Seen Through Black Eyes

Good morning good afternoon and good evening to all. Today's episode is going to be completely off the rails. What I mean by that is it's not going to be about travel…I guess kind of but not really…Today is a special day in my life. Something occurred today 33 years ago.

As a young, yet dashingly handsome young man, I ventured out on my own, moving 3000 miles away from home, family, and friends. Seventeen days into my new adventure, I gazed upon the majesty of the California horizon. In combination with the fact that in mid-October, I was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and shorts and gazing upon the horizon that so inspired me, it seemed as if the earth moved beneath my feet.

Wait… that wasn't my imagination! The Earth actually did move beneath my feet!

It was a freaking earthquake, oh my goodness!

Yes, today 33 years ago was “The Great Quake of ’88. Actually the earthquake occurred on Tuesday October 17th 1989, but ‘89 I didn't rhyme with quake.

I will be setting up a “Great Quake of ‘88” GoFund me page to help me deal with the trauma that occurred 33 years ago, and in lieu of sending coins and flowers…SEND CASH!!!

For people who are of my age group and are baseball fans, if you happen to have been watching the world series of 1989, where the San Francisco Giants were playing against the Oakland A's…which was known as the Bay Bridge Series; because on one side of the Bay Bridge is Oakland, and on the other side of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and they were playing in the World Series that year.

I can't remember what game it was. It was about to start, and the earthquake took place and disrupted the World Series. Now how I experienced it was as such. I had gotten off from work I was working and living in the Bay Area, is I said I just move there. And I was on my way home, and I just happened to walk past a used car dealership. And I'm walking minding my business going back to… I was living in the Tenderloin.

So if anybody is familiar with the Bay Area at the tent you know… I sort of went from the pot to the kettle. Going from Harlem to the Tenderloin. But it's what I could afford, it was an adventure.

I was living 3000 or 2800 miles away from the nearest person that I knew you and it was an adventure. I was young, dumb, and full off…well anyway

So… the earthquake occurs, I just got off of work about an hour ago. I was taking public transportation to get home, and I was probably a half a block away walking in front of this used car dealership when it seems strange as if all of the cars…somebody was in each car and started them all up at the same time because they all seem to start to rumble a little bit and I thought that was strange.

But I didn't pay it any mind because you know, I'm from New York…I see strange things.

However, I then saw people that were inside of the building, the used car dealership building.

But I didn't pay it any mind because you don't from New York I see strange things

However, I then saw people that were inside of the building…the used car dealership building come running out. It still didn't strike me as something catastrophic, but just…odd

It wasn't until I got a little bit further, probably another 25 feet walking down the street heading to my apartment when I noticed that there was glass from the windows of the buildings that was breaking and falling to the ground.

And at that moment, okay I knew something weird going on something not just strange but something bigger…and to get away from the glass that was falling from the buildings to the ground, I sort of… not sort of I ran into the middle of the street!

And when I ran to the middle of the street and I looked I guess that would be North..not sure if is Northeast, Northwest but definitely North not due north but anyway and when I did that I noticed that the ground was moving sort of as a wave… it was only at that point that I realized that it was an earthquake.

And I actually have a newspaper… not clipping, I have the actual newspaper was a special edition that came out the next day. The San Francisco Examiner, and they talk about the earthquake. Now they characterized it a little bit…the initial reporting was not accurate but you didn't know.

So…it indicates that thousands of people died.. obviously anybody dying is tragic. But thousands of people did not die. But the view of it was catastrophic, and that was because the Marina District… a lot of natural pipelines I believe it was…burst when… a lot of the marina was built on landfill, and that area of the ground sort of just became liquefied, because it really wasn't solid ground.

And what ended up happening was a lot of the gas pipelines burst and burst into flames, so lots of homes got destroyed but a lot of people got out prior to. So it looks catastrophic with many homes on fire, and I'm assuming initially they had to report on stuff when they didn't have full information and the assumption was that thousands of people died.

In addition to that, the Bay Bridge, the original, well I shouldn’t say original, but they've since not because of the earthquake but they've since rebuilt the Bay Bridge where it's one level but prior to that it was two levels eastbound is on the top and Westbound was at the bottom. And a section of the top collapsed down on the bottom, there were several people killed there.

And in the East Bay there was a double-decker freeway called the Nimitz freeway, where a section… I think a couple of sections… the top-level collapsed down onto the lower level and people were killed there.

For myself, I lived on the peninsula, and I work at the airport so I did not need to cross any Bridges to get home, but we…I’m trying to think…I probably…I went into my apartment…

I cannot remember what floor it was but it was not the ground floor, I did require taking the elevator up, but an alarm was sounded and said everyone had to evacuate, because they didn't know the structural integrity of the building and had to wait for engineers to come out to give the approval. And so that did not occur immediately.

So I stood outside and waited for the engineer to come and give you all okay to into the building. If I'm not mistaken, that did not happen until the morning. Now for me as far as work is concerned, it worked out in an advantageous way meaning the earthquake occurred on a Tuesday, and because of the fact that I was in a rotating day off schedule, I was off on Wednesday Thursday.

So that gave 2 days for a variety of things to take place, one of them not being me going back to work. So I waited outside until the engineer gave the okay, which was sometime… I don't know in the middle of the night or something like that.

I ended up meeting a few neighbors, one young lady in particular that we ended up talking, and just keeping ourselves company and occupied minds through the evening until…

The engineer did come and give the okay to enter, he gave me the okay to enter the building that is…So we did exchange numbers yes.

But moving past that for a second, when I did get back up into the apartment…my apartment I attempted to call back home to let my mother know that I was okay, and I could not get through. Lines were crazy… so there were plenty of people that were calling in to the Bay Area to find out about loved ones, and there were loved ones that were trying to call out.

