Riehlife Earthquake Sandwich (with poem & earthquake memories): bread, spread & jolt

This morning I felt a familiar sensation in a totally unexpected place: an EARTHQUAKE (5.2 as it turns out), but in the Midwest, not Northern California, where earthquakes had become so common as not to be remarked upon. In California, pundits were always warning of California falling off into the ocean. Hey, maybe the country will break in half and we’ll just slide into two separate continents?

CNN says: The epicenter of the earthquake—the strongest in the region in 40 years—was about seven miles below ground and 38 miles north-northwest of Evansville, Indiana, the USGS said.
* KSDK: Aftershocks felt in St. Louis
* WLS: Chicago is a trembling town
* WLWT: Ohioans tell earthquake tales
A few aftershocks followed, with the largest registering at magnitude 4.5.

SANDWICH POEM

Slice of Sandwich
by Janet Grace Riehl

Everything’s a poem.
(Even making sandwiches.)
If you slice it right.

What is your sand-wish?

RIEHLIFE EARTHQUAKE SANDWICH

These are open-faced. Assemble these ingredients:

The BREAD is: Ezekiel 4:9 Sesame Sprouted Grain Bread, the original 100% flourless.

The SPREAD is a combination of: Marzetti (since 1896) roasted garlic hummus with flax butter (you make yourself or find at the bottom of the bottle of flax oil)

The JOLT (besides the earthquake) is: Sicilian Olives (split these in half and place strategically on top of the bread and spread.

Munch.

EARTHQUAKE MEMORIES

November 9, 1968 Illinois Earthquake

An earthquake of intensity VII, magnitude 5.3 shock, felt over 580,000 square miles in 23 states. There were reports of people in tall buildings in Ontario and Boston feeling the shock.

Talking on the telephone with my brother, he reminded me that there was an earthquake on the day of my first wedding on November 9, 1968…also my father’s 53rd birthday…at my parents’ home on Evergreen Heights in Southwestern Illinois. Mother had baked and decorated an amazingly beautiful 4-tier cake, each tier with a different flavor so that no one of the 50 guests present would go away unfulfilled, cakewise.

My brother was up in his old room, dubbed “The Cowboy Room” for its wallpaper designs. The antique glazed windows shook and he feared they might break. In those cold war days, his first thought was that we might be under attack somehow. He rushed downstairs where the rest of us were just standing around. My brother, ever the man of action (he would have been about 21 at this time) urged us to run outside, which we did.

We always kinda thought that earthquake was a shaky portent for that first pancake of a marriage. No earth moved that night.

Gary shared a second earthquake memory. He and his wife Patty were fishing on a small pond when they suddenly saw a fox and a deer dart across the dam. Since they were in the water, they felt no sensation from the quake. The animals fleeing were their only clue something was amiss in the world.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake, aka the Quake of ’89 or the World Series Quake

I lived in Oakland at the time of the 6.9/7.1 surface level quake, and it was a pretty big deal. When it happened, I was driving and couldn’t pinpoint the sensation. For 15 seconds it felt like slip-sliding on snow, and it was October 17th, no snow in sight at 5:04 p.m.

Wikipedia says:The quake killed 67 people throughout northern California, injured 3,757 people and left more than 12,000 people homeless[2] The earthquake occurred during the warm up for the third game of the 1989 World Series, coincidentally featuring both of the Bay Area’s Major League Baseball teams, the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. This was the first major earthquake in America to be broadcast on live television.

There you go—an earthquake sandwich with a poem, a recipe for a sandwich, and a few earthquake memories…jolts from the past.