Palomar Mountain News

Standing at the scanner upstairs at Nathan’s place, we experienced our latest earthquake. Those chimney lamps would not have survived if I hadn’t been right there. I grabbled the tops of each as they were tipping over. That first one was a wedding gift to my grandparents in South Dakota at the beginning of the last century. It is turning a lovely shade of purple. The other was always on this same dresser, in my grandma’s house in Vista; nice they both survived.

I did happen to think back to what we were taught to do in elementary school during those split seconds; “Duck and Cover”! After being in quite a few earthquakes now, I am quite certain that whoever made up that idea of duck and cover has never been in one. I always saw it as an exercise to get my pretty dress dirty crawling under my desk. With my experience, when a quake starts to rumble, I’ve never felt I had the time to duck anywhere. It is amazing what we have been taught to “grab on to”. Think I will stick to the lamps.

Just thought of another earthquake experience up here. We were talking to the County Road Forman at the time, Andy and his wife, Nell Ridge about buying this home in September of 1975. We were in the living room and heard a ‘train coming’. I know we don’t have trains up here, but that low rumble was coming from way out to the west. I looked out the window at more apple trees than we have now, down in out little orchard. Row by row, they lifted about 3 feet out of the ground, like a wave coming toward us. I knew we should ‘duck and cover’ or at least run outside, away from under our second story and the huge beams. I remember thinking it might be my last seconds on earth. That ‘wave’ came up to the bottom of the bank and the ‘train’ stopped. Andy and Nell were content on sitting on the couch but Don jumped up to look out the window, too and saw the orchard wave coming toward us. So thankful that train stopped right at the bottom of the bank about 40 feet out from the house.

This quake was apparently a 4.2 on Palomar, maybe 3 miles from north west of our house.

All is well…

Bonnie