Mesa Musings:

Thirty-five years ago this month I went to the Edwards Cinema on Harbor Boulevard and Adams Avenue to see the epic Charlton Heston disaster flick, “Earthquake.”

I wanted to see what it would be like when (not if) California fell into the Pacific.

In ’74 we were certain the “Big One” was imminent. For years we’d heard rumblings (no pun intended) that California would soon detach itself from the North American continent.

Speculators in Barstow were buying up land they were promising someday would become beachfront property.

I first began hearing about the Big One as a college student in 1963. As I recall, we were told that Southern California was nearly 50 years overdue for a massive quake. I worked with a guy several years later who became so unnerved by all the talk that he and his wife and two kids packed up and moved to Kansas. (I’m sure there was no truth to the rumor that the following spring his house was flattened by a tornado.)

Earthquake hysteria continued to build in the ’70s. We were convinced the Big One could hit at any moment. We were gripped by inevitability. How many Angel games and Philharmonic concerts were less than completely satisfying for me because I was subconsciously plotting my escape route should a temblor strike in mid-fugue?

By 1974, we Southern Californians were exhibiting a siege mentality. In our minds, a single Steri-Strip was holding together the San Andreas Fault.

Occasional small quakes rumbled throughout the region and only heightened our anxiety. The media gave us blow-by-blow accounts of the San Andreas’ “protruding bulges,” “sticking plates” and “magnetic field changes.” It was always bad news, never: “Scientists announced today that it’s been determined that the San Andreas Fault is actually a benign Paleolithic bocce ball court.” They had us twitching worse than Barney Fife on Starbucks triples.

In the aforementioned disaster film, Heston plays Stewart Graff, a construction engineer who’s having an affair with Denise, the wife of a former co-worker. Meanwhile, his estranged but jealously possessive spouse, Remy, is trying to get him to terminate his scarcely concealed in flagrante delicto.

Remy is portrayed by fading diva Ava Gardner (54 at the time of the filming). Denise is played by Genevieve Bujold, a lovely croquenbouche (and, at 32 then, young enough to be Heston’s granddaughter).

As the film’s earthquake sequence commences (an hour into the action), theater speakers emit an ominous low rumble that grows to ear-splitting intensity. “Sensurround Sound” — a series of large speakers and a 1,500-watt amplifier — is employed for the first time in a film. Sub-audible “infra bass” sound waves of 120 decibels — the same volume as a jet plane taking off — assault audience senses.

It’s so loud, in fact, that some attendees report nosebleeds.

The Edwards Cinema that I attended was packed. Frankly, by the time the earthquake hit, we audience members were so jacked up that had an actual moderate quake — of say, magnitude 4.8 — hit the Newport-Inglewood Fault at that moment, we’d have fled the facility screaming.

As the cinematic quake struck, our collective pulse rates were generating enough energy to power the city of Tulsa for a year.

The film’s quake took a full 10 minutes to unfold. Every tall building and freeway overpass in Los Angeles was reduced to rubble. Cars sailed off bridges. A dam exploded. The iconic Capitol Records Building collapsed.

Had you told me as I watched the movie that we were 12 months away from the Big One, I’d have actually breathed a sigh of relief and thought: “Wow, we’ve got a reprieve!” We felt natural disaster looming … pending … hanging by a thread.

Further, had someone informed me that it would be five full years before the Big One, I’d have thought that news simply too good to be true.

But, 35 years? Are you kidding me?

Three-and-a-half decades have passed since the film generated nosebleeds — but no Big One.

Now, I’m not saying the Big One will never arrive. Not at all. I’m just suggesting that maybe a few of us overreacted to an event that didn’t materialize — at least not in 35 years! Maybe we were drawn too easily into a vortex of dread and angst.

Perhaps many — or most — of us are worrywarts. Well, I hereby formally renounce my club membership! I’ve learned my 35-year lesson.

So, what’s this I hear about 2012?

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.