Before I Remember

Shaken to the core, my parents returned to Minnesota after an earthquake

I was born the first child of Kathleen (Corbo) Petrasek and James Petrasek in the late 1960s. They had been married almost a year and half when I was born. I was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. An ordinary delivery (if you consider 18 hours of labor ordinary.) An ordinary babyhood.

My dad went to trade school to be a printer and was espoused the wonders of being part of a union. Upon graduating, he was offered a job at Deluxe Check Printers but it was not a union shop so he declined the job and in a spurt of spontaneity, he and my mom decided to move to California, where they had honeymooned. They had the youthful belief the Union would take care of him by lining him up with a job and they’d have a new beginning. That was early in 1969. They were twenty-two years old and I was less than six months old. The Union did not come through. 

Dad took a variety of miscellaneous jobs including vending machine maintenance. In this job, he met several celebrities while refilling vending machines at the Studios. These are people that at best I have vaguely heard of, but really had no idea who they were when he later told me the stories. His brushes with fame included Jimmy Durante, Little Richard, Lee Marvin, Bob Barker and the Lennon Sisters.

They must have enjoyed the life of a sunny climate. Who wouldn’t, really? They became pregnant with my sister, who was born in the later part of 1970. Then, on 9 February 1971, there was an earthquake that registered 6.6 on the Richter scale, which geologically speaking is considered relatively minor. But it did a lot of damage in the L.A. area and scared the hell out of my midwestern parents. They told me that it was early morning (aka the middle of the night) and they were in bed when the earthquake started. These things usually last a few seconds, maybe 30 seconds at the most, but to them it was the longest few seconds of their lives. They recall things falling off the walls and shelves, dishes rattling in the cupboards. As they were running down the hall to the bedroom my sister and I shared, they were in pure panic mode, yelling “what do we do? What do we do?” And “Grab the babies! Grab the babies!” Jeni, less than six months old at the time, was sleeping through it all. Honestly, she probably still could today. My two-and-half-year-old self, they tell me, was sitting straight up in my bed, not crying, but eyes as wide as saucers. Of course, they grabbed us to protect us from any potential falling items. As it turned out, they instinctively knew what to do.

The 6.6 earthquake on Feb. 9, 1971 was the first major earthquake to hit Los Angeles in 80 years and left thousands of residents without water, power or gas for weeks.

I don’t have any memories of that time or that earthquake and although geologically speaking it was considered minor, millions of dollars of damage were done in the L.A. area and nearly one hundred deaths were recorded. As midwesterners on the west coast less than two years, it was enough to scare my parents back to Minnesota. In fact the very day after the quake, my dad put my mom on an airplane with me, a toddler, and my sister who was less than four months old. My dad stayed behind, packed up their tiny rental and U-Hauled it back home. 

My dad took it as a sign: the Union failed him, so he abandoned it (and California) and took the job at Deluxe Check Printers within days of returning to Minnesota. He worked for them until the day he retired.

When I think about writing my own memoirs, this story is a prologue to how my life started. Do you have any “before you remember” stories?