If this is my time. . .

     If Jim Berkland is right and Southern California is next in line for a major earthquake along the Ring of Fire, I just want to say I am ready to go. I've had a wonderful life, I don't think I have any unfinished business with anyone and I expect to be with Jerry until the end.
     Dear family and friends, I love you.
     It may be a bit disconcerting for any of you who read my blog when my previously-scheduled posts keep appearing for a couple of weeks.


TODAY'S POST,  LAST OF "WHO IS THIS MAN?" SERIES, IS BELOW

BEING THERE (last): "That quake was a doozy!"

     Lorena Fleissig was a young mother who made hats for a hobby. She had been to a class where a lady showed how to steam and shape felt hats and how to make hats out of straw. She had just laid her hats carefully on her bed when they disappeared under an avalanche of bricks and dust coming through the ceiling.
     Meanwhile as Lorena's husband finished feeding their two-year old son Conrad, he heard a noise 'like 4-by-4s jumping up and down under the house," accompanied by the "weirdest feeling."
     Unstrapping Conrad and jerking him out of his highchair, he cried, "Earthquake! Get out!" But two large tubs on the back porch had shifted and were blocking the door.
     Lorena's father, who lived with them, had just taken a shower and was sitting in his robe listening to the radio. He got up and walked toward the front door and as he reached it the door flew open, hitting him on the arm.
     "His blue eyes were as big as saucers," reports Lorena.
     "We were all outside for days," she says. "We got to know our neighbors better than before or afterward. Father made a stove with the fallen bricks and heated it with coke supplied by the Navy. A neighbor would bring over some stew. Tenants hung around. We heated water for dishes and washed out diapers outside.
     "It was March and cold at night. We all slept in our overcoats in a row on the living room floor with the front door wide open in case we had to dash out. At first we put Conrad in his crib in a corner but he wouldn't sleep. He kept whimpering. So we pushed his crib between his Daddy and me. I remember how he kept looking down at us, bundled up as we were in our overcoats.
     "We kept the radio on, listening to Clarence Crary sing all night. When an aftershock hit, his voice would quaver but he kept right on singing.
     "Father and I had to keep busy because we were nervous. There had been a huge bottle of cod liver oil on a top shelf of the pantry--you know in those days we thought it cured everything--with the waffle iron and Aunt Mary's homemade fig wine (it was during prohibition but the wine was supposed to be medicinal) and it had fallen off and broken. We took a mop and broom and cleaned it all up.
     Driving past a school on Hill Street they saw the roof fall in and dust spiral up from the crash.
     "We were nervous for days because the shocks kept coming. Then after they were over there was an explosion on Signal Hill while I was ironing. The dish-shaped lamp on our bedroom ceiling crashed to the floor. The air was filled with dust. I thought it was the end of the world."
                                                  -----
     Connie Rencoret (later Shaver), who had been immobilized by the first shock, learned as the aftershocks continued to take earthquakes in stride.
     "We used to put our ears to the walls and say we could hear them coming," she says. "You know how kids are. It got to be a game."
     Marie Hastings agrees. "Other earthquakes since then have been nothing. The 1971 quake [centered] in Sylmar seemed like nothing."
     Perhaps surprisingly, almost every person interviewed still lives in or near Long Beach.
     Joy Elliott may be speaking for most of the survivors when she says, "I wouldn't take a million dollars for my experience but I wouldn't want it again. That quake was a doozy!"

Written in 1983


Today I am thankful for Earl Grey tea.

BEING THERE (4): Catalina Channel lowered 359 feet

     When the first shock was over the peninsula was 30 inches higher than before, the Catalina Channel 359 feet lower.
     But the uneasy earth wasn't finished settling yet. Thirty-four aftershocks followed in the six hours between the main quake and midnight. There were another 30 the next day and 13 during the five days after that.
     That first night, Curley Goodall, like many people, went out and drove the family car onto the front yard so they could leave if they had to. Navy men were aiding police by patrolling residential streets warning everyone to move to the higher ground of Signal Hill because a tidal wave was expected.
     "Most everybody got out and went up Signal Hill," says Helen. "I don't know why we didn't. We stayed in our car on the lawn. It was a scary time. We had an old-fashioned wood stove and with the gas shut off, it was the only stove in the neighborhood that could be used. Everyone came and cooked meals on it.
     "The church [First Brethren at 5th and Cherry] had been planning a big banquet in their basement that evening. The church collapsed in the earthquake. If it had hit an hour later we would all have been there. It would have been terrible." As it was, they saw the house next door get shaken off its foundations and their own fireplace crumbled. Later, driving around, they witnessed the bank at 7th and Cherry "going down in a heap."
                                                   -----
     Marie Hastings was 12 in 1933 and she lived with her parents and brother Glenn, 8, in Garden Grove. "It was almost as if someone shook the back door." Marie didn't wait to find out who. Having had a bad experience a few years earlier when a man attempted to climb through her bedroom window, she bolted through the living room and out the front door.
     "Mom had a beauty parlor in our home and she was doing a woman's hair. In another ten minutes she would have had the woman under the dryer."
     The Hastings had minor damage--some plaster fell off the ceiling and the water cooler, which used charcoal, fell over and scattered charcoal everywhere. Just a block away, however, the front end of the First National Bank toppled and at Garden Grove High School a student who was decorating for the Junior-Senior Banquet that evening was killed by falling bricks as she tried to run out of the building.
     "We kids spent the night in our 1927 Nash at Dad's sister's place, away from wires and things. I slept on the back seat and Glenn slept on the floor.
     "For a whole week we practically lived outside. Whenever we had an aftershock we'd run out of the house. Our neighbors had one of those black kettles and they kept it boiling on a fire in their yard. We all gathered around it, visited, did our washing."

To be concluded

Today I am thankful for horses.

BEING THERE (3): "Poor cat had nowhere solid to land"

     Not all memories proved amusing in retrospect. Most people were just plain scared and some had close calls. Newton and Sara Kradjian lived at 1325 Appleton, Long Beach. They had tickets to a Christian Endeavor Booster Banquet at the First Christian Church that night and Sara was home worrying that her husband wouldn't be back in time to go. She had already called him two or three times at Newton's Garage.
     The garage was brick with a steep gable roof and held up to four cars. Newton had just overhauled the engine of a '28 4-door Buick sedan. He finished replacing the oil pan, left the car on stilts and walked out of the garage with his mechanic Harry Candler and friend Roy LaNobs at about 5:35.
     He had driven about three blocks when he felt as if a tire had gone flat. He looked up and saw walls falling from the buildings to each side of him.
     The garage was demolished. Had Newton delayed any longer under the sedan, he would have been killed.
                                                  -----
     Hazel Lewis, who turned 94 last month, was with her husband at their 1909 E. 10th Street home that afternoon. She was sitting at one end of the couch, talking on the telephone. At the first violent shake their piano slid out from the wall and her husband had to grab the big radio on top of it to keep it from falling.
     Their sons, 12 and 4, were playing marbles down the street. Terrified, they ran home, leaping undulations in the road as the quake moved down the street. The family slept in their car that night, too scared to stay inside during the frequent aftershocks.
                                                  -----
     Earlene Mann (later Eisemann) was at home with her parents in Highland Park. She was talking to her cat out the kitchen window. "At the first shake the cat took off. I saw the back yard heaving in waves across the yard...the poor cat had nowhere solid to land on as he tried to run.  
     "My sister had been sick and my mother was in an overstuffed chair holding her. Every time she tried to get out of the chair the earth would quake again and she would be thrown back down into the chair.
     "Father drove us to Long Beach. We saw the sides of buildings, collapsed eastward. The sides were gone from buildings four stories high and we could see right into every room."
                                                     -----
     Curley and Helen Goodall and their baby daughter Wanda lived at 563 Cherry then. Helen's brother Wynn was staying with them and they were all eating dinner in the kitchen when the quake started. Wynn grabbed Wanda out of her highchair, rushed her outside and set her down on the ground.
     When he came back inside everything in the kitchen cupboards was in the middle of the floor--ketchup, Crisco, honey, flour and sugar all spilled together and broken glass all over.
     "Wynn hated the mess," remembers Helen. "He couldn't stand having things messed up."

