Wordless Wednesday

The Second Tuesday of Next Week

The International
Date Line

While I was growing up, my mother was known for using interesting turns of phrase.  She would talk about the "oneth of the month" (the first day of the month).  She and my father both used Spoonerisms deliberately, so we saved Chublip Stamps instead of Blue Chip Stamps and ate chotato pips instead of everyday potato chips.  One of my favorites, though, was my mother threatening to knock us into the second Tuesday of next week when we were being, um, precocious.  But, of course, there is no second Tuesday of the week.

Until there was!

When my family moved to Australia in 1971, we flew on a Pan Am 747 and crossed over the International Date Line.  When we did that, the day we lost was a Tuesday.

When we returned to the United States in 1973, we took a Greek cruise ship, and of course we had to cross the International Date Line again.  On that trip across the date line, we happened to repeat a Tuesday.  So not only did we make up for the Tuesday we lost, we finally had the second Tuesday of next week!

And yes, we gave my mother a bunch of crap about all the times she had said that to us.  She had somehow finally succeeded in knocking us into the second Tuesday of next week.

Unfortunately, my parents have both passed away, and neither my brother nor I remember the specific Tuesday we repeated.  But we know we came back in March, and the Tuesdays in March 1973 were 6, 13, 20, and 27.  So I picked today to write about it.

And I am pretty sure my mother would love the fact that I still remember.

Sylmar: 50 Years Ago

With me being from California, I've experienced several earthquakes.  Today, February 9, 2021, is the 50th anniversary of the Sylmar earthquake (also known as the San Fernando earthquake), which struck the Los Angeles metropolitan area early in the morning in 1971.  My family was living in Pomona at the time, about 50 miles to the southeast, and I remember that we felt it.  I don't recall any damage to our house, but hey, we did move to Australia less than two months later.  That had been in the works for a while, though, so really couldn't have had anything to do with the earthquake.

I've had a vague memory for many years that my brother slept through a big earthquake while we were living in California.  I recently asked him about that because of the Sylmar anniversary.  See, I thought he had slept through a quake in La Puente, where we lived before Pomona.  I can picture my parents and me standing outside of our house, but not my brother.  I'm not sure if that was in La Puente, but it was definitely not the house in Pomona.

Unfortunately, I didn't ask either my mother or my father about that memory, and they both have since passed on.  My brother does remember our mother waking him up to see if he was okay, but he thinks it was in Pomona, which would have been the Sylmar quake in 1971.

He found a Wikipedia page about a quake in 1968, the Borrego Mountain earthquake.  Now that was about 150 miles from La Puente, a pretty good distance, but that quake was felt as far away as Las Vegas, so there's a decent chance it was felt in La Puente.  It occurred in the evening, and my memory is that we were standing outside in the dark, so that could be the picture in my head.

On the other hand, that means I don't have any visual memory of the 1971 earthquake.  Maybe it was too early in the morning, and my brain was still fuzzy from being woken up?

Wait a minute!  I just put two and two together.  If my brother was asleep when the earthquake happened, it must have been in 1971, because that was early in the morning.  He was 5 years old in 1968 and probably not taking naps in the early evening.  So I've been mentally misidentifying it all these years.  Well, feh!

My father used to tell me that he had actually seen a sidewalk roll during an earthquake, but he never said which quake it was.  Considering that the Sylmar quake occurred at 6:00 a.m. in February, I don't know if it would have been bright enough to see the sidewalk do that.  Maybe it was one of the aftershocks.

I've been wondering if my father might have photographed any damage from the earthquake, but all of my father's photos are still with my sister in San Antonio, Texas.  Maybe one of these years I'll get ot see them and find out if he documented any of the earthquakes.  He was originally from New Jersey, and he admitted to me once that the quakes kind of freaked him out.

I have been in two other big earthquakes, 1987 Whittier Narrows and 1989 Loma Prieta, which I thought was a significant number.  I met a woman at a conference once who had been in the same three as I had (I'm not counting Borrego Mountain) but also was there for 1992 Landers and 1994 Northridge.  Maybe she's bad luck to hang around?

