Rocking the Church

Another slow and easy Saturday. After going to the gym--yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I still stagger to the gym three times a week--and having lunch with the boy, we piled out instruments into the car and drove over to Christ the King to play music for the "vigil" mass at 4 p.m.

Not too many people but we were okay with that, as we don't look on the church gig as a performance. Adam, in fact, was with me today because he wanted to try out his new tenor banjo (a Christmas present) on one of the songs. Adam, who once was quite gung ho about playing in church, is somewhat less enamored with the idea these days. Still, he shows often enough to make me happy.

So we're sitting listening to the sermon and suddenly the ground starts rolling. Then the rumbling starts. Then a quick sharp jolt bounces the church a few inches down the road. A bit more rolling. Thirty to 45 seconds later, the church comes to rest and we start looking around to see if any one of us had been swallowed up by the fires of hell.

The strange thing--the very Californian thing--is that no one panicked. No one screamed or ran or even cried out. There were a few "ohs" and that's about it.

The power went out. We looked around and shrugged and Father Mike--he's been in Humboldt for 60+ years--started telling stories about earthquakes he's been in over the years and pointing out to us that he had just this year had the church refitted for earthquake safety and chained some of the heavier statues to the wall.

"Do you think you can keep playing?" he asked us. Adam and I and Mary McCarthy, the lady who plays accordian with us, all shrugged and we finished the mass by candlelight. Not exactly something that was covered in Vatican II, but we acquitted ourselves nicely. I told Adam that we're probably already legendary in CTK for being the group that kept playing through the earthquake.

Nothing was broken at home, surprisingly, as the quake registered a 6.5. The epicenter was about 40 miles south, right off the coast of Ferndale. I'm sure there were more broken knick knacks down there. But no one was hurt, no overpasses collapsed, and most of the damage was minor. We're not talking about a major disaster here.

It's my fourth big quake, though. I was just a lad when the Sylmar quake hit LA and I happened to be up at that time because I had to catch the 6:30 bus to school. I remember the bathroom floor shaking and rolling. My next big quake was in the early 80s, when a large one hit Eureka in the middle of the night while I was working a midnight shift at a radio station. The station was located in an old brick building and I recall the walls swaying dangerously. I thought I was a goner--the quake actually knocked me down because I was walking from one room to another. I survived and even got the station back on the air in minutes, an act of bravery which was rewarded a year later when the new owners of the station laid me off.

My third big one was the most memorable. I lived in Canoga Park when the Northridge quake hit. Adam was about 11 months old. It was 4:30 and I had just been called by a client to tell me her child was in Juvenile--as if I could do anything at that hour (juveniles can't be bailed out, so we were going to have to wait till the detention hearing later that morning). I was just drifting back to sleep when suddenly it sounded like someone was pounding on the door. Next think I knew, the house seemed to be lifting off the ground and then pounding hard back down, as if some petulant giant child was slamming it repeatedly.

I went into Adam's room and picked him up out of the crib. We didn't know if the house was going to collapse, so the boy's mother and I made our way in absolute darkness to the outside. In order to do so, we had to pass through the kitchen. We felt our way along the cabinets in the blackness, the boy in my arms and both adults in bare feet. It was far too dark to find shoes and we needed to get into the open quickly.

(Lest you think we were foolish, I remind you that this was the quake in which many people died because their structures collapsed on their heads--often from the aftershocks.)

I had just, a few weeks earlier, lost a dear friend who once ran Mama Pajama's, a coffee house/clothing store where I used to hang out and occasionally play music. Her name was Norah, and she had fallen in love with my infant son the minute I brought him into the place. Norah had unexpectedly died of cancer at the beginning of January.

So as I felt my way along the dark house, onto the tiled kitchen floor, and eventually out the door, I felt like someone was guiding me. I can't tell you why, but I distinctly remember the odd feeling like I was safe because I was being protected while I had the boy in my arms.

When we returned to the house after daylight to get our shoes and some coats (it was cold that January morning), I looked to the kitchen tile and stopped dead in my tracks. The entire kitchen floor, including the way out the door which we had taken, was covered in broken glass from bottles and dishes and glasses shaken loose from the cabinets.

The entire floor, that is, except one small portion next to the cabinet which was inexplicably clear. The path which we had taken in the darkness.

I am sure, to this day, that Norah was looking out for us. That she lead me along the one path where my bare feet would not have been cut to pieces while holding on to the baby. You can give me all the scientific explanations you want. All I know is that my son is going to be 17 next month without a mark on him from that frightening and peculiar night.