Quaking Asters
Sometimes we are reminded of how small we are. Reminded that we are merely tiny passengers, fleas on a cat or more purposeful like ants moving dirt around atop this 4,000-mile radius chunk of molten matter we have named ‘Earth’, but is truly better described as a blue peach, or somesuch other juicy stone fruit whose pit is molten. Nothing but insignificant business on a chunk of debris spinning circles in space at nearly a thousand miles per hour. Ironically, these small reminders-meaning reminders of how small we really are-often come in very large events. Events that push the volume to the brink of silence, spinning into stillness, stillness only found in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
We are a keen species, the sharpest knives even. And, as uber perceptive humans, we try to pick up on things that are repetitious. We seek connections between the past and the present, primarily to be better able to predict the future and not so much to avoid repeating the past-which happens all the time. Looking up, in an optimistic sense, we have made incredible 'progress' in expanding our understanding of and predicting meteorological events (or weather). We now know that storms are not caused by angry gods, at least this has been the consensus since radar and Doppler devices have been used reliably over the last ten decades. We also know that small talk fills uncomfortable voids between two interacting bodies, a sociological calm before the storm, yet somehow most of us still take the weather personally.
There was no warning this time. There would never be a warning, not that anyone saw coming. Some disasters cannot be predicted like an approaching storm. Some events are meant to keep you on your toes, or knock you off your feet, like that of a large earthquake.
It was a Tuesday in the middle of October, Fall stomping its muddy feet outside as usual. It was also game three of the Major League Baseball World Series, which was a real ‘Battle of the Bay’. It had just gotten underway and the whole world of baseball fandom was focused on the mid-hole region of California or the 'Bay Area', the San Francisco Giants were matched up against the Oakland A’s that year, neighboring cities with only the frigid shark-infested waters of the bay and Alcatraz dividing them. Fog helped keep the towns enshrouded from one another most days. Perhaps the pressure of attention on this tiny region grew too great, making things began to fall apart, shake violently, collapse and come undone. In any case, Saint Andreas was cracking and venting her vaporous curses.
Aster sat doing Algebra homework on her twin bed in the lowest room of the split-level cabin that stood up on a steep hill amidst a redwood grove. The street named 'Redwood' was a tiny one lane road deep in a dense forest community above the open coastline of Santa Carla (or Santa Cruz as some call it). Aster sat eating dry corn Chex from a cereal bowl roughly fifty miles from the famous Golden Gate Bridge which is red in color. At twilight, just after 5 p.m. Asters’ stepfather lay ill on the couch in the living room with a cold or flu. He coughed erratically as if this cough would be the last time like the air was too thin in their lush forest homestead. His red swollen nose was pointed at the television on the right of the cold potbellied stove. He shivered every few minutes while looking at it and proceeded to pull his blankets around his shoulders tighter hugging himself still.
Aster knew there would be no dinner that night since it was her stepfather that made the ‘family meals’. Asters’ blue-collared, baby booming' mother was still driving home, “commuting over the hill”, as they said in those parts. There were many hills. An 11-mile road that took more than thirty minutes to traverse, winding, hilly, and dangerous most of the time.
Aster knew there would be no dinner that night since it was her stepfather that made the ‘family meals’. Asters’ blue-collared, baby booming' mother was still driving home, “commuting over the hill”, as they said in those parts. There were many hills. An 11-mile road that took more than thirty minutes to traverse, winding, hilly, and dangerous most of the time.
Asters’ stomach began to growl, the Chex was boring her, although she knew it could have easily been the math. Her stomach grumbled and she realized, she wasn't actually hungry. Aster felt dizzy and lightheaded as if she were spinning, her head heavy with vertigoHer stepfather began conjuring up his lungs and again she was becoming nauseous. Looking down at her dark green carpet, as she placed the balls of her feet against the shag threads her math book slid off the bed, landing a breath away from Asters pinkie toe with a loud thud. The book had been lying firmly in the middle of the bed-she knew this. She tried to reach for her shoes but felt drunk, like she was in a dream, her movements did not cooperate. Her ears failed to discern anything specific.
A narrow hallway, one-way traffic only- like most pathways in that neck of the woods, led to the 3 stairs and doorless exit of Aster’s basement bedroom dungeon, where now, a JBL tower speaker now lay like a dead tree blocking her escape. Her black and white Guinea pig, Ansel was shrieking intermittently, his tiny claws clung to the wire mesh of his cage. Souvenirs from other places and other times were teetering on the ledges of bookshelves, softer trinkets and sharp oddities rolled around like metal ping pong balls until they had no more flippin' reason, all stuff not weighed down then launched off the shelves, out of cabinets, behind doors, atop flat surfaces, all lost their resting places. Aster tried focusing outside the window to clarify something external was going on but her brain and body she felt like an unbelted passenger on turbulent rocket ship readying for take-off. The window was an artists palette of brown, sepia, drab grey and forest green a blur in motion, colors quaking and swirling together. Reining her eyes back indoors for tangible things, Aster heard her stepfather's voice crackling above the chaos of moving parts, he was trying to scream. She had to place her palms on the walls in order to steady herself as she made her way down the dark hallway. Each step, her legs felt as if there were weights on her ankles or she was trying to walk through waist-high mud. She teetered like a veteran drunkard, and although Aster was just thirteen, it was not the first time.
