Word: tented
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...smoking little flame wavered higher up the side of the cavernous tent in the big lot at Hartford, Conn. The thousands of women and their children, and the scattering of coatless men massed in the bleachers, sat quietly, second after second, watching the high-wire performers of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show On Earth. They breathed the circus smells of peanuts and tigers, in the hot afternoon air, and listened to the thumping circus music. Some of them watched the harmless-looking little fire crawling up the canvas...
Then the flame suddenly spurted upward with nightmare swiftness, and billowed silently across the whole top of the tent near the main entrance. The bleachers suddenly rumbled under thousands of feet; folding chairs clattered and banged. The crowd struggled to reach the ground, flowed wildly toward the exits, clotted into groups which pushed and elbowed with silent, furious concentration in the furnace-like heat. Men & women in the high bleacher seats began dropping children to the ground, then jumped themselves. Then great blazing patches of canvas fell. Women screamed as their hair and dresses caught fire. Then a tent pole...
Disaster March. There still was brassy music. The band, on their feet at the unburned end of the tent, jerkily pumped out The Stars and Stripes Forever, as a "Disaster march," the traditional circus warning to performers outside the tent to rally round for trouble. The aerialists slid down their ropes, began tumbling acrobatically toward safety...
...jammed up against the barred runway through which the last leopards from the animal acts were still slinking toward outside cages. As the people struggled here, some scrambling over, some lifting small children, some trampling wildly, the fire raced toward them along the collapsing canvas high overhead. The heavy tent poles fell quickly, one after another. As the last toppled, all the blazing canvas came down on the crowd. There was a brief, screaming struggle beneath...
...give us 24 hours' notice of departure. Actually the call came at 9 o'clock one morning and we were ordered to be a certain place with full field kit at 10:30. ... The first night we spent together at an assembly area, an army tent camp. . . . The weather was cold and three blankets were not enough. I hardly slept at all. When we awakened early the next morning . . . Don Whitehead said, 'It's just as miserable as it always...