Yesterday a jolt in the earth in VA found it's way allllll the way up central NY. Pretty impressive! I didn't feel it, I was on my way into work, but everyone in the office experienced it. I sure heard about it when I got in tho. And I had the funniest reaction to it: I got homesick.
Earthquakes are so very California. I have been through a dozen or so, that were worth mentioning. Only one of them was really scary. Most of them were enough to say, "Meh....it will be over in a second."
I suppose one should fear the earth, taking it upon itself, to dance and flow as if suddenly liquid. The pictures on the wall, tuned askew and the various books and nick-naks flung akimbo.
Just another 6am wake up call for this second generation California girl.
I use to hear them, actually. Right before they would hit. A low rumble, the earth clearing it's throat, perhaps? Maybe it was more the vibrations that I could sense. But I could call them.
I remember working at Barnes Wholesale and I was sitting and jawing with a co-worker. There it was, the thundering moan of ancient earth turning under the crust that we call home.
"Earthquake." I said in almost a whisper.
"What?" said my co-worker
"We are about to have a earthquake."
"Shut up. You know if we did right now I would jump up an run my ass right outside screaming. I can't stand.......SWEET JESUS!"
I stayed seated on the small sofa in her office, she dove under her desk. When things stopped rocking, she poked her head out.
"Next time you get that juju thing going....walk away from me and don't say NUTHIN!"
I was in senior English when the class room started rocking. A scream from the class room next door and a thud. The sound of 20 sets of knees hitting the ground, shortly after. My teacher looked at us and we scooted back and forth in our desks. "Should we get under?" I reassured her, "It will end in a second." So we waited. And it did.
There was no way this 5'10" girl was going to squeeze under that tiny desk.
The teacher next door, poor thing, was from the middle of America and it was her first earthquake. She pretty much abandoned her class and dove under her own desk, leaving her students to follow on their own.
I've been in bed for most of them. On the toilet for one, when I was a lil kid. Walking across a college campus for another. The cars, bouncing and moving closer and closer to each other. Their alarms, defining. Their owners left to figure out how to get into the cars with the doors touching. I was in our family cabin in the mountains for another. The wagon wheel lights swinging.
There are two kinds of earthquakes: a roller and a shaker. One you can ride out, like being on a boat. The other will bring things off the wall. In 1994 the biggest in the history of my 44 years hit Northridge, CA. While it started out lightly waking me at 4am with its rolling action, it soon changed it's temperament to a shaker. So much so that I finally felt scared.
"HIT THE DOORS!" I yelled from my room. Instructions for my two sisters, who I could hear awake, next door to my room. They tell you to brace yourself in a load bearing door frame for safety. It was the first time ever that I had felt I needed to do just that. We camped out in our doorways like it was forever. 20 sec, tops. Pictures dropped, books flew, my parents scrambled down from upstairs.
We were fine, the house was fine, but a lot of other people weren't. The 6.2 magnitude quake was the worst on record since San Francisco.
Maybe I don't miss them too much. But they beat a hurricane or tornado, hands down. I mean, at least you know where you stuff is. In the other two you have to go two counties over to get it.
No comments:
Post a Comment