"Can't quite say for sure," my canine companion answers in hushed tones. "It'll come to me sooner or later."

I can't imagine what might be troubling him. This time the Wayback Machine has deposited us in Boston but it's at least three centuries too late for us to be branded heretics by Puritans. And we're probably several decades early to witness the ball rolling through Bill Buckner's legs and sealing the Red Sox's grim destiny in the 1986 World Series. In fact one of the men behind us on the "El" train is going on about the Sox's "glorious victory" in the World Series last fall. That would make this ... what ... just after World War I? It's been at least that long since Boston won the Series.

Across the aisle a gentleman is perusing an early edition of the Boston Evening Transcript. I spy the date and repeat it to Browser. "January 15, 1919. So is an awful calamity about to occur?"

"I'd say so -- any minute now, probably," responds the fellow across from me. He obviously thinks my question was meant for him, and not for the dog beside me, who wisely has chosen not to respond. The man chuckles at my startled expression. "Prohibition," he laughs. "One more state ratifies it and those temperance ladies will have their way. We'll be spendin' our lives sippin' root beer." He points out the window to a storage tank. "That's a distilling company tank. They just got a shipment of molasses in from Puerto Rico a few days ago. They could make some mighty fine rum from that. But now we're never going to taste it ..."

Uh-oh ... it's starting to come back to me, a bit of urban disaster I'll hear about on a bus tour about 70 years from now. January 15, 1919 ... an unseasonably warm winter day ... a 90-foot-wide, 50-foot high cast iron tank filled to the brim with molasses ... a tank our train seems to be headed for at this very moment ...

"Ah, is there anyway to get off before the next stop?" I ask, trying to stay calm.

The man's response is lost in a kind of rumbling roar, followed by an even louder boom. We look out the window to see the huge tank rising from its base. Its steel plates groan and then there's a staccato pop-pop-pop and the ping of projectiles bouncing off the girders of the elevated railway. Around us a handful of World War I vets, fresh from the trenches of Europe, dive under their seats for cover.

Flying pieces of the molasses tank ripped apart the elevated train track.

But it's no enemy attack. We are witnessing something much more bizarre. We stare, stupefied, as the tank splits in two and molasses begins streaming everywhere. The idea of spilled molasses is not the sort of thing that usually sends chills down your spine. But this is a 15-foot high, slimy tsunami and believe me, from where I sit, it's one wave of killer goo. It hurls part of the tank directly into one the girders holding up the track we're on and the metal trestle tears in half. Our engineer has the presence of mind to slam on the brakes and put us in reverse. Good thing because the track ahead collapses into the spreading ooze.

The dark wave is moving at a very unmolasses-like clip -- about 35 miles per hour -- and soon it's swallowing the streets of Boston's North End. A big hunk of the shattered tank has knocked Boston Firehouse No. 3 off its foundation and the startled firemen inside, enjoying some post-lunch cigars, are quickly buried under the debris. Another municipal building is demolished and at least a dozen city workers are trapped in molasses. Trolley cars on Commercial Street are lifted off the road and smashed. A horse-drawn wagon is picked up and slammed into a fence. People try to outrun the unimaginable terror, with little luck. Some are knocked down and crushed under tons of the hot liquid; others catch the wave and get tossed ahead. A young boy struggles to stay on his feet atop the wave -- for a few seconds he's almost surfing -- but then he tumbles and gets rolled like a pebble toward the harbor. Fortunately a man sees him and extends a pole which the boy grabs. And then like someone pulling a marlin from the sea, the rescuer yanks the boy free of the muck. Others grab him, but it seems they're too late. The boy isn't breathing; he's apparently suffocated on molasses. (Later we find out that he'll wake up in the makeshift morgue.)

Rescue crews waded knee-deep through the sticky ooze.

Finally, as the wave spreads it begins to slow down. But now, in the cold air, the molasses starts to congeal. It's three feet high in some places and all around we can hear cries for help and the whinny of horses who literally are stuck in their tracks. Rescuers already are on the scene. The first ones, men from the harbor patrol ship Nantucket, clamber over ruined buildings and plunge knee-deep into the mess. Soon blue-coated police arrive, followed by wagons of military men from a nearby Army base and then ambulances of Red Cross volunteers in smart white shirtwaists. Within an hour or so you can't tell any of them apart; they're all stained the same deep brown.

