First Quake

Disclaimer: Though the following article has a "punchline" it is not meant to belittle or trivialize the situation the people of Japan are going through right now. My heart goes out to them & I hope I myself never have to experience what they are facing. Please remember the victims in your prayers. It's because of this I was reminded of  "incidents" of my own having to do with earthquakes.

                                                              
                                                       First Quake

                                                               by

                                                                  Jay Agan

      An Ohio Saturday afternoon in a Spring of the late 70s & there I am in my Mt. Vernon, apartment watching a flick on ch 10 (WBNS). The fight scene is raging & I'm skarfing a Coke when the house shakes a little. Funny. No truck went by. In fact it was dead quiet outside. Wasn't much of a shake but it felt ..... strange.

      Thirty seconds later it happens again. Now I was sure it wasn't something normal. Earthquake? Couldn't be positive as I had never experienced one before. I get up & dash out of the subdivided house & take a quick look up & down the street. Everything normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

      I go back in & click on the radio. Within minutes WMVO had the scoop. A couple of tremors hit over a several county area including Knox County.

      A couple days later I'm talking to youngest brother about it & he related the same thing. His two dogs also got to howling a little after.

      My second quake was when I was with the parents in New Jersey while attending tech school in '85. It's about 5 AM Saturday morning when I hear what sounds like a freight train then a slight lurch to the house. Then neighborhood dogs get to barking & howling for a minute or two. "Musta been an earthquake." & I go back to sleep.

      Later that day it's off to the movies. I pass Computer Processing Institute on Rt 4 in Paramus where I attended school, & I notice quite a few cars in the lot. On a Saturday? I didn't think much of it & continued on. At the theater there was a long wait as tickets were being "processed" by hand. The computers were down due to the quake. I figured that was why there were so many cars at the school. This was confirmed there Monday.



Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained. It was about at this
point in the film when the quake hit. I swear, it's true!
Credit: Warner Bros.


      Oh. The movie I was watching when I experienced my first quake? Hercules Unchained starring Steve Reeves. Honest! Go figure.

                                      Article copyright © 3-12-2011 Jay Agan


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Long Ago, Not So Far Away

                                                         
                                                        Long Ago, Not So Far Away

                                                                            by

                                                                               Jay Agan
    
     Returning to Ohio from Jersey back in '88, I hoped to gain employment soon after arrival. Turned out no & I worked through temp agencies for awhile & not in my chosen field as a data systems operator. Three of these brief temp jobs were to exclusively help small businesses sort out their files.

     It's amazing, the number of people out there who can't alphabetize. You'd think with that song being so prevalent (You know. The one that rhymes with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?), most everyone could. Not so.

     A lot of folks can alphabetize only so far. Subsequent letters after the first in a name seem to confuse them. It's reasonable to think they could figure out Wallace comes before Ward or Lowe after Lawrence but they can't. So they throw all the Ws together, Ls in one place, etc. Makes for quite a mess. Shoot. A lot of 'em can't even spell their own names.

     There are other protocols for alphabetizing. If a book/album/movie title has A or The as the first word, you drop it & go the next. Example: The Brain From Planet Arous would be shelved right under B. A Man Called Horse would under M. Some folks don't get that (I just noticed. Neither does the Blogger labels indexer!).

     One mid 90s winter day, I was wandering around the Sawmill Rd. Media Play north of the I270 outerbelt, when I ran afoul of a Trek weenie who worked there. We're talking science fiction when, out of the blue, he decides to try out his mastery of Klingon on me. Out of disgust, I mention how some folks have too much time on their hands.

     He gets this frown on his face & decides not to talk to me anymore (Yay!), when a lady walks up to him with a question.

     "Young man, I seem to be having trouble finding A View To A Kill. Could you show me where it is?"

     I'll give Trek boy some credit. He did leap to his job. Unfortunately it was to the A section.
After a few seconds, I suggested they go to where the V titles were shelved. SHE found it rather quickly.

     Trek weenies .....

                                                       Article copyright © Jay Agan

VHS Vignette

                                                                  VHS Vignette

                                                                          by

                                                                            Jay Agan

     I remember Media Play. Back in the heyday of VHS tapes, it was THE place in central Ohio to go for movies. The three branch stores in Columbus had a fantastic selection of flicks as well as books & CDs. If they hadn't closed down a few years back one could only imagine what they would be like now.

     One day, in my late 30s, I'm rooting around the bargain rack of the west end store when a fit of "depression" hit me. I was not the success I wanted to be & the prospects of romance seemed quite dim.

     I'm thinking, "here I am in my thirties, not even married, blah, blah, blah. Geez. I'm such a loser, etc."

     I dwelt on this for a few minutes, the melancholy making me feel lower by the second. Just as I was about to "down" myself for the umpteenth time, a young couple walked by.

     She: "We always get what you wanna watch! We never get anything I like!"

     He: "All right ----it! We'll get something you wanna watch!"

     The two continued past in sullen silence, not even looking at one another.

     I stopped feeling down on myself for quite some time after.

                                                  Article copyright © Jay Agan

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