To be continued


Today I am thankful that I don't hurt any place.

BEING THERE (2): "I enjoyed the ride"

     Some of the survivors can laugh about their experiences now. Murl Shaver stocked shelves for Safeway and was at the very top of a ladder when the quake hit. The ladder toppled and with canned goods pelting him, Murl had the presence of mind to leap into a display of bread. He escaped unhurt.
     Murl's brother Ray and a young girl named Connie Rencoret, who were later to marry, didn't even know each other then, but they shared the earthquake in Los Angeles.
     Ray was a junior high student in southwest L.A. and was playing tennis when the school wall in front of him disintegrated. He could feel the quakes coming in waves.
     Connie knew nothing about earthquakes. Her family had never discussed them. When her parents, two brothers, and two sisters ran into the front yard they realized Connie wasn't with them. She was sitting paralyzed by fear at the kitchen table while cupboard doors above her flew open and pots, pans and dishes fell all around her.
                                                  -----
     Carol Winterborn was a senior at Wilson High and lived only a block from the school. She was in the bathtub and heard her mother run outside yelling for her to follow. Carol grabbed a coat and held it in front of her as she ran outside dripping. She was so panic-stricken it wasn't until her father reached home by bus that she could be coaxed back inside to put clothes on.
     Rumors flew afterward that an anonymous man had also run naked and dazed from his house. When neighbors suggested he put something on, once the big shake was over, he went into his house and came out wearing a hat.
                                                  -----
   Bill Siler, now of Lakewood, was only five and living in Compton at the time. He was sick in bed--an iron bed on wheels. As the earthquake flung the house off its foundations, the bed crashed from one wall to another with Bill hanging on, terrified at first. In pre-Space Mountain days, that kind of ride had no equivalent. While hurtling across his room, "I could hear pots and pans and dishes falling in the kitchen," he says. "Actually I enjoyed the ride. I thought it was kind of neat."
      Bill's father was a trucker on his way home when the road started heaving beneath him. He watched telephone poles topple one after another like a line of dominoes.
     "Later," Bill Siler also recalls, "we drove through the streets and there were fallen bricks everywhere and people calling for help and crying. You could see the sides of buildings fallen away exposing bathtubs and sinks. You don't forget something like that as a child!"
                                                 -----
     Not even as an infant. Dorothy Barnes wouldn't be two for another month but even she remembers the house shaking and her mother grabbing her by the hand to pull her outside. "We lived outside in a  tent almost until my birthday," she recalls.
                                                 -----
     Joy Elliott was cooking dinner while her mother was at work when she heard a distinct rumble. She glanced out the kitchen door. The car was bouncing as if someone were jumping up and down on the back bumper. The lamp flickered on and off.  She took a step and the floor came up to meet her.
     In her confusion, she thought, "The Japanese are here! I'll never see my mother again!"
     When the shock wore off, she didn't mind the temporary inconveniences. "People were really great to each other after the earthquake. It takes a disaster to bring out the best in people."
                                                  -----
     Dorotha Harmonson was a member of the class of  '33 at Poly High. On March 10 the girls' athletic group planned a potluck in the social hall with a skate afterward. Some of the girls had skated to school but Dorotha took her folks' car to a friend's house that afternoon to borrow a pair of skates.
     Sitting in the car, waiting for her friend to bring the skates out of the house, Dorotha thought schoolmates were bouncing on the car. She started to say, "Come on, you guys, cut it out!" when she realized walls were falling and people were screaming. By the time she got back to school the chemistry lab was on fire.

