again this week

As I drove down hwy 14 this afternoon I was afraid of traffic and congestion that would be caused by the fire that has been burning in thea area. It was really interesting to see all the copters and planes dumping the pink stuff. At one point I witnessed a copter with a long cable and flares attached dangling from the bottom headed up the hill. I guess he was going to start a back fire with the flare to keep the fire away from Acton. To listen to the news, one would think that the fire was burning into the community....not so... just bad reporting. The fire was actually at the top of the ridge about 10 miles to the south. When I got to Grandmas, The fire had actually burned all the way around the north end of the valley from La Canada all the way to Sylmar.

This reminded me of when I was 6 years old. Our family had a small cabin in the Malibu hills that we would weekend at. I remember sitting in the car near the junction of the Ventura Hwy (Now the 101 Freeway)and Las Virgines Canyon road. We had been evacuated from the cabin and with the the fire at our tails we fled to the roadhouse (owned by Spade Cooley-another story). The fire came over the hill and burned towards were we waited and then suddently stopped. We all pulled into Melody's parking lot (resturant down the road) and had dinner. While there the owners came by to check on the customers. I met their daughter Melody (much older than me - she was 15). Her mom was real nice as well and after meeting her dad, we learned that he was a Mormon and a bishop to boot. They lived in Rudolf Valentinos house in the Hollywood hills and the Mrs. talked church with my mom. She told he to call the church and see if they would pick me up and take me to the Mormon sunday school. Wow, this was my first contact with the church and all because of the surrounding disaster. Eventually (six years later) the family was contacted by two stake missionaries (Elder Roberts -best friend don's dad, and Elder O'Rullian) and eventually baptised into the church.

Wow it is amazing how the memories come flooding back with just a little reminder.

As always, Me