Ashaking and Agroaning...Earthquake Time

There's gotta be a Willie Nelson ashaking and agroaning, earthquake song.

"I'm feeling dizzy. What the hell is going on?” It was 1954 and having just moved from flat, boring Iowa, where the big thing was to have 'corn, knee high by the fourth of July’, to Palo Alto, located in the Land of Milk and Honey and Fruits and Nuts, and where the big thing was to be laid back and enjoy the weather.

Now, the gazillionaire geeks and nouveau riche have all but destroyed that culture. The geeks dressed like slobs, making obscene amounts of money and completely powerless over their own bullshit, dominate Palo Alto. Bye, bye sweet college town.

In Iowa, 5 days in a row in January of temperatures warmer than 20 fucking above degrees was considered a heat wave. In Palo Alto any temp in January, in and around 32, is considered a 'cold blast'.

While sitting on the front lawn, in that summer of '54, of the Eichler house we lived in and visiting with a native Californian neighbor, I suddenly felt dizzy and felt like the ground was moving under my fat ass. The thought that I might be having an inadvertent bowel movement did flash on me.

I looked quizzically at the neighbor and he quickly explained, laughing, that we were having a 'fucking tremor'. He thought it funny, while I thought maybe I was better off freezing in the winter and living in an insanely buggy, humid, fucking hot Iowa weather in the summer.

The occasional California tremors through the years have made me no never mind. The papers hardly reported them.

When the big mother came in 1989 and shook up Candlestick Park I was living large in the Big Apple enjoying my friends, hookers and making more money than I deserved. God, it was fun. No booze, no smoking, just living a wonderful, high on the hog life. Wine or not, real shakers produce real tragedies

But at around 3 and change in the morning of Aug 23, 2014 my earthquake nonchalance ended with a real, live jolt. 'My building', about 50 years old and built real cheap, was making edgy noises, like it was coming apart at the fucking seams.

Being on the top floor of a creaky old building that seemed to be moaning and groaning like an old whore on Saturday night ain't too swift. A+ for scary and Palo Alto is about 90 minutes, by car, from Napa Valley, which really paid the price for its sinful, wine soaked living.

Twenty seconds or so became a fucking lifetime with all kinds of bad scenarios going through my normally empty head. Sleeping in my tee shirt didn't make me too fucking well dressed for a hurried exit to the street. But then, how in the hell was I going to get down to the street from the fourth floor without getting killed by flying debris?

On and on. What a fucking twenty seconds it was. A Bronx Jew in an earthquake is an oxymoron.

Fortunately the twenty second shaker and baker ended with me deciding that even at 90, dying in a lousy earthquake held no fucking appeal for me.