To be continued


Today I am thankful for sleep.

BEING THERE (1): Long Beach earthquake, 1933

     No, I wasn't there--I wouldn't be born for another decade--but I interviewed people who were. I was freelancing for local newspapers in 1983 and realized we were coming up on the 50th anniversary of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. So I ferreted out about three dozen people who had survived it and whose stories had never been told. I wrote them up as a feature article and took it to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
     But the editor I approached pointed to a reporter who had old copies of the newspaper spread before him and said, "He's already working on it." I was too shy to say, "But this is all new stuff!"
     The 50th anniversary edition came out with the same old stories about the dome of Polytechnic High School collapsing and the very same quotes from the very same survivors. The same thing happened again in 1993. In 2003, for the 70th anniversary, I submitted my article at last and the reporter assigned to the story used one paragraph of it. (To his credit, he did let people who hadn't been quoted before tell their firsthand stories.)
     Well, I want to share the stories that weren't told and there is no editor to stop me. So here is my original unpublished version of the 1933 quake.
                                                  -----
     You never forget something like that, even when it happened 50 years ago. That dinner you were fixing, in every other way like hundreds of other dinners, that particular conversation--even if you were only talking to a cat outside the window--take on a permanent freeze-frame quality.
      When the Long Beach quake hit, at 5:55 PM on March 10, 1933, most people were doing ordinary things. Jim Sundstrom was in Belmont Shore, telephoning the receptionist at Ideal Laundry to ask if he had had any calls. Carol Winterborn was in the bathtub. Murl Shaver was stocking shelves at Safeway. Bill Siler was sick in bed.
     But every detail of those ordinary events has been frozen by the strobe of the extraordinary event which interrupted them, in some cases forever.
     About 120 people were killed by the earthquake, most of them by falling bricks. The receptionist at Ideal laundry, with whom Jim Sundstrom was talking, was one of them.
     Sundstrom had moved from Pasadena to Long Beach in February and landed a job with the laundry and cleaning business in anticipation of his coming marriage.
     That afternoon he was working late on his route in Belmont Shore and had just called the office to see if there were any last assignments before he quit and went home.
     A young woman name Leona was on the desk and at the very moment Jim was speaking to her the earthquake hit. Each of them dropped the phone to run outside. Jim, unhurt, found the pavement in a state of upheaval. He drove carefully through streets strewn with bricks and rubble from fallen storefronts to the address where the office of Ideal Laundry had been. The building was in ruins.
     Leona had not made it out of the building. Jim and another man cleared the bricks from the doorway and found her lying in the wreckage. Her husband was sitting on the curb across the street, his head in his hands.
     Jim helped carry Leona to his car and drove her to Receiving at Seaside Hospital, itself partially demolished. He thought he had felt a pulse but the harried nurses at the hospital saw how badly her skull was crushed and told him curtly, "Put her body over there!"
     The memory is vivid and the shock of the day still very much with Jim. It isn't easy for him to talk about it.
                                                   -----
      Actually centered three miles off Newport Beach, the Long Beach earthquake, as it came to be called, had jolted an area 45 miles along the coast and 15-20 miles inland. Even official reports vary regarding the duration of that first jolt. The Red Cross reported it as 11 seconds, the geodetic survey as 22 seconds and the Long Beach Sun as 50 seconds. It was variously pegged at 4.6 and 6.5 on the Richter Scale.  
     During those seemingly endless seconds the force of the earthquake moved the land between Inglewood and Garden Grove 8 feet north and then 5-1/2 feet south. No wonder a Long Beach woman standing in her kitchen doorway for protection could say, "I really got bruised banging against each side!"

To be continued


Today I am thankful that God designed faces to be able to smile.