Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Earthquake!

In the early innings of Game 4 of the ALCS, one of those heads up banners streaked across the bottom of the screen. Usually reserved for warning of serious winter events, I had to let it finish it's first loop before I could make sense of it. All I caught the first go around was the word Earthquake!

Now focused for the second loop I found out that not only had Maine experienced an earthquake at around 8:00PM, but the epicenter of this 2.0 monster was not 6 miles from my house.

"Hmm", I thought, "That was about 45 minutes ago." I rewound the memory clock to see if I could retrieve any recollection of odd sounds or movement from the house. Nothing. No break in the normal flow of another normal week night indicated anything had happened. Just this out of the blue banner on the eternal feed loop telling me over and over we had indeed just survived an earthquake.

Now I know a 2.0 quake is a ho hummer over on the left coast. More than likely a quake of this magnitude would not even make an eyebrow raise. And unless china breaks and walls throw pictures on the floor, most folks out there don't even bother to yawn over such a small variation in the stability of the ground they live on.

But here in Maine, we have become comfortable knowing that any unusual event created by Mother Nature is most likely going to come out of the sky. The ground is not supposed to jiggle here. That may be okay for the people living on fault lines out West, but here we like our events to be predicted by Joe Cupo on Channel 6.

I will always remember one of my father's great regrets. He always wanted to feel an earthquake. He died never having felt one. His only chance was when we lived in Japan when I was a child. While Mom and I were at home trying to catch stuff as it flew off of shelves and still keep upright, my dad was landing his C47 on a runway at the base. By the time he climbed out of the plane, it was over. I guess we all have some pleasures destined to be denied us.






1 comment:

Apertome said...

Wow man, now that's just crazy! I'd be pretty freaked out if we had an earthquake here, even if it was just a small one like that.

Feeling an earthquake seems like sort of a strange desire, but the way he just missed his chance is amusing. Personally, I hope I never experience one.