Shaken and Stirred

Last year for the anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake, I wrote about the Winchester Mystery House and the terror of Sarah Winchester when the quake sealed her in a room until the servants were able to find her much later in the day. Due to a sudden awakening and scared kitties on the 102nd anniversary of all that shaking, Mo has decreed today's word to be "Quake", so I will have to come up with a different way of making the earth move .

So here is a story about a "Whole Lot of Shaking Going On". The year was 1957 and it was the summer I was 13 and I was spending it with my girlfriend's family in Fresno. Now both Cookie and I had sort of noticed the male of the species, but all the ones our own age were ... well ... 13. Still she did have an older brother whom we delighted in torturing and since her mother would be working that night, Kenny and a friend had agreed to chaperone Cookie's 13th birthday party so that we could have both boys and dancing.

The great day came and Kenny's best friend showed up coming straight from his summer construction job. Well tender visitors can you guess what happens when a handsome older man of 17 sits down on the stoop and removes his shirt because it is a blazing 100+ of San Joaquin Valley heat while a 13 year old female is sitting on the step above him looking at THAT back ... Hello hormones!!!! Where have you been all my life? .

The earth definitely moved with at least a 9.0 quake, and I did actually manage to get myself kissed that night (first one if you don't count the Hugh O'Brien for charity story told here earlier). So here is Jerry Lee Lewis with one of the songs we danced to that night.



And the rest of the story. In that more innocent age, we dated every summer when I returned to town until I was 16 and he was still a handsome older man of 21 who had gotten engaged while I was gone. Heartbreak can cause quite a quake as well, but he and the great quake of 1957 are still remembered fondly even a half century later when I hear: