The Big One of 1989

Written by guest contributor: Leon Acord-Whiting, Actor/Writer/Producer


25 years ago today, the San Francisco Earthquake. To honor the occasion, here's my journal entry of the first couple days:


I walk out of the State Building a little after 5, cross the street, and stop to look at the USA Today stand. The machine next to it begins to shimmy. Just as I wonder if its the wind, the ground begins to lurch! I look up to see the parked cars literally bouncing on the pavement, rocking like boats on choppy waters. "Oh, fuck!" I thought, realizing what was happening. I grab ahold of a tree, and crack a joke (which I can't remember) to someone at the next tree, while the lurching continues. I look up to the swaying Federal Building and realize this isn't the best place to be. I let go of the tree, and begin to walk, but then its over.
Everyone appears in shock, but there's a feeling of "We survived another one!" I start to walk home, immediately noticing the cloud of dust over upper Larkin. The streets are instantly filled with people. Plaster is scattered across the sidewalks, and cracks snake up the sides of buildings. Some windows are smashed out. I decided to stop by Charly's to joke about it. When I arrive, a crowd of people stand at the door. The manager is telling everyone not to go back in--he doesn't know how bad it it. Hmmmm. The intercom isn't working, so I head home. As I turn my corner, I see Charly. He's on the verge of tears. He tells me he jumped out onto his fire escape--in his underwear--when it hit, barely escaping the shelves that then crashed onto his couch, ripping the TV and VCR cords out of the wall. He's very shaken up.
We went to the Peacock Club on the corner--everything else had suddenly closed. We sat there for over an hour. The news started to come in on radio--there was no power. The Bay Bridge had collapsed. 7.0! We were to a pay phone to call home. I got through to mom on the first try, who burst into tears when she heard "collect call from Leon Acord." I tell her everything is OK. When I hang up, a crowd of about 20 has lined up for the phone. Charly calls his mom, and I went to my apartment. Outside it was cracked along both sides. I walked up the stairs (no elevator), the hallways were cracked, plaster all over the steps. In my place, surprisingly very little was out of place--but every window in the place was shattered and gone. I gathered some stuff, and met Charly. We stopped by his place (a total mess) til dark, then walked. No lights at all, except for passing headlights. Masses of people just walking the streets like "Night of the Living Dead." Dazed. Sirens and helicopters non-stop.
We went to Market Street, then back up here, and went to a bar. Then we went to Christine's restaurant for a while. Then back to Charly;s. He finally got ahold of his family. Neal called, and I finally passed out.
Hung around Charly's most of the next day, no work, still reeling from last night. We went to the Castro and got some money front the only ATM that was working, ate, hung out for a while. We went back to his place, but it was dark, and he was wired. Back to Castro for some candles, and to a bar for some wine. Castro was business as usual, but when we returned, our neighborhood was like Gotham City. Pitch black, throngs on the streets. I finally came home.
Now the streets are completely deserted. Eerie. Still no power. Still hot out. I'm so exhausted I should have no trouble sleeping throughout the generators running across the street.
2:11am
Things are calming down. No work today, and from what I've heard, no work for some time. The older side of the State Building is condemned. Lord! I just cleaned up glass.

The Memory Box

I spent the weekend cleaning out boxes. Boxes of stuff I haven’t seen in years. Stuff I forgot about and stuff that forgot about me. It was strange, sad and wonderful to go through this archeological dig through the past. As I sit here writing this I am surrounded by things from one particular box that held wonders I never imagined. To my left is my first set of drum sticks (I was 10) and my collection of souvenir pens that have something floating through them (some have dried out) and to my right are ticket stubs and old addresses of people I have forgotten.  There were other things in the box like unused 35mm film, photos, letters  and an old wallet.

Yesterday, I went through one of my husband’s boxes and found his first wallet. Its leather with “Chevrolet” emblazoned on it. I tossed it into the tub of stuff to keep. There were three boxes and a trash can. One box was stuff to keep and sort later, a box for donate or yard sale and box for my Mom’s stuff. In my box today I found my wallet. My wallet is nylon with “The Kinks” set coolly on the front of it. Inside this wallet was a snapshot of a life.  I wonder about the young woman that owned this wallet, 30 years ago, and what her hopes and dreams were. I feel strange as I sit here thinking about being an adult. When we are young adults, we have our childhood and the present – where we are now. But what about being an adult for almost 30 years? Where does that leave our memory? Our lives? I think about the many lives I have lived and experiences I have had. It makes me somber in a way but then I look at this wallet of hopes and dreams. Inside I find a picture of my best friend Dawn’s niece, “Meghan Elizabeth 4 months,” with her chubby cheeks. Meghan just had a little boy a few months ago. I also find my college ID from Atlantic Community College with a “Valid for FALL 84” sticker on it. It has several layers of stickers underneath. This ID is a point of pride for me since I didn’t graduate high school until 1985 but I was taking classes. A-ha! My learners permit from the State of NJ, June 28, 1984. Amazing. There is also a CPR card from 1986 as well as a business card from the original dooms-day-prepper  store in Vineland, The Urban Quartermaster. Not sure if it is still there but it was a funky shop with all you need in case of being nuked. For my younger readers, we were not worried about zombies but being nuked and the business card shouts, “PREPARATION NOT PARANOIA!” Those were the days. My MTV Record Club card, definitely a keeper and last but not least my Doctor Who Fan Club of America card.

In between the old Star Trek cards and concerts buttons, I found post cards from Tony Mart’s. Any fans of the movie, “Eddie and the Cruisers,” will remember this spot as one of the scenes in the movie. It was a point of pride in the area that it was shot locally. My husband, who is from the Asbury Park area, and I argue of which location was the real Eddie and Cruisers’ home. Tony Mart’s  is long since torn down and smiling faces from old photographs are also long since gone. The adult years seem to ebb and flow in my memory. I refer to things in the 1990s as, “a few years ago,” and I have to explain what “affirmative action” means to my younger co-workers. I feel old looking through these things. I feel old and I feel like I have lost something along the way. Finding these relics doesn’t make me feel better about life but instead makes me feel longing. Longing for some things in life that I miss. I miss being in dinner theater, playing drums, going to sci fi conventions, practicing karate and being free. Funny, at the time I didn’t feel I was free. Perhaps, I am freer now than I was then? Is youth wasted on the young? No, I don’t wish to go back there. For what I have gained since then is worth more to me than anything I ever could have conceived of back then.

I also found photo albums that I made when I first moved to Tampa and then met my husband. I had no idea I had so much time on my hands to make them. Ticket stubs, pictures, etc. fill the pages of my adventures and they seem to have been many. I can’t remember some of them and it’s not because I was wasted, it’s because I really don’t remember. So many memories from 15 years ago came flooding back as I looked through the album and others didn’t. My husband looked at them with me and he said the same thing – he didn’t remember some of those events. Maybe my longing is to remember those times, events, feelings whether good or bad. I don’t know.

I sit here now planning on what to do with the massive amount of concert buttons I’ve found. I have decided to pin them to a tshirt and hang the tshirt on one of the walls in my house. I can look at them and try and remember when and where I was when I got them. Maybe who I was with. Not sure.  It strains my mind to dig so far back.

I pull two more things out of the bottom of the box. The very last things. One is a Monopoly card that says, “Get out of jail free.” I don’t know why I kept it maybe because it was a “Chance” card. The other is a scrap of paper with a quote written in two different pens, as if I was so anxious to write this down that I had to use a pen and a marker, “Who made the world I cannot tell; ‘Tis made, and here I am in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled such a deed. A E Housman.”  For who I was at the time, it appealed to me and oddly enough – it still does.