When I was all shook up

I was lying in a hammock outside our Cluster Springs home when I was awakened by a rare earthquake on Aug. 23, 2011. From all of my years in California, I knew right away what it was, but I asked myself, “What coast am I on anyway?”

 

The earthquake did not do a lot of damage here, but it brought back memories of my home state, where earthquakes, mudslides, fires, drought and just recently floods have become a way of life.

 

In 1958, an earthquake shook the third floor of my high school building while I was in class, and we all ducked under our desks. The teacher, though unharmed, was the last one to come out.

 

That same year, our hilly neighborhood, built on a filled-in creek, started sliding after heavy rainfall. Our patio and front walk were badly warped, but some of the nearby houses were destroyed, and we all had to move. We bought a house below a dam on a big earthquake fault, another risky location, but it remained intact, even after the big earthquake of 1989.

 

I remember being spellbound as I watched that earthquake on TV right during the Oakland-San Francisco World Series. It was weird occurring at the same time as perhaps the greatest sports event in the city’s history. A portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed with cars on it, the worst nightmare I could imagine.

 

As editor of the Kiplinger California Letter, I was prepared with pre-written copy in case “the Big One” occurred on my watch from 2000 to 2009. Fortunately, it never happened.

 

My friends sometimes ask, “How could anyone live in that state?” I point out that the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are prone to hurricanes, and we have occasional tornadoes here. Trees have fallen on our house twice during big storms.

 

“We’re pretty safe in Washington, D.C.” some up there have told me. There are no big earthquakes, tornadoes are unusual, and hurricanes become tropical storms by the time they reach there. 

 

“Well, you live right in the middle of ground zero in a nuclear attack,” I point out.

Nowhere is completely safe!

This Teacher Rocked!

 

In case you ever think music teachers aren’t influential, think of Susan Stark.

 

As my 7th grade music instructor, she was expected to teach us the 1800s classical works and such traditional songs as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “Oh Suzannah,”

 

Not Mrs. Stark. When she saw me with a copy of “Song Hits” magazine, she enlisted me to bring in all of my copies from home and help her come up with some pop songs for the class.

 

 This was 1954, when “Stranger in Paradise” and “Mr. Sandman” topped the charts. She wrote the lyrics on the blackboard, and the class eagerly sang along.

 

Next she encouraged me to play an unorthodox boogie woogie song I had learned, using her classroom piano at Portola Junior high School in El Cerrito, Calif. My music went over quite well in a talent show, and one of the greasers persuaded me to play it again.

 

A year later, she rounded up a bunch of us boys for an assembly show in which we sang “What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?” unknowingly preparing me for singing it as a senior adult with the Washington Men’s Camerata.

 

Do you think I am writing about her impact on me? Well, no.

 

Four years later, she coached another boy, the son of one of my mom’s friends. “You collect records. Why don’t you bring some of your favorites, and we’ll play them in class and you can talk all about what you like about them,” she told him. They weren’t Beethoven or Mozart.  They included “I’m Walkin’” by Fats Domino and “Boppin’ the Blues” by Carl Perkins.

 

Next, the boy played some blues music at the very same piano I used. He didn’t stop there. He came back and played that piano after class, drawing a small enthusiastic crowd, including a drummer who wanted to join him. They went to the drummer’s house and collected others to play.

 

The boy, John Fogerty, and Creedence Clearwater Revival were headed to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

 

“Mrs. Stark was a great inspiration,” he wrote in his book ”Fortunate Son.” “Rather than thwarting me when I went off to the piano to bang out some rock and roll–which I’m sure sounded pretty awful–she encouraged it and acted like it was the coolest thing in the world.”

 

Answering the Call

Every so often we hear a voice guiding us. Sometimes we listen and sometimes we don’t. I like to think it is from God, but some would say it is a voice in your head.

 

I had several jobs in which I heard “the call” to leave, to do something else. I thought, “No, it’s too hard to find another job. I don’t like what I am doing but I can get by here.” The boss sensed my frustration, and I was finished.

 

When I managed the Associated Press news desk for morning newspapers in Washington, the chief of the congressional staff asked me to join him. “Nah, I was brought from San Francisco to do this.” I had more influence on the news report where I was, though I was suffering from burnout after four years.

 

Later, my boss saw that and sent me unwillingly to cover Congress. It was a shock, but I absolutely LOVED it. Mixing with all of these famous people, and interesting young staff. I should have responded to the call several years earlier. It led to a stint as Treasury correspondent, where I developed a specialty in business and economics.

