Small businesses embrace total solar eclipse crowd
The last time a total solar eclipse passed through Waxahachie, Texas, horses and buggies filled the streets and cotton fetched nine cents a pound.
Nearly 150 years later, one thing hasn’t changed: the threat of clouds blocking the view. Overcast skies are forecast for today’s cosmic wonder across Texas, already packing in eclipse chasers to the delight of small-town businesses.
As the moon covers the sun, daytime darkness will follow a narrow corridor — from Mexico’s Pacific coast to Texas and 14 other states all the way to Maine and the eastern fringes of Canada. The best US forecast: northern New England.
Like other communities along the path of totality, Waxahachie, a halfhour’s drive south of Dallas, is pulling out all the stops. It’s the region’s first total solar eclipse since 1878. The next one won’t be for almost another 300 years.
“I feel so lucky that I don’t have to go anywhere,” the Ellis County Museum’s Suzette Pylant said as she welcomed visitors in town for the eclipse. “I get to just look out my window, walk out my door and look up.”
She’s praying the weather will cooperate, as are the owners of all the shops clustered around the historic courthouse made of red sandstone and pink granite in the centre of town. They’re bracing for a few hundred thousand visitors for Monday’s four minutes, 20 seconds of totality.
The Oily Bar Soapery is hosted a Bubble Blackout all weekend, with eclipse-themed soaps and giveaways.
Owner Kalee Hume said that with the next one centuries away, “we figured we’d go all out”.
Nazir Moosa, who owns the Celebrity Cafe and Bakery, winced when he heard the weather report, but noted: “It’s weather. You can’t control it.”
North of Austin, Williamson County residents hope the eclipse puts the area’s new park on the map. The River Ranch County Park, which opened in July on the outskirts of the city of Liberty Hill, is sold out and ready to host hundreds today
“It still has that new park smell,” said Sam Gibson, the park’s assistant office administrator.
Stacie Kenyon is inviting people to watch the eclipse from her Main Street Marketplace in the heart of Liberty Hill’s historic downtown — and escape inside the boutique if it rains.
“We were really hopeful, but now with this weather it is kind of a bummer,” Kenyon said. “We will just have to wait and see.”
In Waxahachie, there’s a sense of déjà vu around the town of 45,000 residents. A banner in the museum’s front window, displaying newspaper headlines from the July 29, 1878, eclipse, detailed the cloudy skies all morning. But just before the moon
lined up between the sun and Earth that afternoon, the sky cleared.
Totality won’t sweep across the US like this again until 2045, sidestepping almost all of Texas.
“It just blows me away,” Moosa said as he served up a large breakfast crowd. “The hotels’ rooms are booked and everything else ... it’s very good news for Waxahachie.”