Flower Power

I'm old enough I've met quite a few old timers who lived through the Big Quake in 1906.

My great grandmother, in fact, who was 17 at the time of the Quake, used to tell us about how she and her family camped with other displaced persons in Golden Gate Park, and she said she had a really good time.

She used to like to say that the earthquake survivors were the prototype for the hippies and the flower children, because the families who lived in the Park after the quake lived very communally, sharing all their possessions, taking care of one another's children.

And funny, the one thing that always puzzled me about the old timers' stories about the Quake and the fire in 1906 is they would always tell you about the big rain that came a few days after the quake that extinguished the fires and saved what was left of San Francisco.

And if you were a Bay Area kid like me, you'd say "But hold on a minute there, Grandma. It doesn't rain in April!"

Maybe in other places in the country you get your rain any old time of the year, but in California, our rain only comes from November through maybe the middle of March.

Well, I guess we're getting our one-hundred-year April deluge out here, because I mean to tell you, I feel like I'm living in Raintown, USA, here. I've never seen so much rain in my life.

Here it is Easter, and the rain is still coming down. Well, the good news is the flowers are happy. In fact, I'm going to bring some to church. It bugs me that we've got the Virgin of Guadalupe on a sub altar there, and nobody every puts native flowers in front of her.

I mean, people are putting tulips and stuff in front of her, which is all very fine and thoughtful, but hello! She's the Patroness of the Americas! She's not the Virgin of Rotterdam, OK. I mean, if we're going to appropriate the trappings of paganism, let's at least put some thought into it.

You know what I'm saying? Let's give it some conceptual integrity!

And two days from now at 5:18 AM is the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake, so go offer some native flora to your Virgin of Guadalupe.

Oh. And pour yourself a Bloody Mary. That has nothing to do with Catholicism. It's just one of those Earthquake traditions. The old folks were very conscientious about that one.

Kurt "big daddy" True
16 april 2006