Making her way to the front door was an obstacle course for the nimble and scared but Asters adrenaline showed up to participate. In passing, she noticed that the suitcase-sized television had heaved itself from its stand at the potbellied stove and had landed on the grey slate, amazingly unbroken. Aster and her stepfather stood silently, legs braced, and cowering underneath the spindly doorjamb. Questioning without words, mouthing what could be easily mistaken for a prayer, the two looked at one another, quaking, barefoot, hoping they were not the last sight each other sees.
The wooden deck was flexing and whining under our feet, cracking and then snapping, and finally collapsing in toothpick towers all around them. Alarms wailed then the canines in the hills. The sound of hissing, explosions, shattering glass, screams, and sobs, all was in a painful chorus of disruption, a concerto of chaos from a single event lasting just one-eighth of a minute but leaving a deep gash that would take years to heal. Propane tanks bursting in the air provided an ill-timed finale, better than Tchaikovsky and there remained an ever strengthening and permeating smell of septic and gas fumes, of bleeding wood and freshly turned soil from the earths' newly ripped flesh, making a miasma cologne of beat-up Mother Nature. Earthquake dropped in for a quickie.
A narrow hallway, one-way traffic only- like most pathways in that neck of the woods, led to the 3 stairs and doorless exit of Aster’s basement bedroom dungeon, where now, a JBL tower speaker now lay like a dead tree blocking her escape. Her black and white Guinea pig, Ansel was shrieking intermittently, his tiny claws clung to the wire mesh of his cage. Souvenirs from other places and other times were teetering on the ledges of bookshelves, softer trinkets and sharp oddities rolled around like metal ping pong balls until they had no more flippin' reason, all stuff not weighed down then launched off the shelves, out of cabinets, behind doors, atop flat surfaces, all lost their resting places. Aster tried focusing outside the window to clarify something external was going on but her brain and body she felt like an unbelted passenger on turbulent rocket ship readying for take-off. The window was an artists palette of brown, sepia, drab grey and forest green a blur in motion, colors quaking and swirling together. Reining her eyes back indoors for tangible things, Aster heard her stepfather's voice crackling above the chaos of moving parts, he was trying to scream. She had to place her palms on the walls in order to steady herself as she made her way down the dark hallway. Each step, her legs felt as if there were weights on her ankles or she was trying to walk through waist-high mud. She teetered like a veteran drunkard, and although Aster was just thirteen, it was not the first time.
Making her way to the front door was an obstacle course for the nimble and scared but Asters adrenaline showed up to participate. In passing, she noticed that the suitcase-sized television had heaved itself from its stand at the potbellied stove and had landed on the grey slate, amazingly unbroken. Aster and her stepfather stood silently, legs braced, and cowering underneath the spindly doorjamb. Questioning without words, mouthing what could be easily mistaken for a prayer, the two looked at one another, quaking, barefoot, hoping they were not the last sight each other sees.
The wooden deck was flexing and whining under our feet, cracking and then snapping, and finally collapsing in toothpick towers all around them. Alarms wailed then the canines in the hills. The sound of hissing, explosions, shattering glass, screams, and sobs, all was in a painful chorus of disruption, a concerto of chaos from a single event lasting just one-eighth of a minute but leaving a deep gash that would take years to heal. Propane tanks bursting in the air provided an ill-timed finale, better than Tchaikovsky and there remained an ever strengthening and permeating smell of septic and gas fumes, of bleeding wood and freshly turned soil from the earths' newly ripped flesh, making a miasma cologne of beat-up Mother Nature. Earthquake dropped in for a quickie.
When the earth settled for smaller aftershocks instead of stomping rage, Asters’ mother appeared out of thin air climbing up the hillside driveway, safe but disheveled, relieved to see them and without a scratch or speck of dirt on her pearl cashmere sweater.
The sky turned from crisp to clouded as is customary, it often rains after a large earthquake, all pressures must be relieved, it sobbed for the next three days without reprieve. Asters stepfather, sick when before the quake and now forced to sleep outdoors in the October rain had gotten worse. The steely back dropped mountains were shaking their shoulders and crying springs into waterfalls.
The survival part began when it stopped raining, when the ground fell back asleep, when rubble stopped smoldering and when strangers became neighbors.
The survival part began when it stopped raining, when the ground fell back asleep, when rubble stopped smoldering and when strangers became neighbors.
A disaster is something that often is defined as something that carries with it, sadly, unfortunate consequences. Aster knew this was no disaster. She felt more fortunate than she ever had, blessed, with no place to call home and a chance to rebuild-this time with a more solid foundation.
The Loma Prieta earthquake, which happened 25 years ago at 5:04:15 p.m. PT on Oct. 17, 1989, reached a magnitude of 6.9 and lasted 17 seconds that felt like a month. It caused 63 deaths and more than $6 billion worth of damage. A piece of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge crumpled to the lower deck. A mile-long section of Interstate 880 -- the double-decked Cypress Structure -- pancaked during rush hour. Fires raged in San Francisco's Marina District. The sports angle cowered by comparison.
Description: San Francisco Earthquake of 1906: Ruins in vicinity of Post and Grant Avenue. Looking northeast
ARC Identifier: 524396 NARA National Archives and Records Administration
Date: 04/1906
Photographer: Chadwick, H. D
Licence: Public Domain
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