On Second Thought, Don’t Tell Me

Sitting here on the Big Island of Hawaii, waiting for a tropical disturbance to be “upgraded” to a hurricane. Some upgrade. A first-class problem, but since it’s my first-class problem, and we’re all family here at Curmudg, stick with me for a bit.

A very big problem on the Big Island is that when the supply chain gets interrupted, life can become a real mess. For everyone on the island, not just us haoles.* Looking around your home right now, think of how many things—furniture, furnishings, food—have come from somewhere else. Maybe another state. Maybe another country. In Hawaii, not much comes from here, apart from a bit of coffee, the occasional pineapple, and maybe a cow or chicken.

So we stock up as best we can. And wait.

Telling my mind to wait is another issue. Thinking further about the possibility of impending disaster, I started wondering which is better—the disaster you know is coming, or the one you don’t?

(Truth be told, I ran this musing by my two trusted advisors—daughter and wife—who think it’s a bit nutty.)

But I say, “carry on”…

Houston is not a city on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s connected to the Gulf by a 52-mile-long man-made ship channel, begun in the late 1870s. It’s a marvelous feat of engineering. Perhaps this is where the phrase “everything’s big in Texas” originated. The Ship Channel is the busiest waterway in the United States, by waterborne tonnage.**

In August of 1983, the first tropical storm of the season—Alicia—came barreling up the Houston Ship Channel into the city. It wasn’t a small hurricane—a Category 3. It made history by causing over $3 billion in damage (over $10 billion today). There were 21 fatalities and over 7,000 injuries. Nearly every office building in downtown Houston lost at least half of its lower-floor windows.

I was at home, about 10 miles west of downtown, waiting for the hurricane with my daughter Emily (6 at the time) and her mother (a bit older than 6 at the time).

Waiting was about all we could do.

We watched the winds pick up and the rain come down fierce and sideways. At one point, looking at our backyard, I thought I spied parts of a roof flying by, but I wasn’t about to investigate. It wasn’t ours, I was reasonably sure.

The wind and rain pummeled Houston for about 45 minutes, then stopped.

Our electricity was still working, and the TV news informed us that the eye of the hurricane was passing over. Walking outside was surreal. The air was calm, the sky a greenish-yellow, tree limbs strewn about the yard and street. A red tricycle was overturned and down the block from its owner.

All was quiet. Very quiet.

As predicted, the second half of Alicia was much calmer. It took a few days for the city to dry out, roads to become more passable, and for life to return to a semblance of order, although the overall cleanup lasted many weeks.

The house was fine; the family was fine. We walked away shaken, not stirred.

Fast-forward six short years, and I’m now living in Northern California. It was an uneventful, quiet Monday in the Executive Offices of Men’s Wearhouse (MW) in Fremont. I poked my nose into George’s office to say hi, and he mentioned he had two tickets to that evening’s baseball game and asked if I was interested.

Sounded great.

I also knew I was going to have to stop at home to pick up a sweater—no matter what the month, Candlestick Park in South San Francisco was always cold and windy.

(You’d think the warehouse of Men’s Wearhouse might have a sweater, but nooooooooo.)

I was living in Alameda in the East Bay, about thirty minutes north of my office. Driving home, north on Hwy 880 (“the 880” for you SoCal folks), I noticed bumper-to-bumper traffic heading south toward the San Mateo Bridge. So I made a mental note that after stopping at home, I’d continue north on 880 toward the Bay Bridge.

I’d need to take the first left after leaving my house.

Walking into the house to inform the Mrs. (not the first, not the last) of my intention to go to the game, I was met with more than the usual hostility from her. Something about “Why am I not going to the game?”

Explaining there were only 2 tickets—for George and me—wasn’t a sufficient answer, so I left the house quickly and not quite what I’d call “present.”

I got in my car and made the first right toward 880 south.

By the time I realized my mistake, I was already stuck in traffic and reckoned it wouldn’t make much difference.

As I approached the toll plaza of the San Mateo Bridge, I felt the back of the car swerve back and forth.

Wonderful…a flat tire. I’m not Mr. Fix It. Longtime Curmudg readers may remember I once cut half an inch off the top of a door, so changing a tire wasn’t exactly in my repertoire.

Pulling over to the side of the road and getting out of my car, I saw many other cars doing the same thing. Huh.

Maybe not a flat tire after all. Maybe an earthquake.

I could still feel the earth moving a bit as I, along with several other drivers, looked around, shook our heads, got back in our cars, and drove across the bridge. I don’t remember what I was listening to, but it wasn’t the news. When I reached the west end of the bridge, I noticed a building to the left I knew had been under construction. It was mostly askew—vertical beams fallen, horizontal beams vertical.

Huh.

Again.

Maybe it was time to turn on the news.

The game I was on my way to was Game 3 of the infamous “Battle of the Bay” World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s. The earthquake was the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta quake—the most severe to hit the Bay Area since 1906.

I made the literal, metaphorical, and metaphysical right turn out of my house that night. And it may have been exactly the right one. Had I gone left, as I intended, in roughly the same amount of time it took for me to reach the San Mateo Bridge, I might have been on the Cypress Street Viaduct near the Bay Bridge. Or on the Bay Bridge itself. Both collapsed during the quake. The collapse of the Cypress Viaduct killed 42 people when the upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck. A large section of the Bay Bridge also collapsed, killing one person.

The argument with my wife may have saved me. Just in time to have more arguments, in truth. But in truth, I also walked away from the earthquake with an awesome sense of how strange, unpredictable, and precious this life and this world are.

One minute you’re standing in the eye of the hurricane; soon enough, you’re cleaning up from its destruction and thankful you and your loved ones are in one piece. One minute you’re driving to the baseball game, the next you’re driving away from the game and trying to find the safest way home.

So which is better: the disaster you know is coming, or the one you don’t? I still don’t know.

There is no safe way—there’s just the way. Sometimes you’re in charge of your safety; sometimes the spirit in the sky is.

You never know.

With or without warning, I’d prefer fewer disasters.

*Hawaii has its own culture and language. Haole generally means a white person or outsider, and my guess is there’s more than a tad bit of sarcasm attached to it.

**According to Google, who’s never wrong about these things…

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