So I was not able to get through to my mother, probably… I think it was probably like twenty-four hours or so or longer…and the reason that I say that is because, I attempted to call several times during that next day. The earthquake was on a Tuesday, so all day on Wednesday I attempted to call, and every time I called the lines were busy.

And it wasn't until I don't know the exact time but it was Wednesday night into Thursday morning before daylight I know for sure. I attempted to call and I finally got through. So I got through and I did speak to my mother sometime between… let's say…cuz it was nightfall so sometime between and I were talking about October so…9 p.m. and 2 a.m., closer to probably the 2 a.m. Thursday morning time period…that is California time Pacific Coast time, that I got through when I spoke to my mother and let him know that I was okay because obviously she had known that I had moved to San Francisco, and got the information that there was a major earthquake in San Francisco and one of her sons was living in San Francisco.

So I did speak to her as quickly as I could. Remember this is 1989, so no WhatsApp, no instant-messaging, anything like that. So it was the regular phone call, and that's what I did and I finally got through.

So that was my experience with the earthquake of October 17th 1989, which I refer to as “The Great Quake of ‘88” even though it was in 1989…

Just to take a step backwards a little bit, I don't know if I went into this cuz I went straight into the story…

Is that I put in a transfer with this carrier that I was working with. I was working in New York and just wanted to experience something different, be adventurous…that's the kind of person that I was…

So I put in for this transfer. I put an actually a transfer for LA and for San Francisco, and San Francisco came up first. And it came up actually so fast, because what happened was I talked to some senior people, and asked, you know what is the process? How long do you think it would take?

And they were like, “Oh, if you put in the transfer, it’s probably going to take at least, a minimum of 6 months, probably a year before you hear back from them…”

Well, I heard back from them in like 3 weeks. And I really was not prepared for the move, but it said that if you turn it down you can't even put in another request for another 6 months. And when you're 23…that's a long time!

So, I said what the heck, let me just go ahead and do it and I did it. Taking a step back from that now, I just did not go out there cold turkey. I did go out and visit there three times. The first two times I visited San Francisco, they were day trips. And that's because the carrier that I worked for had a flight that would depart early in the morning. I think it was about a 6 a.m. departure and get in at…maybe it wasn't that early…

But say it was about 8 a.m. departure, and would get into San Francisco around 11 a.m. or noon and then they had a red eye which departed around 10 p.m.

So I could go out there, visit, spend several hours, and don't have to stay overnight. And so I did that twice, and then the third time I said I wanted to experience the overnight. So I stayed overnight, I caught a flight out there, stayed overnight so I can experience what…not only the nightlife because you're living out there's going to be more than going out, and hanging out and going to clubs and partying, which at that age that was a part of it. But there's a lot more to it than that.

So I actually did not go out and party and hang out. I went to different neighborhoods to see what it was like at nighttime and then caught the first flight out in the morning cuz I had to get back to work the following day.

So… I did that…experience that made the decision that yeah, what the heck if I didn't like it I could put in a transfer to come back within 6 months, so I ended up staying out there for 12, 14 years something like that.

So, it was an interesting part of my life...very good, I am glad I experienced that. And then it just so happened like the cherry on top was the young lady that I met in front of the building after the earthquake, we ended up becoming an item. And we hooked up and had some good fun.

We probably stayed together for about a year and a half or two. So it was good, it was good we had a lot of fun. She was new to the city as well. I think that…what I was only there for about 3 weeks, so she was there longer than I, but she really wasn't there that long. So we got the opportunity to explore the city together tried to coordinator our days off…we had a good ass time.

So that was my introduction to the West Coast. Initially, I'm getting the impression, what I remember is that she was a little bit conservative in the bedroom. We both explored new things.

So yeah that was nice. It was really good because again both of us being new to the city, and it allowed us to have a companionship, camaraderie. Those periods of time we both might have missed back home. I can't remember exactly where she was from, but if we started to miss that we had each other so it really worked out well for the both of us.

I cannot remember which one of us moved first, but that was sort of the beginning of the end. We stayed in contact after we moved, then it sort of waned a little bit. But interestingly enough, when I was first moved there was living as I said in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco, and I was in a very small studio apartment. Very inexpensive.

Then I was able to move into the East Bay which was a little less expensive, but I was able to get a little bit more for my dollars. And I got a junior one-bedroom which was an upgrade from what I had. But it turns out that there was an African woman that lived in the building that I was going to say she had an eye on me, but we had an eye on each other, and we ended up hooking up and having an on-again off-again relationship.

But the reason why I mentioned this is because, ironically enough, as technology started to improve and… not improve but you know that it always improves… but I do not believe it was fake because it was before that time.

What I'm getting at is my ex-wife, I never mentioned that I had gotten married and had moved to Atlanta, and years after myself and the African young lady stopped seeing each other because she moved…it turns out that she moved to Atlanta.

The details are foggy, but somehow or another we got in contact with each other and rekindled things when I moved to the east coast…well I moved to Charlotte North Carolina, not exactly the East Coast. But to get from Charlotte to Atlanta was pretty easy, especially working for an airline where you can fly for free.

So we rekindled things many many years later. So I always thought that was pretty interesting and ironic. So I will conclude this episode here and now, and do a really brief recap: The episode was primarily about “The Great Quake of ‘88”…

However, I did venture into two dalliances that I had. One began right during “The Great Quake, and continued a bit after. And the second one began a few years after, and rekindled many years later in San Francisco.

So thank you for listening, and the new episode I just compelled to talk about a different experience that I had while I was living in California. It’s not a travel experience, but an experience nonetheless.

END.