The American
Whole Lot of W
atching the news lately is a disturbing pastime. What with all the doom and gloomers spouting out about twenty twelve and the end of the earth as we know it, all I feel like doing is taking my credit cards and heading out to party. Problem is if they’re right, I’m okay and have done the right thing, but if they’re wrong, I’ve really screwed up and will have to spend the rest of my life paying off credit card debts. Also, after last year’s earthquake and tsunami it’s no longer safe to go to Japan; which has always been the top of my list of places to visit before I die. (I was born in Okinawa and just love oriental robes and samurai movies). Strangely, watching all the Japanese TV coverage brought back the
Going On experience I had forty some years ago when I was a teenager in Los Angeles. We were living in Northridge in the San Fernando Valley at the time the ‘68 earthquake hit. There I was happily tucked up in bed dreaming about Sofia Loren (I was young, I had a poster of her soaking wet on my bedroom ceiling, what can I say!) and suddenly I was flung out of bed and across the room by a rough shaking and rumbling of the earth. I had felt enough tremors in the five years I had lived there to know that it was an earthquake. But this was a big one. Then another one hit us that seemed even bigger. That got me moving. I pulled on some jeans and ran to the other end of the house yelling for everyone to wake up and Cracked road after a California earthquake PHOTO: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
James Carroll Jordan remembers a California earthquake that had a good side get out. My little sister Laurie was muzzily staring at me from her bed as I opened the door to her room. Just then another wave hit us and out flew my little brother Johnny followed by Mom and Dad. I grabbed Laurie and we all headed out of the house. Dad had to unlock about seven locks on the front door, so we were caught with another roller. I glanced into the living room just in time to see the liquor cabinet fall majestically to the floor breaking everything in it. Mom touched her finger to the spreading pool of booze and said:”Ooohhhh! I bet that will make a fun cocktail. I think I’ll call it the Earthquake!” Dad had managed to get all the locks open and pulled the front door back. My idiot brother was so scared that he ran right into the screen door that Dad hadn’t yet opened; I caught him as he bounced back. Dad finally got the two screen door locks unlocked and out we flew just as yet another quake hit. You could actually see the ground Definitely NOT the Olsen girls that James “comforted”
20