Dad loved the cake…..

And now….treadmill time to work off what I ate..!! HA!

Everyone have a great day….

I’ve been fortunate. I’ve lived in Southern California since 1987 and in Los Angeles since November 1990. During these two decades, I’ve seen how fast forest fires move and how quickly they can destroy everything in their path. But I have survived.

The forest fire that scared me the most happened 18 years ago, at the end of June 1990. I was staying with my Aunt Ruth in Santa Barbara. She lived in San Marcos Gardens, a housing development a quarter of a mile east of Highway 101 and just north of San Marcos Pass Road at the beginning of the foothills.

About 4 o’clock news came that a forest fire was raging down San Marcos Pass. Residents were advised to leave their homes immediately. Aunt Ruth and I could see smoke and flames about a mile up the Pass.

“Let’s go to Uncle Bob’s,” I suggested. He and his family lived about four miles away in Santa Barbara not far from the ocean.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Aunt Ruth insisted. “If this house burns down, I’m going with it.”

Aunt Ruth and her late husband, Don, who died in 1986 at the young age of 60, bought their home in 1958. They loved it! It was a nice, three-bedroom ranch style home with a large yard.

“Look,” I said to her, “This is very scary. I’m going to leave now and I want you to come with me.”

She refused.

I packed a few things and then placed my 18-year-old tabby cat, Patches, into her carrying case. We drove toward Uncle Bob’s. I couldn’t keep Patches at Uncle Bob’s, however, because he had a dog who liked to fight with cats. Moreover, Patches was a declawed indoor cat, and Uncle Bob’s doors were opened often throughout the day. Instead, I drove Patches to a cat boarding place I had driven by many times. The two young women who ran it couldn’t have been nicer to Patches and me. They showed me a decent-sized cage where Patches would feel comfortable. I brought a half-dozen cans of her favorite flavors of cat food.

“Patches will be welcome here as long as you like, George,” one of the owners said to me. “We’ll make her feel comfortable. Don’t worry about anything.” I petted Patches, said “Goodbye,” and thanked the two young women. I said I’d come by the next day to see how Patches was doing.

The radio said the forest fire was coming down San Marcos Pass swiftly, destroying everything along the way. I drove back to Aunt Ruth’s home to try one last time to change her mind. My cousin Donna’s husband, Efren, was already there, helping Aunt Ruth carry a few of her possessions.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I said. She gave me a dirty look and didn’t say a word. That was Aunt Ruth for you.

I followed Efren and Aunt Ruth back to Uncle Bob’s. Efren and Donna and their young daughter lived in a small one-bedroom apartment Uncle Bob owned. They were saving for a home of their own.

Then Uncle Bob surprised me. “Wanna go with me to check on the horses?” he asked.

Uncle Bob kept his two horses with a woman who owned a house, a barn, a corral, and a few acres of land about two miles up San Marcos Pass Road.

“I just talked to her on the phone,” he said. “She’s driving her own horses to the Earl Warren Show Grounds, which offered to keep horses as long as there was a threat of a forest fire.”

Bobby quickly hitched his horse trailer to his pickup truck and we took off.

It was smoky driving up the Pass. When we arrived, his two horses were clearly frightened and glad to see us. We put them into the horse trailer, drove back down the Pass, and headed to Earl Warren.

After we boarded the horses, we drove back to Uncle Bob’s home for dinner. We watched on TV how the fire as came down the Pass, went by San Marcos Gardens, and then leaped over Highway 101 into Hope Ranch, where there are many multi-million dollar homes.

About nine o’clock, Uncle Bob and I drove toward Hope Ranch to see if we could be of any help.

What we saw reminded me of newsreels from World War Two. People were fleeing Hope Ranch, some on horseback but most walking along the sides of the road, carrying whatever they could manage. Hope Ranch was ablaze from Highway 101 to the ocean.

We couldn’t enter Hope Ranch and turned around to go home.

We got up early the next day and watched the news. We saw that the fire came down near Aunt Ruth’s home and leap-frogged over the nearby Catholic orphanage, then jumped over 101 and into Hope Ranch, where the fire caused major damage. We didn’t know if Aunt Ruth’s home survived or not.

Uncle Bob, Aunt Ruth, and I drove to her home. It was fine. So were all of the homes in her subdivision. The fire jumped around it. Homes to the east and north were burned to the ground. Later, Uncle Bob and I drove up the Pass to see the damage first hand. A brand new Greek Orthodox Church was unscathed, but the buildings around it were destroyed. The lady who boarded Uncle Bob’s horses was fairly lucky. Her house survived, but not her barn about 75 yards away.

It looked like the forest fire literally leap-frogged over buildings on its way down the Pass, destroying one or two, leaving another untouched, then burning two more, and so on….

There was no logic to this madness.

By noon, officials said the fire was over. It was safe for residents to return to their homes in Hope Ranch and up San Marco Pass.

What was the extent of the damage? Two lives were lost. The death toll could have been much higher. About 600 homes were destroyed. It was a major disaster.

In only 18 hours it was all over.

I picked up Patches about three o’clock and took her back to Aunt Ruth’s. She had been cared for very well, fortunately. The two women who took care of her said they petted her and did all they could to make her feel welcome. When we arrived, I took Patches out of her carrying case and she headed for the bedroom closet where she liked to sleep. She was out for hours.

Aunt Ruth was shaken by the ordeal. “Too close! Too close!” she said repeatedly. “Too damned close!”

We smelled the remnants of the forest fire for several days.

About five-thirty, Uncle Bob stopped by. He had already picked up his horses and took them back up the Pass to their home.

He called his wife, who met us at Richard’s, a family restaurant on State Street not far from Aunt Ruth’s. It was too late for the Early Bird Specials, but Richard gave them to us anyway — a full dinner for $1.99 for senior citizens (I was only 50 in 1990 but Richard always gave me a break).

When I went to bed that night, Patches came out of the closet and slept next to me, as she always did.

It was good to know that we were all OK.

George Spink
Los Angeles

from “Warren Mapleleaf”