WHEN THE SHAKING STARTED

Twenty nine years ago the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. Now, without that as part of my memory, I would have never remembered that one of the games of the World Series happened that day. Because I pay no attention whatsoever to baseball, even though it's a mighty fine game, and remarkably similar to cricket. Which bores me also.

It was a Tuesday. Sunny and warm.


At the moment that the quake hit, I was arguing politics at the Caffe Trieste. When both of us saw everybody else clustering at the front door between the large plate glass windows, we realized what was happening, and decided that the bathrooms would probably be safer.

Once the shaking stopped I went home. I was the last person in my building to have a warm shower for the next four days. It was a very long and enjoyable forty five minute shower.


My girlfriend Savage Kitten made the long trek back to North Beach from San Francisco State University and checked up on me. I walked her home, and as usual held back three blocks from her house, so that neither her parents nor the neighbors would see me and ask questions. Because good Chinese girls from an old-school Toishanese family with a frightful harridan mom should not be seen dating white guys, ever. Later I called up to make sure she had gotten home safely in the utter darkness (no streetlights, the electricity all over the city was out), and had the first and only conversation in my entire life with her mother.

[During the years we were together I never met any of her relatives.]

Who was I, how did I know her daughter, where were my kinfolk from, what were my prospects, when would I graduate, and did my folks own any real estate?

I answered seemingly honestly but with complete lies. A concerned young classmate, going into engineering, from a different country district, born here, and yes.

The different country district explained my horrible accent.

[Failed to mention that the district was generations ago, in Europe.]


In the utter darkness of that evening, the Vietnamese joint, Sam's Pizza, and 'Stinksy Rosie' all were serving food from their grills by candlelight. Candy's place was booming, because she had borrowed the generator from the shop across the street. Lights, loud music, chilled drinks. The police came by just before ten o'clock and shut her down.


Next morning I went into Chinatown, because several cafes and bakeries there had hot coffee. Lots of cheerful people milling about.
A day off! Excitements! Hot beverage!


A few days later at the Caffe Malvina nearly a hundred dollars worth of quarters and dimes fell into my coffee cup, splashing cappuccino everywhere, but miraculously only a few drops on my clothes. The electricity had come back on, and released the coin hutch in the payphone above my table. Across the square the alarm of a shop went off because a trolley started up and rolled into the front of that building.




Please note that we don't have hurricanes here.
Nor plagues of locusts or frogs.
Those are back east.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================