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Published on 10/27/1997 All articles from this issue

El Niño is coming

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

Batten down the hatches. Check shingles, gutters, drains, and areas that may be subject to flooding. Lay in a supply of rain wear. Slicker, high boots, and flannel nighties. Videos too, for those windswept nights when rain lashes the windowpanes and makes driving hazardous. On such nights, moviegoing can be fraught with peril. In fact, according to our Austrian friend whose purse was lifted from her lap at Shoreline's Century Cinema 16 while she and her "Schatzy," ( a Los Altos Hills councilman) watched the show, it already is.

"A hand came over the back of my seat," she said.

The thief took off like a guided missile. The lady had cash and credit cards. Within the hour the bandit had charged $150 on one of them.

"Write about it! Tell people to be careful!"

"I had planned to tell people to be careful. It can and does happen here. Cris and I still shudder at the memory of the August night when, returning from a garden party at Woodside, replete with good food and warmed by an evening with old friends and former business associates, we drove leisurely toward home.

Paralleling southbound traffic on Interstate 280, we cruised toward Arastradero. And suddenly we were startled by a loud report. A huge metal object flew toward our car, and fell inches short of the right front wheel. The car behind us was following closer than it should. We were saved by the assailant's bad aim, weak biceps, or both. We didn't know which. We only knew there were angels on our shoulders.

A report to the police brought the follow up. The investigating officer found a large mailbox in the road. Mailboxes in the Hills are often vandalized. This was mischief grown vicious, and potentially life-threatening.

Unpredictability. A blessing, sometimes, and sometimes a curse to shake us out of our orange blossoms and bring us face-to-face with reality-hard, cold, sober.

Our No. l son in Denver fills column inches for his paper, "Lo-Do," writing about summer hailstorms that created havoc. The lady who shares his chicken wings planted yards of tomatoes and zucchini. They grew toward the sky (on trellises) prolifically enough to blanket Denver in red and green produce, only to be beaten to a pulp when the hail came.

His description of the pounded veggies follows:

"... exactly like Momma's," he wrote. "My brother was grounded for l3 years because he didn't eat his vegetables."

"Oh, sharper than a serpent's tooth," I grieved to Cris. "I never served mashed zucchini and runny cole slaw on the same plate!"

Our son worries about El Niño and the chicken wing lady's winter crop. So do I. However, a Berkeley climatologist owns, "Nothing is cast in concrete. We might even have a drought year."

Or, El Niño may yield to La Nina, a cold matriarch who may chill Pacific waters and cause icy currents to drift toward the mainland.

With El Niño currently playing havoc with the trade winds, it's anybody's guess what will happen next. Predicting the unpredictable is chancy. Nevertheless it's prudent to prepare.

So leave your purse at home when you go to the movies, get home before dark, and eat your veggies.

Having done all this, you'll be as secure as one can expect to be in a wild and crazy world.