Cuyahoga (scene)

Tonight Fire On The Water opens at Cleveland Public Theatre, which is inspired by the Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969. I am really looking forward to seeing this play, a collaboration between five West Side theater companies, combining as it does local history and theater, and features the work of some of my favorite artists anywhere.

Several years ago while I was reading up on the events of 1936, I discovered that the Cuyahoga had caught fire several other times during the past one hundred and fifty years. I wrote a brief scene as part of the These Are The Times which I later cut.

This scene is not part of Fire On The Water, either ... I just felt like sharing. Enjoy!


CUYAHOGA
by David Hansen © 2011

VOICE OF THE LIVING NEWSPAPER
The savage peoples who clung to the banks of the Great Lake Erie prior to the white man’s arrival called itself the Iroquois. And they had a name for the mighty river that wended its tortured route to that great inland sea - CUYAHOGA, meaning “crooked river.”

CITIZEN 1
So ... “Cuyahoga River” means “crooked river river”?

VOICE OF THE LIVING NEWSPAPER
Yes! The banks of the Cuyahoga, called the Flats are the powerful digestive system of this tremendous Midwestern economy. Shipping vessels make the impossible turns, bringing freight from the Erie Canal to the rest of the world! The petroleum giants - Shell, Gulf and of course, Standard Oil - store tanks of tens of millions of gallons of fuel right on the water’s edge for easy transportation. And one fateful day in 1936, John Hanzel set the river on fire.

Enter JOHN HANZEL, 36, a working man with gauze wrapped around his face and hands.

CITIZEN 2
Says what? You can’t set a river on fire!

VOICE OF THE LIVING NEWSPAPER
Apparently, you can! What happened to you, sir?

JOHN HANZEL
I were on a team breaking the freighter Spokane down into scrap on the East Bank. They tell me a spark from my acetylene torch caught oil and debris on fire ... but all i know was I fell into the river and it was like being boiled in the fires of Hell.

CITIZEN 1
I saw it! The conflagration headed across to the West Bank where that gasoline was stored. The whole damn Flats could have blowed up!

CITIZEN 3
The fire lasted for five days.

JOHN HANZEL
By the time I got fished out I was burned up pretty bad.

VOICE OF THE LIVING NEWSPAPER
You’re a lucky man, John Hanzel.

VOICE goes to slap HANZEL on the back. 

JOHN HANZEL
Please don’t do that.

End of scene.

Source: The Plain Dealer, August 2, 1936

Fire On The Water continues through February 14

Burn on, big river.

How about a joke?

A guy walks into a pub, where he sees a lonely old man sitting by himself, nursing a pint. The old man looked so miserable and depressed, the guy walks up to him and asks, "Why so glum, chum?"

The old man says, "Lad, look out there to the field. Do ya see that fence? Look how well it's built. I built that fence stone by stone with me own two hands. I piled it for months."

"But do they call me McGreggor-the-Fence-Builder? Nooo..."

Then the old man gestured at the bar. "Look here at the bar. Do ya see how smooth and just it is? I planed that surface down by me own achin' back. I carved that wood with me own hard labour, for eight days."

"But do they call me McGreggor-the-Bar-builder? Nooo..."

Then the old man points out the window. "Eh, Laddy, look out to sea ... Do ya see that pier that stretches out as far as the eye can see? I built that pier with the sweat off me back. I nailed it board by board."

"But do they call me McGreggor-the-Pier-Builder? Nooo..."

"But ya fuck one goat..."

When I was one year old, in 1969, was the last time the Cuyahoga River caught fire.

When people make jokes about the river, like a lot of Clevelanders I bristle, and want to protest, to point out how much more clean the river is these days, especially compared to other places around the nation you could mention.

But ya fuck one goat ...

The truth of the matter is, it was a filthy river, and continued to be so for a very long time. And as history has it, fires plagued the Cuyahoga since in 1868. A spark from a blow torch ignited floating debris and oils in 1936, and the conflagration lasted for five days.

John Hanzel, 36, a welder was working with an acetylene torch on the freighter Spokane, cutting it for scrap. He fell into the river and sustained first-degree burns before being fished out. There was concern that the flames might reach the far side of the river, igniting tanks of the Gulf Refining Co., where 10 million (!) gallons of gasoline were stored. Standard Oil and Shell reserves downriver held another 5 million gallons. Firemen contained the blaze to the east bank, though over $6,000 in damage was done to piles and timber owned by the Erie Railroad.

Source: The Plain Dealer, August 2, 1936