In the early 1970s, I landed back in San Francisco. For three years, me, my partner and her two children had been living a gypsy life, traveling from one collective household to another, from San Francisco to the Colorado Rockies, to western Massachusetts and finally, back to San Francisco. Read all about it in The Kitchen.

During all that meandering, we retained a few tribal rituals from the late ’60s.

One of those rituals revolved around the summer solstice and its many implications. To celebrate the awesome power of the sun on the longest day of the year, we few, we tribal few, would sit around the kitchen table with a cork, a needle, a burning candle, and a bottle of tequila.

Clutching a solstice token of our choice — a post, a ring, or a stud — we would sit in the throne (a liberated straight-back chair) and our brother in song, stage, and spiel would take a belt of tequila, pass it to the initiate who slugged a shot, passed the needle through the candle, placed the cork behind the ear lobe, and, with a wolfen growl, pierced the earlobe of the solstice celebrant, and inserted the post, ring, or stud through the newly pierced lobe.

Despite our meanderings, the tribe gathered each solstice to drink tequila and take another shot to the ear. Solstice by solstice, my array of posts, rings, and a gold hoop with the foot bone of a fox climbed up the gristle of my ear in a five-pierced arc.

Time passed. Year by year, the holes closed and my willingness to have the holes re-opened diminished. Finally, although the molten core of resistance, rebellion, and love continued to burn, the solstice days relaxed into a toast with a joint and a glass of wine. And that is the story of my piercings.

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A local brewery named itself “Bad Tattoo”, a good description of far too many skin decorations.
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Saturday Night at the Big Y

When the lights went out in New York during the great northeast blackout of 1965,  I was browsing with a friend at Georg Jensen,  the upscale Madison Avenue silver shop.   Then all us shoppers held hands,  and in single file we groped our way out to the dark street.  (See Aunt Miriam, Diva)

And some years later I was in a movie theater when I suddenly smelled smoke.  We were told to evacuate and hurried out post-haste.

And more than once at Jane Addams High School in the Bronx where I worked for many years,  the principal ordered the building evacuated after a bomb threat .  (For more about Jane Addams see The Diary of a Young Girl,  Magazines for the Principal,  The Parking Lot Seniority List,  and Educator of the Year – Remembering Milton)

Then in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New York,   we were ordered to leave our apartment building after the basement was flooded knocking out the gas and electricity. (See Cooking with Gas)

And recently I was ordered to evacuate a building once again.

It was a summer weekend in the country we were expecting friends for lox and bagels Sunday brunch.  I planned to shop for what I needed on Saturday.  but the weather was glorious that day and knowing our local Big Y supermarket is open every night until 9,  I didn’t leave for the store until after 6.

All started out well – I got a parking space in the Big Y lot near the shopping cart return,  I remembered to bring my shopping list,  and even remembered my reusable bags.  (Unfortunately I did forget an umbrella.)

Once in the store I walked up and down the aisles filling my cart and crossing items off my list.  But just as I got to the checkout line,  I heard the alarm and then the announcement.

“Attention shoppers!   Leave the store immediately!  The fire alarm has sounded and although there is no smoke or evidence of fire,  according to Fire Department protocol the building must be evacuated.”

And so I abandoned my loaded shopping cart,  and with hundreds of my fellow shoppers I headed for the exits . Then once in the parking lot I found myself in a torrential rainstorm –  with no umbrella.

Very wet,  and with none of the groceries I’d gone for,  I drove home.   Later I called the Big Y to ask what had happened,  and was told fortunately it had been a false alarm,  so early the next morning I went back with my shopping list.

i must say although all my evacuations were stressful to some degree,  and certainly inconvenient,   all were carried out safely and relatively orderly.

But did the Big Y really have to evacuate me on Saturday night when I had guests coming Sunday morning!

 

– Dana Susan Lehrman