EXCERPTS FROM REELIN’ IN THE YEARS
Loma Prieta
I had just gotten off work at the Monterey library automation company on October 17, 1989, when the first jolt hit. My car started jerking and shaking. Parked cars along the street were bouncing a foot off the ground. The stop light stanchions began swaying, rocking back and forth. Traffic lights went blank. All radio stations went off air. It took a while to realize this was an earthquake, 6.9 magnitude, the largest one I had ever experienced. When I finally mustered the courage to drive home along Highway 1 north to Marina, I found cars scattered across four lanes of traffic, some on the shoulder, some on the median, some at a full stop on the asphalt. Slowly and cautiously, we all resumed our frightening commute to who knows what we would find at our destinations.
At home, there was no electricity. Several neighbors were cleaning up toppled hot water heaters,
up-ended furniture, the contents of cupboards, pantries and refrigerators spilled onto floors. My own home was dark but suffered little damage, just cracked tiles and grout, a few broken figurines and plates.
As thousands of after-shocks continued to roll through, we set up a tent and camp stove in the backyard. We used a battery powered radio to listen to the emergency broadcast system as it intoned a roll call of building and freeway collapses around us, failed or successful rescue attempts, road closures.
For four days, my community pooled thawing groceries, barbecued and offered each other coffee, water, batteries, and companionship. It took me two weeks to feel safe enough to resume living inside, not flinching as aftershocks continued, sleeping at night on the mattress finally moved from inside a door frame, back to our comfortable bedroom.
In the Eye of the Storm
Shortly after moving to Neah Bay, I experienced my first gale. Our mobile home perched on a bluff just above boulder reinforcements leading down to bay water. Newlyweds, we stored unpacked wedding gifts in a small metal shed beside our single wide trailer. As the wind velocity ratcheted higher, my husband was busy on the Coast Guard boat, towing in fishermen who had lost their engines or gotten into trouble.
I sheltered in my kitchen, staying away from the windows. The electricity failed. Torrential rain slashed downward from fulminating clouds. As the tempest howled, gust reached 100+ miles per hour. Our shed blew into pieces. Wedding gifts sailed over the brink to disappear into ocean. Sheet by sheet, our mobile home’s skirting blew off and vanished. The leveling blocks beneath our bedroom keeled over and the trailer began shimmying and shaking. I was terrified. Soon several of the seamen from the station parked a three-quarter ton truck alongside the midsection of my frail aluminum sided trailer, using metal cables to lash our home to this make-shift anchor.
As the storm accelerated, temperatures fell, and it began snowing. I wrapped myself in blankets and used the tiny burners on our propane stove to provide heating. Eventually, our doors froze closed. When he returned to shore, my husband liberated me by pouring boiling water along the door seam. It was a pyrrhic victory as our MG Midget was buried in a snow drift, all four tires frozen fast to the ground.
Nuke ‘Em Till They Glow
As politicians and the Pentagon ramped up for an attack on Iraq named Desert Storm, the Monterey community divided itself. Peace organizations came together to form a coalition of like-minded individuals deploring violence. Members of Veterans for Peace started assembling at Window on the Bay. Each Sunday they planted white crosses to commemorate those killed during preparation for full-scale U.S. invasion. On the night of January 17, 1991, aerial bombing of Iraqis began.
Along Pacific Avenue in front of Colton Hall, members of the Peace Coalition, including myself, held up signs urging negotiation and peace. We occupied the park surrounding Monterey City Hall, lined the sidewalk in silent protest. Across the street, those in favor of military aggression and mass killing formed their own demonstration. Young men in pickup trucks waving enormous American flags paraded up and down the street screaming, “Nuke ‘em till they glow!” as they passed.
For the first time, I felt this was no longer the country I once knew and loved. A reporter from Channel 8 arrived with cameramen, shoved a microphone in our faces, interviewed our hecklers who shouted over our voices, then threw her mic into the street shrieking, “Fuck you all!” before storming off.
Around midnight, a man who had been standing on the opposite of the street came over to our side with his young daughter. One by one, they went down the line of peace protestors, thanking us for our act of conscience, shook each person’s hand.
Jennifer Lagier lives a block from the stage where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar during the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, and helps publicize Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium reading series. Jennifer has published twenty-three books, most recently Weeping in the Promised Land (Kelsay Books), Postcards from Paradise (Blue Light Press), Illuminations (Kelsay Books).
OVUNQUE SIAMO 