Suddenly, I was thrust backwards in time to that ominous Friday when my mother was "preaching" (better term: projecting) her end of the world nightmares on my Aunt Pauline and myself. I was, at first, a casual eavesdropper; my room was adjacent to the kitchen where my mother worked from her pulpit above the sink while she cooked and Aunt Pauline was sitting in one of the straight backed, straw bottom chairs from the dining room.
"There will be weeping and gnashing of the teeth, and the worm quencheth not!" she asserted. "The earth will shake and rumble, and the sky will turn to blood! Ye know not the time the Lord cometh, but he will come!"
She so had me at the earth shaking. I leaned against the wall beside the doorway, listening, hidden. It was not like I hadn't heard it all before, but something was different. The sky was an odd yellow color and it was filled with dark clouds of varying shades of color--charcoal, gunmetal, blue steel. Jacob's ladders dropped and rose. And the day was far too warm for March; a storm was brewing.
Closer to home, the storm had already arrived in the kitchen. Mother continued..."tidal waves that will wash the earth clean, and tornadoes and hurricanes and fire and brimstone will fall from the sky." My aunt was soaking it up and I was thinking behind the wall. I was all of ten and a half years old and very impressionable.
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Later that night, after the aunt had gone home and my dad was there after working all day, we were settled around the tv, watching a movie. "The Robe," I think. When there was a news report that interrupted and the reporter began to inform us intracontinentals about the Alaska quake and tidal wave. I'm sitting there, going stone cold, afraid to breathe. Was it the end of the world?
Later that night, I couldn't sleep for fear that Jesus would come and first, drown me, then take my soul straight to hell and dump my miserable, sinning butt there forever. For. Ever. I was terrified. Every drop of dew that condensed and fell on the cellar roof from the main roof outside my bedroom window was an omen of doom. If I listened very closely, I could hear the sound of roaring water in the distance, Yellow eyes reflected from the cellar roof and at first I thought it was a demon from hell come to collect me, but then I heard a "meowr" and the pain in my chest subsided as I began to breathe again.
Is it any wonder, that all of this fascinated me; even as it attracted me, I was compelled to seek answers. Real ones to hearsay. My parents didn't have a clue, and there were not many sources out in the sticks. But that spring, my parents invested in a set of World Book Encyclopedias, and I was off and running to learn the secret nature of everything.
That's enough about me for the moment. Yes, it was indeed, an adventure in geology--of the wrong kind. And within the week, this footage was broadcast on our black and white tv. I was on my way.
Enjoy this little bit of history and join me in watching "Though the Earth be Moved."
