Well it was very nice to see that the San Gabriel Valley got a little press during the last couple of weeks. As they say, "any press is good press".
Here in Los Angeles County this area is primarily ignored by most of the news outlets unless it pertains to something horrific or a major league political scandal. To be honest, the last political brouhaha we had here, Temple City's bribery dust up, was hardly a blip on the radar.
That was until early in the morning of Thursday the 6th of December.
The weathermen on the news had given us a brief warning. We were going to be getting some fairly strong winds, but their warning didn't come with the usual relish and apocalyptic doom that usually accompany reports pertaining to any change in our weather.
So I was a little concerned as I heard the escalating gusts outside my window around midnight. The wind chimes were working extra hard and suddenly I started hearing some of the potted plants leaving their perches on the walls.
This was not the usual Santa Ana winds that I was used to hearing this time of year. It was time to put down the patio umbrella before it started doing a Mary Poppins impersonation. Once outside, my suspicions were confirmed. After my task was complete I made a hasty return to my bed. Hopefully I would awake to a couple of barrels full of leaves and that would be the end of it.
Boy was I wrong.
At approximately 1:36 a.m., my wife and I were awakened once again by the winds and as soon as our eyes opened all signs of light went out. There was nothing to do but set the cell phone as an alarm clock for work in the morning and hope for the best.
When we got up later that Thursday the power was still off and it was as though we had landed in Oz. When I opened my front door the pile of leaves and cypress tree droppings created a leafy version of a snow drift. While I viewed this at that moment as disastrous, I had no idea the level of the destruction I was in for beginning with the Gingko tree in my backyard which split and blew over due to the force of the winds. Fortunately it fell in my yard and neither one of my neighbors' yards.
Once on my way to Glendale the fallen trees and vast amounts of debris that littered the streets made my journey more like a ride at Disneyland than a morning commute. My usual route through the side streets of northern San Gabriel and east Pasadena was blocked at every turn by huge fallen trees and branches that were bigger than my car.
The biggest shock came at the corner of San Gabriel & Colorado Boulevards with the sight of the crushed Shell gas station. Obviously the surrealism of this vision wasn't lost on me alone. The corner was surrounded by TV news vans and appeared on the front pages of newspapers the following day. The image became the symbolic poster child for this event.
As anybody who lives in this area will tell you the next week would be trying on everyone's patience. We would wake every morning to a symphony of chain saws and refrigerators of spoiling food. Those of us who were lucky had our power back in a few days, others it took a week.
Many were calling for the heads of their city councils and local Edison/Water & Power officials with equal venom. While there were death threats made to Water & Power workers on the street by octogenarians in Pasadena, things were looking even uglier here in the City of Temple. In a town that many still refer to as Mayberry, the villagers were sharpening their pitchforks and getting ready to storm the castle, I mean city hall.
Then, as if by magic, the balance shifted back to the majority having power instead of the other way around. People who had abandoned their homes so they could access their Facebook accounts at nearby hotels, returned. The pitchforks were put back into their outlines on the walls of the garages and the refrigerators were restocked.
Life was good again in the land of Andy, Opie, and Aunt Bee.
Bill Dunn has been a published opinion columnist for 14 years. Any comments can be sent to either our exalted editor at tmiller@beaconmedianews.com or to Bill directly at dunnsinferno@casegod.com You can also find Bill on Facebook at : www.facebook.com/WhenAllisSaidandDunn
