re: What's the most impressive thing you've ever seen?

When I was a boy, one of my dad’s good friends was a oil field baw. He went about 6’7” and maybe 325 or so. My grandparents had a galley kitchen in their house with a bar separating the actual kitchen and eating area. They got a new refrigerator and needed help getting it set up. My dad’s buddy comes over and lifts the old refrigerator OVER the bar by himself (it wouldn’t fit between the end of the bar and the wall). I can remember my dad trying to help him (who is no small man himself) but “Big Ed” wouldn’t let him. That was the most impressive thing my 8 year old self had seen at the time, and I can’t think of anything that can top it 27ish years later.

While I was in college the area north of the Sterlington carbon black mill caught on fire (it may have been a plant that used a lot of carbon black ...don't remember). Well for 40 years that area had been used to dump carbon black. It was a swampy area. Well around 1981 there was a long dry spell and a camper let a fire get out of control and it ignited the carbon black. Now, by then, the carbon black was yards deep..very thick and mostly buried. It burned for weeks. My major professor and I drove there and there were these 70-80 feet tall "tornados" coming out of the ground with fire and the base and fire coming out of its sides. And with the whirling sounds it was extremely impressive. He had a camera and took a lot of pics, with his lens cap on..... Sterlington finally ran a water line from the river and it went out a couple of days afterwards.