By DAN SHAPLEY
The message found its way to my desk, like many do, scrawled on a sticky note and stuck on my computer screen late on a Friday afternoon.
A meteorite had hit the parking lot at Cosimo's Trattoria in Poughkeepsie.
A cosmic occurrence at Cosimo's? Come on.
I dialed the number.
A crater, about nine inches across and two inches deep, had appeared mysteriously overnight, said Jeanne Biever, the restaurant's manager.
"You're sure it's not a pothole?" I asked.
She was sure. The staff had entertained all sorts of explanations ? battery acid to Big Foot. Nothing could explain it.
"It's bizarre," she said.
She didn't sound crazy.
I had a couple more hours of desk work in front of me. It was St. Patrick's Day.
I wished she sounded crazy.
"I'll stop by later," I told her.
After work, still thinking I was on my way to see a pothole, I leashed my dog and walked him to the restaurant.
As advertised, the hole was about nine inches across, and two inches deep at the center.
It was not a pothole.
Perfectly round, its rim appeared to be melted. A spray of tar and asphalt pebbles surrounded the crater.
Biever was kind. She didn't say, "I told you so." I made some calls.
Intriguing, Dave Lindeman, a member of the Mid-Hudson Astronomy Association, thought. But not likely to be a meteorite.
A meteorite that hit the ground with enough force to make a crater would not have vaporized, yet the hole was empty.
Missing evidence
Biever quizzed the staff. No one admitted to removing the evidence.
And the melting of the asphalt, which seemed like such a solid indication a space rock had struck?
Just the opposite, Tom Rankin, another association member, told me.
"It's a misconception," he said. "When a meteorite hits the ground, it's not going to be hot."
Despite the mounting evidence, Ed Forrest, owner of Astronomy Delight in Hyde Park, was curious enough to check it out in person that night.
After all, the 1980 Chevy Malibu that was smashed by a meteorite in Peekskill in 1992 was purchased for a price that made high school senior Michelle Knapp's $100 investment seem extraordinarily savvy. R.A. Langheinrich Meteorites has taken it around the world as the "famous Peekskill meteorite car."
Maybe Delafield Street would be the second astronomical curiosity in the Hudson Valley to win world renown. Not a bad advertising ploy for a restaurant, Forrest said. Or for an astronomy education franchise like his, I said.
But it's unlikely a meteorite would smack straight into the earth, Forrest said, rather than at an angle.
He took a meteorite from his pocket ? not even the size of a fist, but heavy like a skillet. Iron. Nothing like that at Cosimo's.
But what on Earth could have caused that crater, and the spray of rocks and tar?
Cosimo's staff are still calling in experts, though they stopped blocking cars from the parking space.
"I still think it's bizarre," Biever said.
Source: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps ... 006/NEWS01
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