They have their work cut out for them. Almost 150 people lie injured in the streets; some have be cut from their clothes. The final death toll will be 21 -- including two victims who won't be discovered for another four days, their bodies so battered and glazed they can't be identified at first. Several horses, trapped like flies on flypaper, are shot by the police. As the rescue crews trudge through the thickening muck our train backs down the track and we get off at the next station.

Congealed molasses covered almost everything in Boston's North End.

Instead of hopping back aboard the Wayback Machine, we stay in Boston and sure enough we're back in the North End the next day -- even veteran time travelers can't stay away from something this strange. Of course hundreds of other gawkers are there too, along with the weary cleanup crews scrubbing futilely with hoes and brooms. It's only when a fireboat begins spraying salt water from the harbor over the neighborhood that they start making any real progress. And the place stinks, not so much from the molasses as from the rotting horse flesh all around. At one point the workers pause, puzzled by the sudden ringing of church bells in downtown Boston. We find out later that it's to celebrate the fact that Nebraska has ratified the 18th Amendment, officially bringing in Prohibition.

As we walk around, Browser and I become aware of another problem -- you can't keep the molasses off you. It's everywhere now, spread by work crews well beyond where the waves actually settled. This is just the beginning of molasses creep. For months it'll seem like every doorknob, every trolley seat, every public telephone in Boston is sticky. Boston Harbor will be a deep shade of brown through the summer. And the sweet aroma of molasses will linger in the city even longer. In time, after 3,000 witnesses testify during 300 days of hearings, the courts will find the United States Industrial Alcohol Company liable, concluding shoddy construction and overfilling of the tank was to blame, along with the apparent sudden expansion of the molasses -- the temperature had only been 2 degrees above zero the previous day. The company will pay almost $1 million to settle the claims.

For years afterward Boston oldtimers will say they can still smell molasses. Browser and I weren't around to smell for ourselves. We headed back to the Wayback the second night after the explosion, tired and anxious for the skin-blasting shower heads of the 1990s. I am too anxious, in fact, and just before I plunge into our vehicle I hear Browser bark from behind, "Wipe your feet!".

For a dog he's such a nag.

If you have anything to add about the Great Molasses Flood send an e-mail to rrieland@discovery.com.

Here's a taste of feedback:

I have used this story often in an Engineering Materials Failure class that I teach. I have never had as much interesting detail as was given on your web site. Thank you.

Steven E. Benzley
Associate Dean, General and Honors Education
Brigham Young University

That was a great article you wrote about the molasses flood. It's always been a legend in our family, even though no relatives were involved. I remember my Nana always telling me about the molasses flood and the Coconut Grove fire. Did you ever consider writing about that one too?

Great job!
Melissa LeRay

What a great account of Bostonian history! I can remember as a child being told of a great great uncle who remembered the flood. His voice was too trembly to understand. Pretty neat the way you tell it. I grew up not more than four miles away in Somerville.Perhaps sometime you might visit Prospect Hill in Somerville, the sight of the first flying of the first American flag. This is an area filled with some well-known and some not so well-known American Revolutionary History. ... One more thought ... Do you think that the "Slower than molasses in February ..." line is unique to Boston?

Bonnie

Where We've Been:

Chicago, 1913: The Queen of Anti-Smokers

Morristown, NJ, 1780: The Most Brutal Winter in U.S. History

New York, 1945: Airplane Crashes into the Empire State Building

Russia, 1899: Pavlov and His Dogs

San Diego, 1916: The Big, Big Rain

Waco, Texas, 1896: What a Train Wreck!

Washington, DC, 1829: The White House meets Animal House

Patrick J. Kiger is a Washington-based writer who has been published in The Washington Post Magazine, GQ and George,as well as Discovery Channel Online.You can send comments to him at PJKIGER@aol.com@INTERNET.