zone of totality. The local chamber of commerce had a grill set up in a church parking lot, and people were putting out lawn chairs along the streets. The Grayville Elementary School sign announced classes were canceled for “Eclipse Day.”
Shortly after noon we drove the last few miles and stopped on a gravel lane next to a stubbly cornfield, and waited. We set up our chairs one minute before it was supposed to start. Mark and I both bought eclipse glasses well in advance, so we were prepared.
A few other cars sat along the same road. The one nearest to us bore Minnesota plates. Its occupant had driven down from Minneapolis.
Chad used his phone to look up eclipse-related songs: Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” Etta James’ “I’d Rather go Blind.” We talked and listened to music for more than 40 minutes as the moon slowly crawled across the sun’s face. About 15 minutes before totality, with the sun reduced to a crescent, we noticed the light beginning to dim.
And then, too quickly, it was over.
No eclipse conspiracy theories about great earthquakes, mass human sacrifice, martial law proclamations, collapse of infrastructure or Biblical “End Times” came true. Nor did it somehow prove the Earth is flat.
We stopped at a tiny local truck stop so I could file this story. The crowd outside was already dispersing.