When God waves at you, watch out

DAVID SILVA

I’ve always found it odd that one of the most frightening experiences

of my life occurred in serene and sunny Newport Beach.

Actually, the words “serene” and “sunny” have no place in this

story, because the events described in it occurred during the great

storm of 1983. The power of the storm caught everyone off guard,

dumping more than 18 inches of rain on the region and sending seaside

homes and historic piers crashing beneath the waves.

But sitting on my mother’s warm couch in blessedly inland

Huntington Park, watching the scenes of devastation on the news, the

storm seemed as far away as a moon landing. For the previous two

hours, TV news crews had their cameras trained on the Huntington

Beach Pier, jabbering nonstop that the tip of the historic structure

was about to break off and fall into the sea. I sipped my hot coffee

and watched and waited, having never seen a pier fall into the sea

before.

Then, as happens in so many of my stories that end badly, the

phone rang.

“Dave!” My friend Jack Bear’s voice sounded strained. “Dude, I’m

at my girlfriend’s house in Newport Beach, and my car won’t start.

You gotta come get me, man! If I miss work tonight, they’re gonna

fire me for ...”

“Whoa! There it goes!” I shouted. On the screen, the tip of the

Huntington Beach Pier had at last cracked off, turned sideways and

slid beneath the churning waves.”Dave, are you listening? You gotta

come get me, man!”

“Jack, I don’t know what to tell you,” I yawned. “I’m sitting here

watching piers fall into the ocean, and the chances are about 100%

that that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”

“Dave, my job’s on the line,” Jack pleaded. “If you come get me,

I’ll give you $50.”

Now when you’re 18, unemployed and counting the days to when your

mother kicks you out of the nest, $50 is a lot of money. Suddenly,

all thoughts of falling piers had vanished from my mind, crowded out

by the question of whether Jack would actually give me a $50 bill, or

two 20s and a 10.

“Give me the address,” I replied.

Just getting my little Datsun B-210 Honeybee to the freeway proved

a challenge. The wind was driving so hard it blew me from one lane to

the next. As I rounded the onramp to the Santa Ana Freeway, the

pickup truck in front of me suddenly hydroplaned and spun out, coming

to rest on the center divider.

It was my first big sign to reconsider what I was doing. Turn

around. Once in Orange County, God had done everything but send St.

Peter out on a rowboat to beg me to turn around. But I pressed on.

Bold. Invincible. Dumb as a milking cow. That’s what it is to be

18.

I finally reached the turnoff from Newport Boulevard to Coast

Highway, missed it and kept heading up what I later learned was the

Balboa Peninsula. The road soon petered out into a residential

neighborhood. I couldn’t read the street signs through the rain, so I

pulled over, got out of the Honeybee and walked up to one. The

howling wind drove the rain sideways into my face, and even a few

feet from the sign I had a hard time reading it. Finally, I turned

around and started walking to my car when I saw the oddest thing. A

four-foot wave, or the churning remnant of one, was sweeping across

the street and heading right toward me.

“Huh,” I thought to myself. Then the wave hit me, flipped me over

and dragged me halfway across the street. My right knee slammed into

the pavement, followed a second later by the left side of my face.

For weeks afterward, I would look like Mr. T had gangster-slapped me

as a pitiful fool.

And a pitiful fool I truly was, because instead of being alarmed,

I stood up and just felt outraged. Who’s in charge of flood control

around here? I thought to myself. I’ll sue! These were the thoughts

that were occupying my head when a second wave struck me from behind

and dragged me halfway to the other side of the street. My shoulder

slammed into the curb with such force that I was sure I’d dislocated

it. I stood up again.

And it was only then, with seawater up my nose and my face,

shoulder and knee screaming with pain, that it finally occurred to me

that I was in trouble.

“Nyah!” I shrieked in my best Three Stooges voice, and dashed for

the Honeybee. I had just managed to get inside and close the door

when a third wave slammed into the car with such force that it rocked

it side-to-side.

“Oh God, God, God, what’s happening?” I started mumbling over and

over, and surely God must have thrown up His arms in heaven and said,

“Oh, right, now I’ve got his attention.”

What was happening was the worst storm in 50 years was pounding

Balboa, hurtling waves from one side of the narrow peninsula to the

other. But trapped inside in my little Honeybee, all I could think of

was that the world was coming to an end -- my part in the world,

anyway. And just when I thought I couldn’t be more afraid, the

granddaddy of the three previous waves crashed over the car. I looked

around, saw nothing but cascading water and suddenly became convinced

the wave had swept my car right into the sea.

If you’ve never been underwater in a leaky Datsun B-210, I’m here

to tell you it’s an unsettling experience. So unsettling that I

instantly rediscovered my Catholic roots, quit with the “Oh God, God”

bit and organized my prayers into a full-on “Hail Mary.” I don’t know

how many “Hail Mary”s I recited before it finally occurred to me to

start the car and get out of there, but by the time I got back on the

freeway, I felt closer to the Almighty than I ever had in my life.

Complacency is a natural byproduct of living in Paradise, and so

it is that the only natural phenomena Southern Californians tend to

respect are fires and earthquakes. Everything else we treat as minor

inconveniences, which is why East Coast residents are forever reading

sad stories about us and shaking their heads with wonder. But since

that stormy March afternoon forward, I have nursed a deep and abiding

respect for the forces of nature.

It was sometime after 8 p.m. when I finally arrived home and

stumbled through the front door. My mother walked out of the kitchen,

took one look at me and shrieked. Aside from being soaked, my jeans

ripped and the left side of my face one big Rorschach test, I had a

look in my eyes like I had been through the tortures of the damned.

“What happened?” Mom wailed.

I just shook my head and walked toward the bathroom to get a

towel.

“Is this about your friend Jack?” she called after me. “Because he

called a couple of hours ago and said you didn’t need to come get him

after all.”

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019, or by e-mail at david.silva@latimes.com.