The whole thing lasted only 15 to 20 minutes, but when it was over, several boaters had lost their lives.-consuelo
In 1978 I was in a microburst. We were changing clothes to visit Beech Spring Cave near Lake Guntersville on the Tennessee River when -in a sudden- violent winds and torrential rains hit. The six of us sought refuge in a big Dodge van that rocked with alarming portent of overturning.
The deluge passed in about 15 minutes. But strong gusts of winds keep us imprisoned for 15 more.
To lighten the atmosphere as we waited out the tail of the storm, I offered Caver Tom ten dollars to eat the one inch long green horse-fly buzzing in a bottle who had been deftly caught by my son Danny as we waited. Tom is the quintessenial retro-woodsman. He walks through the woodlands as others would vist the salad bar at Denny's Restaurant. But the horse-fly was exceptionally ugly and Tom hesitated. Soon, though, the ante was raised to 40 Dollars. Our guests from out-of-town had never seen anybody eat a horse-fly before.
Tom ate the horse-fly, which became the hit amusement of the trip. The wind stopped and we had a pleasant visit to the cave, then we returned to Birmingham.
The next morning the headlines of the Birmingham News reported that 21 people had drowned when a freak microburst had overturned an excursion houseboat out of Huntsville. This was the worst maritime disaster in Alabama since the days of the Steamboats. The ill-fated sight-seeing boat overturned about the same time and less than a quarter of a mile from our van where Tom ate the horse-fly.
