‘6.6 a New Measure of Personal Toughness’

If you are not among the hundreds bloodied or the thousands bathing at water fountains in Woodley Park, this is the moment to exhale, kiss jujus and thank whomever is your god.

We’ve made it. Cats are limping home. Crickets are peering from cracks. Satan shrugged and lost. To redirect Winston Churchill: If Los Angeles and Southern California last a thousand years, men will still say: “This was their finest hour.”

And if over the age of 50, know that you have survived the Big One. Because, by the stringy whiskers of fallible Nostradamus, you won’t live long enough to see anything worse than these convulsions that left dozens dead.

Trust me. I’ve been mortared in Beirut and firebombed in Phoenix. There were rubber bullets in Belfast and a nasty assortment of projectiles in Vietnam. But all that was instantaneous danger. Done in a blinding instant and dimming by the second beer.

My only experience as vicious as the Northridge earthquake--the one time where peril was incessant with absolutely no place to hide--was any month during a childhood stunted by the London Blitz. Then came buzz bombs. Then V-2s.

So, Los Angeles, wear your survivor T-shirts with pride. Like the mandatory eight count, you’ve made 6.6 a new measurement of personal toughness. You’ve seen Armageddon and journeyed home. You’ve found fresh priorities during an epochal week where the aftershocks had a heftier wallop than most anything we had felt before.

Now it’s time to flip off the gloom, look back in better humor and continue the philosophy written by one Ventura Boulevard merchant on the plywood where her store windows used to be: “The Glass Is Still Half Full.”

Our first act after the 18-wheeler rolled through the upstairs bedroom was to disengage from twisted sheets, paintings on the pillows, night stands on the bed and each other.

Thoughts and words were shards that rattled and collided in the dark. You OK? Seen my slippers? Hear any hissing, smell any burning? Thank God for large Mag Lites.

This certainly was more excitement that any couple deserved with the lights out and their jammies on.

And at 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17, Los Angeles certainly was no place for any man with a passion for collecting antique clocks. And staircase walls no inspired choice for displaying her collection of ceramic masks.

I asked about the dining room. “Ankle deep in a generous contribution to the wealth of Lord Waterford,” she said. “Our 16 glasses are now a priceless 1,750-piece collection.”

She asked about the kitchen. “Your worst nightmare.” Eggs in an olive oil marinade? “Molasses and soy sauce,” I said.

The cocktail cabinet had exploded.

Nothing so benign as Jack Daniel’s to wipe up from hardwood floors. Just a wall-to-wall slick of tawny port and Bailey’s Irish Cream, a puddle of maroon ooze that might have marked Jack the Ripper’s last victim.

And there was no joy in Plasticville.

Chez Lilian, a fine French restaurant, was on its roof. A trestle bridge had collapsed on a vintage car. Residents were prone, supine, eyes staring, feet showing from beneath huge rocks, a human litter around the horror of a crashed locomotive and crushed boxcars.

But my Lionel model railroad can be righted and rebuilt.

Casey the cat, displaying uncanny feral wisdom, had gone AWOL 12 hours ahead of the show. Wednesday night there was a furry thud against the front door. The wayward gray had returned.

Collar and tags were gone. She ate three cans of 9 Lives fisherman stew, drank two bowls of water and hasn’t purred since. We are withholding salmon until she tells us where she has been.

*

Animals are odd, sad little victims of earthquakes. Flyers are sprouting everywhere. Anyone seen Tabiatha? Benny needs medication. A $100 reward for Turbo. Several thousand cats must be on the lam, with none in sight.

I suspect they’re alongside Interstate 10 around Covina, paws out and hitching rides to Arizona.

Then there’s Jake, the very British bulldog belonging to a friend. He has legs like fireplugs--the dog, not the friend. Shoulders broader than the Thames Estuary. But when it hit the fan, this tough doggie pooped himself.

Back to hitchhiking. Tuesday, a homeless person hefting a single tote stood by a Ventura Freeway on-ramp. He held a new line in cardboard signs. It said: “Oregon.”

Just for an instant, I became achingly aware that I had the wheels and if this guy had money for gas. . . .

That same day, the first twitch of normalcy returned to the San Fernando Valley. Just before noon, KFWB-AM paused for a breath from uninterrupted, shiver-to-shake coverage of the quake--to give us an update of the Lorena Bobbitt trial.

Thursday, with gas but no water, with electricity and two dishes, we also nudged closer to routine.

“We have broccoli and bean sprouts, a jar of water chestnuts, two cans of chunky chicken, and I see the wok underneath the bookcase,” she announced. “We will have a stir fry.”

She thought about it some more. No can do. No soy sauce.

*

Physically, materially, more than a million citizens are months away from recovery. Emotionally, none of us will remain unstained by these awful days. Too many tents and sobs in the night in public parks. Too many chilled children with diarrhea. Too many old, sick and lonely people who will forever gasp whenever a truck rumbles by.

With the roof over our heads in less of a shambles, we must now reach out.

Eight pounds of oven-baked chicken should go a long way in Balboa Park. Peanut butter and jelly for a dozen loaves won’t cost much. We have some gallons of Sparkletts water, wearable T-shirts in storage, aspirin and much canned food for those who right now are trying to reuse disposable diapers.

Tomorrow, next year, sometime when other troubles rise, we will lessen them by turning to a pewter tankard and an old harmonica.

The tankard is mine. It came from the MV Stirling Castle, one of the courageous little ships that evacuated Dunkirk. The mug survived that, only to be squashed oval half a century later in alien Los Angeles.

The harmonica is hers. A gift from long ago. It has made music around a dozen campfires and eased many blues when days didn’t go right. Monday it was crushed into a V.

So we’ve put them together as a personal memorial.

To dark, frightening times when there was little to drink and certainly no music.