Might as well share my other blue ribbon, for best short story in the Western class.
On Saturday I got a chance to read an excerpt aloud at the fair. Many of the writers/readers were a bit shy and reserved in their reading. Not me. I went in there with *jazz hands*
Would you expect any less from me? I didn’t think so.
Last evening, I sat curled up in the corner of my comfy couch, sleeping feline nearby, laptop lid up, idly surfing about, catching up on the news of the day. The Good Man did something similar in the next room. Giants baseball on the radio, the sounds of Duane Kuiper calling the game.
From out of nowhere, the lights flickered, and then went out. The instant it went dark, a loud whining sound could be heard outside. The unmistakable sound of a power transformer under extreme strain. It went on for a long time. Stopped, then started again.
And I slipped back into memory. It was the early 1990’s. My folks were living in Carlsbad and I was home for a few weeks between summer school and the start of the regular school year at NMSU.
It was a beautiful, clear summer day. I decided to take a long walk and get some exercise in before my folks came home from work. I left the house about 3:30 in the afternoon and walked down long country roads. My folks were living on the outskirts of Carlsbad at that time (if you’re from there, it was out on Cherry Lane near the CARC farm).
The first half of the walk was great. It was a gorgeous New Mexico day. On my return trip, things started to get ominous. In August in the southeastern part of the state, storms come in fast and furious. Emphasis on furious. Carlsbad is at the tail end of tornado alley, but being at the tail end doesn’t mean the tornados are any less frequent.
As I walked a little faster, the sky turned deep black, and then green. The clouds started to boil. This was bad. Very, very bad.
The rain came quickly and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The powerful winds whipped raindrops into my bare legs and arms. Then the hail started. Small icy bits at first, then growing larger.
My whole body shuddered when I heard the sirens I’d come to both fear and hate. Tornado sirens. That meant a tornado had been spotted and all we could do was wait.
I was still about a mile from home, on foot, and in the center of the storm.
I picked up the pace a lot more. I ran off and on, but as I’m not a runner, I had to slow down so I could catch my breath.
Already drenched, I groaned when the rain picked up intensity. Thunder shook the ground, the trees, the terrified girl by the side of the road.
Lightning cracked out of the sky and hit a power pole across the street and ahead a bit.
That’s when I heard that sound. A power transformer under strain.
The power transformer exploded, sending flames and sparks into the sky.
I dove headfirst into a now very soaked alfalfa field, remembering my early training on “get low when lightning is around,” and lay as flat as possible, hugging mother earth while lightning struck all around.
Soon the heart of the storm moved on and I could hear the thunder a couple miles away, counting “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” between lightning strikes and thunderclaps.
When it seemed I was safe, I leapt up and ran for my folk’s home as fast as I could. I got home safely. I called my mom (a no-no in the storm, but I needed my mommy!) and since we had no tornado shelter, she recommended that I stay to the center of the house and if a tornado was coming to get into the bathtub and hunker down.
“Get ready to leave the house!” The Good Man commanded sharply, snapping me from my reverie. I was back in Northern California and that transformer sound had stopped.
I jumped to action, running to get the cat carrier out of the closet and once The Feline was secure (she loves the cat carrier and walks right in with no complaint) I ran room to room and unplugged every device that was attached to a socket. The Good Man was on the phone with PG&E advising them of the situation.
We dashed outside to see what was going on and the neighbors were all outside too, talking over what they saw and heard. Soon the sirens of a fire engine came racing toward us and the firemen let us know a powerline was down two streets over but no explanation as to why the powerline came down on a quiet evening. PG&E were on their way and we should go back inside.
We lit candles and got out flashlights and settled back into the couch. Safe. On that summer day back when in Carlsbad, I was also safe. Tornados did touch down, but several miles away.
This past April when an earthquake came along and the house and ground shook, The Good Man, a longtime veteran of the Bay Area, commanded “Get in a doorway!” and I did.
I’m grateful to have a partner who is the epitome of grace under fire, and I’m grateful for my Mom’s wise support from two decades ago, too. Mostly, I’m just grateful when there is someone strong and wise to guide me through a crisis.
That makes me feel safe.
Image from Ring Electric’s blog.
The June issue of New Mexico Magazine is on newsstands now! I got my copy in the mail this week and found a few more copies at my local Borders.
Yippee!!
Here’s the cover, in case you’re looking for it. I’m on page 13!
B’gosh and B’gorrah, today is the wearin’ of the green and the luck o’ the Irish.
When Irish eyes are a’smilin’ over a four leaf clover, or something like that.
You know, for some reason this reminds me of a boyfriend I had back at NMSU. He was a lean ol’ cowboy from Capitan and he had a lot of classic sayings, many of them unreapeatable.
One of the cleaner mottos did stick with me, in fact I use it today. It went something like this:
“It’s better to be lucky than to be good.”
Now this is a theory I subscribed to for many years. I believed luck was the only way I got anything good.
But that seems to be changing with time, and here in my wiser years, I’m actually starting to disagree. I’m learning that the best of all luck is simply to have the courage of your convictions backed by hard work.
Which means you get to make your own luck.
Sure, this takes a lot more effort than leaving it to the Goddess of Fate and her bitch sisters Destiny and Time*, but it’s one hell of a lot more satisfying.
Or maybe the truth of it all is, really, it’s better to be both lucky AND good.
*For the purists out there, don’t get your knickers in a twist. This is me making stuff up, not actual Greek mythology. This week’s Theme Thursday is luck. Image by Andrea Kratzenberg and used royalty free from .
Last year, in the holiday season, I saw a Christmas tree that was decorated with white origami cranes. It was so simple and beautiful, and was located, of all places, in my local Ace Hardware store.
The idea stuck with me, and so this year, I decided to do something similar.
I bought real Japanese imported origami paper and I chose to decorate our holiday tree with origami cranes this year.
In the tradition, cranes are said to be a special gift or a very auspicious thing. So heck, The Good Man and I could use a little auspiciousness (<-- not a word) in the new year. So I folded and folded and soon, I had a pile of 100 cranes I then placed on the tree. We’d intended to add more decorations, but found that the colorful cranes were simple and elegant and more than enough to make our Christmas tree really beautiful.
They are quite pretty and a nice alternative to the regular ornaments.
When I look at my tree, it just all feels very auspicious and good luckish (<--also not a word) and makes me happy.
But I have a question. What is the impact on the auspicious meter when The Feline callously rips a crane from a low branch, bats it around (playing a game of cat and mouse), then leaves the crane for dead on the train tracks that encircle the tree?
That can’t be good.
Rather inauspicious (<- actually a word!)
All photos by Karen Fayeth, taken with my iPhone 4