No movie tonight. Grim came over to hang out, we went on a CSUN walk, but it was rainy and cold so we only made it halfway before heading back to the pad. Just around the corner from my apartment, on Reseda Boulevard there was an NBC news van parked in front of the building where The Meadows used to be. In just a few hours, at 4:31 this morning, it will be twenty five years since we were hit by the Northridge Earthquake.
A quarter century has gone by, can you even believe it?
Three days before on January 14, 1994 - it would have been a Friday evening - it was Chris' 30th birthday. I remember him sitting at a table that night, playing cards with two of his friends. Just a memory that has stuck with me in retrospect. One's 30th is a fairly big deal, and so I remember the guys playing cards...... but who knew what was coming?
Saturday the 15th of January holds no memories, but Sunday the 16th does. My friends and I had a tradition in the early 1990s of playing football on Sunday afternoons. This day, however, only Ryan, John B. and myself showed up at the CSUN front lawn, which is now the location of the Valley Performing Arts Center. The lawn was our football field. Usually, at the very least we had enough friends to play a three-on-three game of touch. On this day, though, we only had three total, so we had to recruit some kids we saw who were riding their bikes nearby. We played a three-on-three with those kids for an hour or so. This would have been sometime between 2 and 4 o'clock. We loved our Sunday football in those days.
There was a weird vibe in the air, though, and later we would remark on it. It was like an ozone smell or an almost imperceptible charge. Just a strange tension, noticeable but not something to remark on until afterward, because the next day that physical tension in the air became a tangible thing.
I remember that after the football game, John B. went home, and Ryan and I walked back to 9032 Rathburn, the house my family and I had lived in since 1970. There's a weird time trip for you. We know how elastic time can be; the quake was 25 years ago but it feels like it was yesterday. But in 1994, the twenty four years that had passed since my family moved into 9032 in 1970 would have seemed like an eternity. Time moves much slower when you are young, of course, so a quarter century between the ages of 10 and 35 feels different than a quarter century between 35 and 60.
But yeah, we had lived at 9032 since June 1970, and over the years it had become the hangout house for all of our friends.
That afternoon, Ryan and I walked back to the house. In January the sun goes down by 5:30 or so. My next memory is of walking with Ryan over to Taco Bell on Nordhoff Street, right next to my beloved Northridge Libe (which I wasn't to frequent until many years later). Ryan was headed home. He had asked me to walk with him to the bus stop at Reseda and Nordhoff, and we stopped at Taco Bell on the way. Perhaps he only bought a drink. I know that we didn't stay there or sit down.
I waited with Ryan for the bus, and then he was gone, on his way home. That was the end of our football afternoon, so I walked back home myself, just a couple of blocks away. By now it was around 6 o'clock in the evening.
My next memory is that Pat came by the house around 9 o'clock. This memory is a big one, because he had an advance copy of the new King's X album "Dogman". KX was the greatest band in the world in those days (check out their first six albums to see why), so a new advance listen, courtesy of Pat who worked at Sony, was a Big Deal.
We went out to the garage of 9032 to listen. At the time, Terry and his girlfriend (now wife) Kelly were living in our garage. Terry had his stereo out there, so we played Pat's record company copy of "Dogman" as loud as we could. Right off the bat it sounded different from their other meticulous releases. Beyond heavy, tuned way down. Determined and driven. On first listen, Pat and Terry didn't care for it. Me, I loved it. Every song sounded incredible (and to this day it is a Top Five All Time Album for me).
We finished our King's X "Dogman" listening party at around 10 pm, and I guess we might have hung out and chatted for an hour or so after that.
My final memory is of watching an old episode of "Dragnet" on TV. I had an old black and white television set up in my bedroom that I had slept in since I was ten years old. It was a small, portable tv, on the floor next to my bed. I have been a late night person since adulthood, and I recall watching Jack Webb bust some criminals or hippies or whomever. I was watching "Dragnet", a rerun on one of the local channels, and then I went to bed. If I remember correctly, I left the tv on, with the sound low. The time was probably around 2am.
One last thing : I got up to go to the bathroom at around 4am, maybe 4:15.
And then a few minutes later, I was back in bed, half asleep, and WHAMMO!!!
It felt like a giant fist was pounding the floor beneath me. There were two sonic booms a split second before the quake hit, and then the sound of a nuclear powered freight train running right through the house. I wound up on the floor of my bedroom, holding on to the foot of my bed with one hand, and pinning the other against my bookcase to keep it from toppling upon me. Framed photographs on the wall flew about the room. Glass broke. Outside my window I saw an electrical drum on a power pole arc and emit blue sparks, then blow out. The house and street went pitch black. The shaking felt like an atomic bomb had gone off, no joke. We were near the epicenter and it was horrendous.
The immediate aftermath of the Northridge Earthquake was chaotic, but soon, with the help of friends and neighbors, we got organized and settled in to our new mode of emergency. FEMA services and the Red Cross were incredible, and we made it though.
For me, the quake and the year 1994 were only the beginning of an odyssey that has lasted to this day, for reasons that have to do with the year 1989. You know a lot about that year, too, because I have reported it to you.
It is important to remember things, I think, and just just to brush the past aside. Many people I have known have taken that approach, and have just breezed past unpleasant events and in some cases have pretended that something unpleasant never happened.
Me, I have remembered everything. And I have written down everything I can remember.
The earthquake changed my life, not only by shaking my house and my town, but by shaking up my spirit, in a manner of speaking.
My soul came alive, and I remembered my life. It took a few years afterwards, but eventually I remembered what had happened to me, and I have never forgotten it. /////
That's all I know for tonight. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment