The Life and Times of Joe Acton
9.2 Alaskan Earthquake, showing where I was.
I was born in the Territory of Alaska and raised in the state before it became a reality series. I remember when it was just a bunch of relatively harmless eccentrics that couldn't get along in the Lower 48, as opposed to after Statehood when it began to fill up with religious nuts and political whackjobs.
A tip of the hat to Mom and Dad:
WWII turned out to be the matchmaker for my parents. "The War", as it was commonly referred to in our house, was without question the high point in their lives and forever changed and molded them as it did their entire generation. Their's has been called "The Greatest Generation", though in many ways I think it was equally the lost generation: their innocence to war, their dignity to a civilian life which no longer seemed relevant, and their memories to a new generation only interested in the future, not honoring the past. They went from an era of duty, command, and respect for authority, to the chaos of civilian life in an explosively growing society. All the pissant wars since then are of no relative consequence to what this generation did, the sacrifices they made, the expectations they never shirked, the yoke they bore for America. My parents never adjusted to life after The War. And I never blamed them for it.
One of the great prizes my father had from WWII was his "Pacific Short Snorter", a 1935 silver certificate dollar bill, signed by various celebrities of the time that Dad ran into at USO clubs, in transporting them on ships he ran, in catching a drink with them in some backwater gin-mill of the war. Here's a little about the Short Snorter, a unique piece of a bygone era.
After the war, Dad was a ship's captain and pilot in Cook Inlet, Mom was in charge of hiring at Ft. Richardson. Dad was well known throughout the territory in the maritime industry, both for running ships and being a deep sea diver. Mom was somewhat an anomaly in the Civil Service as she was one of the few women supervisors in Alaska. And I cannot remember any function at the Elks Club that they missed, the annual "Purple Bubble Ball" being the signature event -- and I know you think I'm making it up but follow the link for proof that it's still the real deal.
We lived on the outskirts of Anchorage before there were any skirts. Well, you know what I mean -- there wasn't any suburbs because there wasn't any urbs. Our house was in the middle of five acres that no one wanted and even if they did, no one was inclined to argue with Ozzie and Harriet over the homestead (if you don't know who "Ozzie and Harriet" were, go back to reality programming). Amongst the other reasons we were so popular is that we raised bees and let me tell you if you want to make friends with people, do NOT bother raising bees.
Every two years the Civil Service would send us to South Dakota (where they hired Mom) to visit her relatives. I'm not sure she actually wanted to go see her relatives, but that's where we wound up. Here I am with the Mt. Rushmore Chief, as he was forever known to Mom.
Mom played a double keyboard Connsonata Organ and insisted I learn to play it. This may have worked well if I'd been born 10 years earlier, but Connsonatas weren't doing it for me in rock and roll and then we all discovered that I wasn't smart enough to read music which, of course, didn't prevent me from being in the choir. Not playing an instrument was a bitter disappointment for my mother, a non-event for my father, a huge relief for me and adequate proof there was a god. At least until 1964.
Dad skated like Dick Buttons -- well, Dick Buttons after a couple of shots of V.O. -- but nevertheless he was pretty damn good. He taught me to skate and play hockey, a skill-set which got me through high school and then an athletic scholarship to college, without which my grades would have qualified me for boot camp. It wasn't as though I wasn't paying attention, it was just that I was thoroughly uninterested in the stuff they were teaching. My willingness to regurgitate facts inevitably stumbled over my need to know why this was important. Wasn't I likely to run out of space in my head? How do I get this stuff out if I memorize it? This one got me sent to the office: "Sherlock Holmes said it was folly to memorize anything you can look up in five minutes or less." Note to Vice Principal Pollock: it doesn't takefive minutes anymore and "Yes" if I knew then what I know now, I'd be delighted to do my senior year again.
My dad and I were in downtown Anchorage when the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake occurred. Given the recent Japan disaster, you are going to hear a lot about earthquakes and their impact on people, so let me give you a thumbnail first-hand primer on a five-minute 9.2 earthquake:
a) anyone who says they weren't scared, weren't there when it happened; there are liars and there are crazies and I'll take the crazies any day of the week -- but if you were in a major earthquake, you were scared, crazy or not.
b) forget everything they tell you about getting under your desk or standing in a doorway -- you won't be standing up very long and your desk will be moving;
c) forget orderly evacuations -- memorize the following phrase: "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!";
d) a big earthquake builds in intensity -- it doesn't start out at 9 -- so don't just stand there like a government employee waiting for it to stop. Rule: you hesitate, you die;
e) waste no time praying to God -- either he's busy or wasn't paying attention in the first place, which is how you wound up in the mess to begin with;
f) do NOT expect to get any help for the foreseeable future from the government -- you are on your own and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to have the hysteria slapped out of them.
And this is the most important lesson about being in a major earthquake: don't ever, ever, ever expect to get over it -- it is a seminal moment and will forever change your views on god, government, and your fellow man. You will learn more about yourself in an instant than a lifetime. And what I learned is that if a train or truck rumbles by, do not be between me and the door because my feet will be doing their thing. See above.
I couldn't read music but I could read aeronautical charts so I got my pilot's license when I was 17. Wasn't much money in being a private pilot so I fished commercially (even got to meet the crew of the Calypso), and during the pipeline years was a cop on the Anchorage Police Department (think Dodge City or Tombstone Arizona and you're still not close). People who I thought were my friends and colleagues talked me into going to law school - some of them I managed to get even with after I graduated, others are still in the Witness Protection Program.
My wife, Ann, and I met in the sixth grade but she wouldn't really have much to do with me until college, when I married up and she settled. Along the way, we took some time off to serve in the Peace Corps in Managua, Nicaragua; we went through the U. S. Foreign Service Language Immersion program in Puerto Rico, so una mas cersa y donde esta el bano, vato. Here my Nica ID and shows me either just back from a jungle trip (OK, now it's called a "rain forest", but I still call Denali Mt. McKinley, so it's the jungle) or off a three-day drunk, I forget.
Ann was a nurse in charge of public health in Managua and I was spy for the CIA. You didn't find a lot of Peace Corps volunteers with a law enforcement background so it was natural that everyone thought I was a spook. Probably didn't help when I let it slip I was an Alaskan working with the British Thermal Unit to cool things down in Central America. Come on, people... this is funny stuff. You roll that one down the bar and you're not buying a drink all night.
I hooked up with an archeologist from Yale and we explored Nicaragua looking for -- you know what... never mind. I like the CIA story better. Here's a picture of me standing on a pyramid we discovered in Nicaragua -- at that time the only known one of its kind (and we were lost when we found it so don't ask for a long/lat). Rule: someone builds a pyramid in the desert, easy to find -- build it in a jungle, bring a machete. And if there's not a VIN number on it somewhere, don't ask me who built it. Check out the hat.
When we returned from the land of dysentery and corruption (by which time I had acquired a very high opinion of foreign aid), we hatched our heir to nothing, Erica, now a well-respected educator who has finally given up on my grammar but nonetheless feels compelled to tell me WHAT to write. An accomplished writer in her own right, she's the funny one in the family and I steal from her shamelessly and without attribution. This is likely to come back and bite me in the butt as it is she who will decide what kind of nursing home I wind up in.
We started a company that morphed into business information, the operation of which is a graduate level study on what happens when you meld the science of chaos with the philosophy of capitalism. We are no longer qualified to get a job there, so it's a damn good thing we started it. If you are interested in entering the exciting world of business information, please contact us -- the business is not for sale but the least we can do is try to talk some sense into you.
Ann's alter-ego is a well known Master Gardner in the area and when she's not torturing otherwise defenseless flora and fauna in our yard, she is lecturing about it elsewhere. She also gives clinics and has a newsletter if you are inclined toward this kind of vegetative abuse. All I know is that I wind up moving heavy, dirty objects from one side of the property to the other, and then back.
My alter-ego is that of a filmmaker and I've been fortunate enough to have my screenplays and films win at various film festivals around the U.S. The Zaydoe Films portion of this site isolates the disease of filmmaking and I would encourage you not to visit the page for fear you might also fall victim to it. It is said that filmmaking is a disease that you will not die of, but most certainly with. So far, they're right.
A tip of the hat to Mom and Dad:
WWII turned out to be the matchmaker for my parents. "The War", as it was commonly referred to in our house, was without question the high point in their lives and forever changed and molded them as it did their entire generation. Their's has been called "The Greatest Generation", though in many ways I think it was equally the lost generation: their innocence to war, their dignity to a civilian life which no longer seemed relevant, and their memories to a new generation only interested in the future, not honoring the past. They went from an era of duty, command, and respect for authority, to the chaos of civilian life in an explosively growing society. All the pissant wars since then are of no relative consequence to what this generation did, the sacrifices they made, the expectations they never shirked, the yoke they bore for America. My parents never adjusted to life after The War. And I never blamed them for it.
One of the great prizes my father had from WWII was his "Pacific Short Snorter", a 1935 silver certificate dollar bill, signed by various celebrities of the time that Dad ran into at USO clubs, in transporting them on ships he ran, in catching a drink with them in some backwater gin-mill of the war. Here's a little about the Short Snorter, a unique piece of a bygone era.
After the war, Dad was a ship's captain and pilot in Cook Inlet, Mom was in charge of hiring at Ft. Richardson. Dad was well known throughout the territory in the maritime industry, both for running ships and being a deep sea diver. Mom was somewhat an anomaly in the Civil Service as she was one of the few women supervisors in Alaska. And I cannot remember any function at the Elks Club that they missed, the annual "Purple Bubble Ball" being the signature event -- and I know you think I'm making it up but follow the link for proof that it's still the real deal.
We lived on the outskirts of Anchorage before there were any skirts. Well, you know what I mean -- there wasn't any suburbs because there wasn't any urbs. Our house was in the middle of five acres that no one wanted and even if they did, no one was inclined to argue with Ozzie and Harriet over the homestead (if you don't know who "Ozzie and Harriet" were, go back to reality programming). Amongst the other reasons we were so popular is that we raised bees and let me tell you if you want to make friends with people, do NOT bother raising bees.
Every two years the Civil Service would send us to South Dakota (where they hired Mom) to visit her relatives. I'm not sure she actually wanted to go see her relatives, but that's where we wound up. Here I am with the Mt. Rushmore Chief, as he was forever known to Mom.
Mom played a double keyboard Connsonata Organ and insisted I learn to play it. This may have worked well if I'd been born 10 years earlier, but Connsonatas weren't doing it for me in rock and roll and then we all discovered that I wasn't smart enough to read music which, of course, didn't prevent me from being in the choir. Not playing an instrument was a bitter disappointment for my mother, a non-event for my father, a huge relief for me and adequate proof there was a god. At least until 1964.
Dad skated like Dick Buttons -- well, Dick Buttons after a couple of shots of V.O. -- but nevertheless he was pretty damn good. He taught me to skate and play hockey, a skill-set which got me through high school and then an athletic scholarship to college, without which my grades would have qualified me for boot camp. It wasn't as though I wasn't paying attention, it was just that I was thoroughly uninterested in the stuff they were teaching. My willingness to regurgitate facts inevitably stumbled over my need to know why this was important. Wasn't I likely to run out of space in my head? How do I get this stuff out if I memorize it? This one got me sent to the office: "Sherlock Holmes said it was folly to memorize anything you can look up in five minutes or less." Note to Vice Principal Pollock: it doesn't takefive minutes anymore and "Yes" if I knew then what I know now, I'd be delighted to do my senior year again.