The collapsed Newhall Pass interchange, where California Highway 14 merges into Interstate 5, after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake.  The overpass was deliberately repaired quickly, before seismic codes could be upgraded, and collapsed again in the same manner during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Wordless Wednesday

A Significant Family Move

Recently two different influences on my blog came together in a way that made me write this post.  Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun theme had people writing about homes in which they have lived and which ancestor moved the furthest during his lifetime.  And the California Genealogical Society invited Craig Siulinksi to teach a class about writing one's life, in which he suggested that attendees each write about a significant event in our lives.  Having those ideas running around together in my head made me focus on a significant move.

As evidenced by the post about the homes in which I've lived, I have moved many times in my life.  My family moved so many times when I was a kid, my mother was nicknamed "the wandering Jew."

One of the most significant moves came early in my life, when my family left the United States and lived in Australia for two years.  We did this through a potential immigrant program sponsored by the Australian government.  I don't know how many groups might have been targeted, but the relevant one for my family was tradesmen.  My father was a talented and accomplished mechanic and apparently fit in well with what the government was looking for.

He was such a good mechanic, his photo was used in a newspaper ad in Australia!

I don't remember any of the preparations leading up to the move, because I was just eight years old and my parents handled all of that.  My father has told me one thing he had to do was go to San Francisco for an in-person interview at the consulate.  His opinion was that they wanted to make sure he was white; I don't know if that's valid or not.

We flew to Australia in March 1971.  The first leg of our journey was taking a helicopter from Ontario Airport in far western San Bernardino County to LAX, where we would catch a plane.  The three of us children were thrilled that we could look out the windows of the helicopter in all directions, but my mother, who was pathologically afraid of heights, had her eyes squeezed tightly shut the entire trip.  She kept telling us she didn't want to hear about what we could see down on the ground.

The airplane we flew on was a Pan Am Boeing 747.  Those were relatively new at the time, and I think it was pretty fancy, but I can't recall anything specific about the flight other than that we had to stop in Hawaii to refuel (which nowadays sounds amusing to most people).  And illogical as it seems, my mother loved to fly, as long as she was not sitting by the window.

I have only vague memories of our earliest times in Australia.  The first place we lived was an apartment.  I think that's where we were when my parents bet each other who could stop smoking longer.

Some background:  Both of my parents had smoked my entire life.  My mother's best friend smoked also.  When we were younger and my mother asked us children what we wanted for Christmas, we would say in a chorus, "We want you and Daddy to quit smoking."  To which my mother would reply, "Yeah, right, what do you really want?"  Well, be careful what you wish for.

So the bet was on.  My father gave up after three days.  My mother, who was more than a little stubborn, stuck with it.  Unfortunately, she became grumpier and grumpier (a very polite term for how she was acting) and ever more unpleasant to be around.  Eventually, my brother, sister, and I all begged her, "Mommy, please start smoking again!"  (The smoking is what eventually killed her, but she was absolutely miserable without her cigarettes.)

Next we lived in Maroubra Junction.  The main thing I remember about this location is that my mother worked at a Greek deli for Mr. Kringas.  One time when I was there Mr. Kringas asked if I could read.  At 9 or 10 years old, I proudly said I could, and he promptly handed me a newspaper — but it was in Greek!  He thought this was a great joke, but maybe that's what motivated me to learn the Greek alphabet.

As for the photograph at the top of this post, according to my father, "The Concorde was on a world introduction/promotional tour.  Being an airplane buff, I decided we should go see the beast.  Everyone was duly impressed and your Mother was already scheming up how to get a ride.  When we later found the going rates for SST travel, that plan was quickly discarded."  The photo of my siblings and me in front of the Concorde was taken at the airport in Sydney.  According to this history of the plane, the date was June 17, 1972.  (Isn't the Web wonderful?)

Wordless Wednesday