Carry on

No matter what tomorrow brings

Aloha from Texas,

Cadillac Classic

With a Navy pilot dad, all four of us kids were born on bases scattered across the country. When we got orders to Oahu, my fun-loving mom was thrilled — Hawaii had just become a state, and it was all pineapple fields and beaches back then. Compared to Columbus, Ohio, it felt like paradise.

TIDAL WAVE

We’d barely settled into our flimsy beachfront officer quarters when the largest earthquake ever recorded in North American history struck near Anchorage, Alaska 9.2 on the Richter scale, sending a tsunami racing 3,000 miles toward the very beach where we slept.

There was no warning system. Military police pounded on doors, waving searchlights and bullhorns, hollering for everyone to head for the hills. Panic everywhere except my mother who refused to leave without dragging our little French poodle, Jacques, out from under the bed first.

As kids, we were sure nothing could touch us, tucked safe in Dad’s big Cadillac convertible under the stars far up a mountaintop. My parents knew better.

But we carried on.

The wave never reached us. My first brush with disaster, seared in memory forever.

TURBULENT TIMES

“We Carry on” by Bettman

Not long after, President Kennedy was assassinated. My generation remembers little John- John’s salute. A nation’s grief distilled into one small hand. Those were turbulent times, they still are, but our lives carry on.

Mine did, right through a VW Beetle stalling out for good in Dallas, meeting a young photographer with big dreams and being part of building one of the largest photography studios in the Southwest.

Young Chuck Untersee

EARTHQUAKES

As filmmakers chasing bigger creative horizons, Chuck and I packed up our young family and headed to California — landing smack dab in the middle of the historic Northridge Earthquake.

In the dark early morning hours, the walls cracked and swayed. Cabinets flew open, dishes shattered, and we tumbled down the stairs into a chaotic night to a cacophony of car alarms and crackling power lines. My sister’s apartment pancaked flat as she scrambled out. A motorcycle cop racing to help plunged to his death when the overpass buckled. Thousands lost homes that day; many lost far more.

Aftershocks kept coming for weeks, some nearly as strong as the first, keeping everyone on edge. Nothing reminds you that you’re not in charge quite like the ground moving under your feet.

But we carried on.

FIRE

A decade later, we crested a mountain pass at sunset, overlooking farms and orange groves, headed home to the 80-year-old Craftsman farmhouse we’d spent two years restoring - buttery yellow siding, hand-sanded wainscoting, a vintage Wolf stove beside gleaming copper countertops.

The flames in the sky looked close.

Too close.

By the time we understood the fire trucks were there for us, our little cottage was already an inferno. The horses whinnied in their stalls; the dogs shook under the bushes.

When it was over, nothing remained of our dream but the Wolf stove’s molten hulk and a lone rock chimney.

We carried on — straight back to Texas. Goodbye, earthquakes and wildfires. What could possibly go wrong in God’s country?

ICE STORMS

Turns out, everything. Two unexpected and rare ice storms swept through Texas and exposed just how fragile our power grid is — and how fragile we are.

Much of our town sat without power for days; the rest took “rolling blackouts.” With windchills below zero, it turned life-threatening fast, especially for folks with no heat, no water, and an electric can opener rendered useless. Furniture got burned for warmth. Roads iced over — most Texas counties don’t even own a snowplow, and the Sheriff’s department had to borrow tire chains. Grocery shelves emptied. Gas lines stretched like it was 1973 all over again.

Chuck and I have lived off-grid for years — no meter, no utility company, just solar panels and batteries. We’re on our own, always. Our lights stayed on.

Still, the freezing cold found our blind spots.

The windmill pipes froze, cutting off water to cattle that drink twenty gallons a day. No one expected single digits to last that long. Even a “self-sufficient” system reminds you: when the propane runs low, or the pipes freeze, or somebody slips on the ice, you find out the grid isn’t the only fragile thing around here.

We are too.

Carrying On

Calamities come with the territory on this big, beautiful, crazy planet. But here’s what I keep learning, over and over: I’m not in charge around here, I never was. I’m just along for the ride — tucked in the back seat of my heavenly Father’s big red Cadillac, safely carried , no matter what tomorrow brings.

What calamities have you suffered? Let’s share the load in the comments, I read every one!

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