My dad and I were in downtown Anchorage when the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake occurred. Given the recent Japan disaster, you are going to hear a lot about earthquakes and their impact on people, so let me give you a thumbnail first-hand primer on a five-minute 9.2 earthquake:
a) anyone who says they weren't scared, weren't there when it happened; there are liars and there are crazies and I'll take the crazies any day of the week -- but if you were in a major earthquake, you were scared, crazy or not.
b) forget everything they tell you about getting under your desk or standing in a doorway -- you won't be standing up very long and your desk will be moving;
c) forget orderly evacuations -- memorize the following phrase: "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!";
d) a big earthquake builds in intensity -- it doesn't start out at 9 -- so don't just stand there like a government employee waiting for it to stop. Rule: you hesitate, you die;
e) waste no time praying to God -- either he's busy or wasn't paying attention in the first place, which is how you wound up in the mess to begin with;
f) do NOT expect to get any help for the foreseeable future from the government -- you are on your own and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to have the hysteria slapped out of them.
And this is the most important lesson about being in a major earthquake: don't ever, ever, ever expect to get over it -- it is a seminal moment and will forever change your views on god, government, and your fellow man. You will learn more about yourself in an instant than a lifetime. And what I learned is that if a train or truck rumbles by, do not be between me and the door because my feet will be doing their thing. See above.
I couldn't read music but I could read aeronautical charts so I got my pilot's license when I was 17. Wasn't much money in being a private pilot so I fished commercially (even got to meet the crew of the Calypso), and during the pipeline years was a cop on the Anchorage Police Department (think Dodge City or Tombstone Arizona and you're still not close). People who I thought were my friends and colleagues talked me into going to law school - some of them I managed to get even with after I graduated, others are still in the Witness Protection Program.
My wife, Ann, and I met in the sixth grade but she wouldn't really have much to do with me until college, when I married up and she settled. Along the way, we took some time off to serve in the Peace Corps in Managua, Nicaragua; we went through the U. S. Foreign Service Language Immersion program in Puerto Rico, so una mas cersa y donde esta el bano, vato. Here my Nica ID and shows me either just back from a jungle trip (OK, now it's called a "rain forest", but I still call Denali Mt. McKinley, so it's the jungle) or off a three-day drunk, I forget.
Ann was a nurse in charge of public health in Managua and I was spy for the CIA. You didn't find a lot of Peace Corps volunteers with a law enforcement background so it was natural that everyone thought I was a spook. Probably didn't help when I let it slip I was an Alaskan working with the British Thermal Unit to cool things down in Central America. Come on, people... this is funny stuff. You roll that one down the bar and you're not buying a drink all night.
I hooked up with an archeologist from Yale and we explored Nicaragua looking for -- you know what... never mind. I like the CIA story better. Here's a picture of me standing on a pyramid we discovered in Nicaragua -- at that time the only known one of its kind (and we were lost when we found it so don't ask for a long/lat). Rule: someone builds a pyramid in the desert, easy to find -- build it in a jungle, bring a machete. And if there's not a VIN number on it somewhere, don't ask me who built it. Check out the hat.
When we returned from the land of dysentery and corruption (by which time I had acquired a very high opinion of foreign aid), we hatched our heir to nothing, Erica, now a well-respected educator who has finally given up on my grammar but nonetheless feels compelled to tell me WHAT to write. An accomplished writer in her own right, she's the funny one in the family and I steal from her shamelessly and without attribution. This is likely to come back and bite me in the butt as it is she who will decide what kind of nursing home I wind up in.
We started a company that morphed into business information, the operation of which is a graduate level study on what happens when you meld the science of chaos with the philosophy of capitalism. We are no longer qualified to get a job there, so it's a damn good thing we started it. If you are interested in entering the exciting world of business information, please contact us -- the business is not for sale but the least we can do is try to talk some sense into you.
Ann's alter-ego is a well known Master Gardner in the area and when she's not torturing otherwise defenseless flora and fauna in our yard, she is lecturing about it elsewhere. She also gives clinics and has a newsletter if you are inclined toward this kind of vegetative abuse. All I know is that I wind up moving heavy, dirty objects from one side of the property to the other, and then back.
My alter-ego is that of a filmmaker and I've been fortunate enough to have my screenplays and films win at various film festivals around the U.S. The Zaydoe Films portion of this site isolates the disease of filmmaking and I would encourage you not to visit the page for fear you might also fall victim to it. It is said that filmmaking is a disease that you will not die of, but most certainly with. So far, they're right.