Descriptive Writing

HON 296 Split Rock Disaster course at Onondaga Community College practicing descriptive writing

A true story of a victim to the Split Rock Disaster. His name was Thomas Gray:

“Singing always soothes the soul, exhaling fresh air out of my lungs creating exhilarating sounds with words so powerful. I have a great voice! Although, at times my voice becomes raspy because of the smoke and fumes in the thick air I continuously breathe. My fellow friends in the Cathedral choir know me as Thomas Gray. I work on Split Rock Quarry with many other men trying to make a living in this rough world. I’ve had 31 years of living so far. I live on 121 Furman with my mum, a beautiful woman inside and out who surely raised me well. I get my pretty looks from her. Now I know what you’re thinking… what’s a 31 year old doing living with his mum still? Well ya see, never been married, no kids, and my mum needs my help around the house and loves the company. She took care of me growing up, so I owe it to her. For the most part, she gets around easy by herself while I’m working at Split Rock. Every day is the same ole routine getting up and going up the hill to the rock. Exhausting, yes, but I feel like it’s worth it to fight this war. WWI is causing turmoil, I feel like at any time we won’t live to see another day. Today was going to be like any ole day, mixing the TNT until my body hurt and my flesh becoming the same color as my dark shirt. Little did I know. I brought home a jar of some TNT for my mum yesterday. It looks like a kind of yellow-brown sugar and I still don’t know why she wants to put that stuff on the mantel. She says it’s the new décor all her friends are putting in their homes. They admire it, but after mixing TNT every day, I don’t see anything but a bomb ready to explode.

I feel peace walking up this hill because it gives me a chance to clear my head before being suffocated with the thick, toxic air at the top. “Hey Crowley!” I run into William Crowley almost every morning. Seeing that guy always makes work feel lighter cracking me up with his jokes. Lots of the guys are cool here but I feel like we all do what we got to do and go home to get the real party started. As I walk on through the quarry, there are people crossing paths everywhere, carts and storage containers brushing up dust and fumes like a broom sweeping dirt across the floor. A blanket of chemical fumes wraps around my body like a wool coat draped around me during the rough Syracuse winters; although, this was not the type of blanket I wanted around me. Suffocating my lungs little by little, but today was different than any other.

Dusk had fallen and I was pouring the TNT as I watched my friend roll by. Out of nowhere, a loud panicked voice screams, “Let’s get that loaded car out of here!” Patrolman Buck Lynch rang out the alert that would begin this fatal disaster. Flames engulf the Monte-jus room and spread to the 60-foot tower of the No. 1 TNT building next to me. Hoses, fire extinguishers, and chemical carts flew by as trained firemen tried to keep the fire under control. Water blasts towards the building spraying me in the face. I hope they get this fire under control or there could be an explosion.

BOOM! I blasted off the ground like a rocket lifting me off the soiled ground. Pieces of my body mixing in the air with body parts of my friends, all of us falling from the sky. After I hit the ground, the heaviest rain fall I have ever felt pounded down on me. Darts, like the ones you play at the bar except heavier darts made of solid limestone rock. These rock darts coming towards me smash darkness into my brain overcoming my thoughts. I never saw it coming. My mum heard of the news and she’s never been the same since that day. My loyal friend, William T. Crowley suffered in the same darkness that had succumb me. Crowley was my dear friend who was a patrolman on Split Rock. He got one more year of living on me, he was 32. He suffered severe burns, his corpse was destroyed causing his death. The worst part wasn’t that though. The worst part was that some idiots mistakenly buried him in Watertown. Crowley didn’t deserve to go like that, none of us did. Undertakers McCarthy and Dan Bennett tried to reconstruct my head and face because I was unrecognizable. My mum didn’t even know it was me! My face crumbled and blackened like a burnt log deforming as it burns in a fire. They did the best they could, but even after they were finished, she didn’t know that taped-up face was the face of the same baby she once looked at, as she rocked me to sleep. A photographer by the name of Arthur Cullings, confirmed my identity from the pieces that were left of my head. My decrepit body was buried in a wooden box on July 5th, three days after the explosion robbed me of my existence.”