 

I got better at listening. After a music theory teacher heard me play a little on the piano a few years ago, he insisted, “You have to join a jazz band!” So I found one with a paid instructor and played in it for two years. Once we performed at one of Washington’s top jazz clubs.

 

Then there was the friend who told me, “Pickett Craddock is a single woman, Mike. You ought to get to know her.” Glad I didn’t ignore that!

 

Later, on a foreign trip, I told a stranger on our tour bus that I wrote news before retirement but that I was mostly interested in music now.  She looked me in the eye and declared, “You have got to keep writing!”

 

So I just did!

Special People in Our Lives

 Many of us have an “Uncle Fred” or an “Aunt Freida,” someone to look up to. As a toddler, I followed my Uncle Fred around the house, fascinated with this exuberant, talkative man. 

While I did love my parents, Uncle Fred was special, representing the vigorous outside world that my parents did not. He was a World War II veteran, one of the first soldiers to liberate Paris. Reading his diary is on my bucket list.

 

When I was maybe 10 years old, he took me in his car once on his insurance sales calls, describing the local history of every place we went in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was captivated by his account of the deadly accidental explosion at Port Chicago, Calif., in World War II.

 

When I began my cross-country trip to live in Washington in 1971, he told me, “Don’t go! You’ll be killed.” Well, he wasn’t always right.

 

Uncle Fred had aspired to be a journalist but never got the education. I guess I fulfilled some of his ambition. You could say we idolized each other. He would send me far too many newspaper clippings and write me long letters every few days, in the dot-dot-dot writing style of the ever-famous San Francisco columnist Herb Caen. He was almost as good.

 

Our only breaking point came when he sold my grandfather’s 1880 typewriter at a yard sale. I was devastated. The typewriter was so unique that you couldn’t see what you were writing on it–you had to pull a lever. It had separate keyboards for capital and small letters. It was one of the things that got me interested in writing.

 

Uncle Fred felt bad about selling it and went to the buyer and bought it back at a premium. But living 3,000 miles away, I don’t think I saw it afterward. After Uncle Fred died, my cousin shipped it to me as freight on a Greyhound bus.

 

I fixed it up some, but you could never get another typewriter ribbon like that. I took it to my office at the Kiplinger Letter to show it off in our old-fashioned headquarters, full of history and traditions.  It seemed like it belonged there. But I did risk upstaging the typewriter of the founder, Willard Kiplinger, whose writing device was a centerpiece in the museum below. My typewriter was 40 years older.

 

I was a little worried. My last boss was jealous of my grand piano, which was better than his. “I dreamed last night that I took a chain saw to your piano,” the boss told me once. 

 

So I didn’t really want Austin Kiplinger, Willard’s son, to see it. A colleague told this distinguished heir to the news operation about it, though, and Mr. Kiplinger came to my office. He said he was impressed, but he sure looked uncomfortable.

 

After I retired in 2009, I took it to our bed & breakfast, located in a house even older than the typewriter. It seemed to be a perfect place for it.

 

Thanks, again Uncle Fred, for buying the typewriter back!

 

I wonder if I will be someone’s Uncle Fred.

 

 

What I won't read--and will read

 

I read about four newspapers online religiously every day. But there are some stories I will not read. (Hope there aren’t any in today’s paper!)

 

–Any puffy Super Bowl feature article the two weeks before the big game.

 

–Sunday news analyses summarizing what happened during the week and trying to make it into a broader trend. (We used to call them “thumb-suckers”)

 

–Forecasts of any kind: economic, stock market, sports, politics or even weather more than three days out. I used to make forecasts myself. I know!

 

–Most anniversary articles, since nothing new has happened.

 

–Articles that start: “What you need to know.” Let me decide that!.

 

–Threatened lawsuits. (File it first.)

 

–Stories expressing “cautious optimism.” Meaningless words.

 

–Warnings of a government shutdown, which never happens.

 

–Retired politicians telling us what must be done (when they couldn’t get it done themselves).

 

–”These are difficult, uncertain times” stories. Well, all times are! Now, World War II and the Great Depression were difficult times.

 

What I will read:

–Happy, upbeat stories that reinforce the joys of living.

 

–Accounts of people surviving against all odds in disasters and other hopeless situations.

 

–Interviews with musicians, artists and other interesting people.

 

—“How to” stories, especially about technology. (Such as: how can I get my computer to save my password?)

 

–True crime stories.

 

–Big business disasters. Fat cats getting what they deserve.

 

–Scams and pyramid schemes. Glad I avoided them.

 

–Scathing reviews of really bad shows. They are so much fun! I would write them too if I wasn’t such a nice guy.