I had an amazing experience just now. I went on my walk (my first of two for the evening), and I wanted to pass some earthquake sites, as today is the 30th anniversary. The first place I passed was the site of the Northridge Meadows, which has another building on it (since about 1999) but will always be The Meadows. I wanted to see if perhaps there was a news van parked in front. There wasn't, which surprised me, though maybe 30 years is a long time to warrant coverage of a specific location, even one as legendary as that place. Then I turned left at Plummer Street, and saw that the local Rite-Aid was dark at 7 pm. It has apparently gone out of business, as other neighborhood institutions recently have. The Rite-Aid was at that location for about 25 years, but the reason it was an institution was because it was a Thrifty before it was a Rite-Aid, and it was the same Thrifty that had been located at Reseda and Nordhoff since at least 1968, the one I used to play pinball at, and buy triple scoop Thirfty Ice Cream cones at, and the place where I met Pat F. So, essentially, even though it was now a Rite-Aid, and had relocated to Plummer and Reseda, it was still the Thrifty from days of yore, making it a Northridge Institution.
I then continued to CSUN to see if perchance there was a news van there. There was not. Maybe I went out too late in the day, I don't know. But I continued on across campus to The Soraya (formerly the Valley Performing Arts Center), where traffic was tied up by cars heading into the parking lot for whatever is playing tonight. I crossed the street and walked down Lindley to Osborne, intending to double back toward Etiwanda, and when I got there I continued to 9032, because I wanted to see the house in which I experienced the Northridge Earthquake. That house qualifies as an institution in my book. We lived there for 25 years. I'm sorry to report that it, too, seems to have "gone out of business" as it looks like a fortress now instead of a house, which I reported in another blog. I mean, it doesn't even resemble the house we lived in.
But here is the amazing part: as I walked past it, imagining the quake, and remembering how it felt to ride it out, I came to the front lawn, and something caught my eye, and I glanced down and I thought it was a cat. But in the moment it took for my eyes to adjust (no more than one second) I saw that it was a raccoon. And it was almost at my feet. It had crept up and walked around me, much as a cat might do on it's own property. If you read a recent blog, you might recall I had another amazing raccoon encounter just a week or two ago at CSUN, near my apartment. That one involved three raccoons who stopped and stared me down because I was unknowingly blocking their path to their yard. But tonight, it happened on the front lawn of 9032! I was on the sidewalk, and the raccoon just arced around me, about three feet from where I was, and he or she looked up as if to say, "Visiting your old home, eh? I live here now." It was all the more amazing because the timing had been perfect. But also, there is something spiritual or mystical about raccoons, I think. It's like they know something. The way they look at you. Possums are kind of like that, too. But not quite as much as raccoons. Anyhow, that was my walk. I continued on back after that, past Mike B.s house, and then past Audie Murphy's old house, and then made my way back up to my apartment.
I have a movie, "Ladies Crave Excitement"(1935), which may or may not be a true statement, or may be a generalization, but it's kind of a misleading title for the story of a newsreel cameraman who will chase down any scoop. He does have an exciting blonde girlfriend, but everyone in the flick is exciting, and excited - the action moves at warp speed and doesn't let up from frame one. I didn't catch the plot because of Life 2024, but it looked and sounded good, and you know, a lot of these '30s comedies work well just as dialogue, like a radio show, so if you nod off for a few seconds, don't worry. The movie works almost as well with eyes closed.
One thing that did catch me: they had one heck of a good chase scene with multiple cars, and we are talking big 1930s sedans and roadsters, so the stunt drivers must've been very talented in those days. It looks like they are driving through an old Valley canyon. It's well worth a watch just for that.
As for the Quake, I will always remember what preceded the shaking, something that was not much talked about, and maybe it wasn't heard in all locations, but in Northridge it was loud and clear. I remember that I had gotten up for a drink of water around 4 am. It had been a hot day that Sunday, and I had played football that afternoon. I'm a light sleeper and was thirsty and didn't really fall back to sleep. I had a small, portable black and white TV on the floor of my bedroom, and a rerun of "Dragnet" was playing. I probably had the sound low or off, but I was just lying there trying to fall back to sleep, when: "BOOM!>>>BOOM!" There were two sonic booms, or just plain booms. I would later tell fellow Quakers, "It sounded like a bomb going off". Yes folks, at least in the epicenter, in the heart of Northridge, you heard BOOM! BOOM! (like a gigantic bomb), immediately followed by an upward SLAMMING underneath your house which felt like the devil was punching through your floor. Then came the shaking, which was scarier than you knew an earthquake could be, like you were in a box being shaken by a giant the size of Planet Earth, accompanied by a sound that sounded - literally! - like a freight train running through your living room.
The Northridge Quake was the scariest doggone thing I've ever experienced (well, almost). But for sure it was the scariest natural disaster in my lifetime. It happened so fast, and I've only been in two major quakes (and a bunch of medium to minor ones), but in the first major quake, the Sylmar in February 1971, which happened about seven months after we moved to Rathburn, there was no BOOM BOOM, and there was no SLAMMM!! There was just a rumbling that grew stronger accompanied by uniform shaking (not the "trapped in a box" kind), and then heavy side to side shaking that felt like you were on the ocean in high seas. Excepting the Northridge Earthquake, that's what quakes have always felt like in my experience. They shake and they sway, and every one of them is scary: folks, earthquakes suck. But none of them went BOOM BOOM! Like the Northridge Quake did.
What also got me was the official magnitude, according to the Richter Scale. Lucy the Earthquake Lady from Caltech (who we got to know well from the news) reported that the quake was a 6.7, about the same as the Sylmar quake of '71. All of us at my house thought "hardly not even". It was a 10. You would've had to feel it for yourself to agree, but while riding it out, it literally felt like the whole wide world was tilting, while being pounded and shaken in a giant's fist. Then the whole world went black....
My life became the Northridge Quake after that. Photographing the damage became an obsession that led to my exploration of the Northridge Meadows, and that began a psychic and spiritual and memorial odyssey that I am still undergoing today. The Meadows changed my life, and I am planning to write a book about it, but it will take me a few years to get to. Mister Dave Small accompanied me on that journey, and Ryan, too. The Quake changed my life, in more ways than one. In a strange way, it felt like The Beginning of Something........
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