#EvacueeDiary IV On 60 years to do the most stupid thing

Our stretch of Altadena had a curious way of staying in touch. The meetings were usually called to order about 1:30 am with the screeeeeech BANG! Of a car smacking a parked car on Altadena Dr, or crushing a car poking its nose above Holliston, Highland, or Ganesha. It’s how we met our neighbors like Jennifer who spent the 70’s bobbing in the South China Sea after her father, an officer in the army of South Vietnam somehow got his family on a boat to do it.

We met the neighbor outside our local automotive carnage zone on the night of January 7th when we saw her standing in front of her familiar house. She was holding a pet chicken and talking to a news reporter about how it was the only one she could grab, while her house burned like it was a set under the direction of a director with an unlimited budget and the mandate to get the most chilling scene of an entire house burning as they could. 

We spent the night like that, at mom’s house lying in a bed we were comfortable in, in a house that was very comfortable, and watched Altadena lose its comfort.

It was a hard night to sleep. Somehow we both managed to close our eyes for a few hours that night but by daybreak that escape was done. The news had filled with reports of not just Altadena on fire but also Pacific Palisades and the LA basin reflected it. When I walked out to the balcony outside of Dave’s office I was greeted with this vision

It was then I turned to my Sweetie Darling and asked if we should see if our house made it, and my Patsy got in the car with her Edina and we headed back up to Altadena, marking the most stupid as a fish with breasts thing I had yet to embark upon in my then 60 years on Earth. It was less than 12 hours after we got the order to evacuate we headed back up to Altadena and it was still actively burning.

There were police out, and all they had for us was FOOL WHERE ARE YOU GOING! looks none tried to stop us as we went up the back ways only residents who want to avoid the police going up the hill know to take, and once we got north of New York Dr going north on Holliston we could see the country club where I learned to threaten golf balls cheerily on fire. We dipped around it up Holliston and both sides of the street were on fire. I drove over electric lines that I assured Sweetie must be de-engergized and heard explosions all about as I imagined people's propane tanks that warmed their backyards or fueled their barbecues popping off.

We snaked our way up Ganesha where I cautiously poked the nose of my car out and right onto Altadena Dr, and you know what my mind saw 1255. It was there behind the Deodar, it was there like the days Victor Lewis walked an extra block past Ganesha to walk me home because I was afraid of dogs, it was there. Until I got to Highland right in front of my house and it simply wasn't. I looked in my front yard and saw almost to the mountains themselves, my house was gone, Jennifers house next door I watched them put loving care into making a showplace was a smoldering heap. My entire block was a smoldering heap, except for the house of our neighbor, the one who said "that's nice" at the idea of the fire staying in the hills. His house survived, if you want to call being next to 1255 when it burned survival. It had every plastic artifact and the trees in the yard burned off. 

1255 looked as if it served as the launchpad of a Saturn V rocket. The grass was gone and the soil beneath it crunched like glass underneath. It was unbelievable. The gas had not been shut off in the neighborhood and the pipe of its service had a full on conflagration coming out of it, and my first thought was "gonna be a big ass gas bill this month". Your mind races, it stops, every atom of your body screams what the fuck?

The hose I had intended to fight the fire with was left as an imprint on the grass where I dropped it, the deodar I spent my mornings under drinking coffee and waiting for a teacher to call in sick looked like Daffy Duck after. performing the act you can only do once. 1255 had an elevator, the car was made of fine Mahogany, many of my friends got their first kisses in it, 1255 hosted some of the most epic teen parties of the early 80's and the shaft had collapsed and was lying in the basement and part of the front yard. There wasn't an atom of wood left.

Know the scene in Princess Bride where Wesley is in the pain machine and it gets ramped up to 10? Know the whimper he made? Sweetie and I made it together and hugged. So many memories just gone, and we didn't even get to say goodbye to 1255 and it was gone.

It was here #Evacueediary truly began. 

We were homeless.