| OCR Text |
Show Oh Say Can You See? 30 topped by the North Wind puffing in the wrong direction, a f i re burned. Not a bonfire, but a t a l l f i re hedged by a column of jumbled whites, browns and greys, a thick f i re mostly hidden but not quite. Black smoke twisted away from the red f i r e , sometimes losing i t s e l f in the confusion, sometimes slithering out into the blue. The cloud burned, scarring i t s belly, melting i t s insides with red and yellow while i t rolled over and over in the same place. We s t i l l pass Administration Hill every time we drive to the dam to go on the world's longest elevator ride, dropping down deep into the stomach, the belly of Hoover, to the hum of big red generators with white round lights on top. The guide always talks about kilowatts, power to southern California and spill-over precautions. I used to watch the ant tractors and drivers circling the generators stories below while he explained. "Now, i f you w i l l follow me, we w i l l go directly into the Nevada diversion tunnel," a voice from a bullhorn said. Our feet echoed through a dripping cave, man-blasted, the voice said. Water roared through a giant grey penstock (the guide called i t ) under the square observation room. I barely heard his speech. He pointed to yellow, red, blue, and green lines on a painted chart under a green metal lampshade. Outside of the glassed, chicken-wired window, a man balanced on a catwalk to check bolts twice his size. The room trembled. The water rushed. I was glad that I didn't have to tightrope catwalks and check pipes as big as the world. |
