THE GREAT QUAKE OF 1990

Five datelines, five states, five dispatches, zero earthquakes

Dec. 1, 1990

BLACK OAK, Ark. -- The land surrounding Dennis and Sonya Saddler's blue, single-wide mobile home is flat as far as the eye can see.

In the distance, dust devils whirl, whipped to life by incoming storm clouds. Tornadoes have been known to tear across these fields in spring, and when they do, they're vicious because there's nothing to slow them down, just a few houses and a barn. In fact, it was just this past spring that a twister came at 4:30 a.m. and tore away half of the Saddlers' barn.

But Dennis and Sonya Saddler aren't worried about a tornado. Not right now.

"See it?" Dennis asks, pointing to the horizon. "See it?"

He's pointing to a small ridge -- it can't be more than a few inches high, and from here it's almost invisible -- that rings the west and north edges of his property. Warning flags used to be on the ridge, courtesy of a surveyor who knew what lay beneath the benign rise.

Dennis plowed the flags under. He's lived here all his 30 years. He doesn't need to be reminded that less than a quarter-mile from his home, the home he shares with his nine-months-pregnant wife, the New Madrid fault lumbers.

"Can't let it worry you, though," he says. "All you can do is get ready."

The Saddlers are experts at getting ready. They've been preparing for an earthquake every since Iben Browning announced a 50-50 chance of a major temblor along the fault this week. And we're not talking about a few jugs of water and a handful of granola bars.

"Got me a thousand-gallon water tank all filled up," Dennis says, proudly. "Got a bunch of chickens, a couple of hogs, some turkeys, a few guineas, some ducks, two deer already in the freezer. A bunch of canned goods in the pantry and a gas grill. Got some copper line in case the propane tank busts loose. Got a bunch of peroxide -- I mean, a bunch. That stuff works wonders, you know. Oh yeah, got me some bandages, too, and five cases of Budweiser."

Dennis' face breaks into a broad grin. "I'd say I'm ready. Wouldn't you?"

Part of the planning frenzy is because of the baby -- Jonathan Charles Saddler -- due this month. Dennis has even installed lightweight ceiling tiles in the baby's room in case the roof falls in.

Of course, if Dennis had his druthers, he'd have waited another year for Jonathan. With all this talk of an earthquake, coming just days before the baby, who can blame Dennis for fretting?

Sonya can't, though she's delighted at the prospect of being a mother. A substitute teacher, Sonya already has Jonathan' clothes lined up neatly in the closet. She's positive he'll enjoy the wallpaper, decorated with blue bunnies and bears. And she's sure happy Dennis is such a worrywart.

Life is pretty good for the Saddlers, save for the New Madrid fault.

"It ain't a'gonna happen," Dennis proclaims, popping open a Bud and handing it to his visitor. His accent is as thick as the clouds building up outside. "Though this fella Browning, he's no dummy, talking about the moon and the tides and all."

Sonya nods. So does Jimmy Cantrell, a family friend who's come from Harrisburg to talk. For the past several weeks, that's all the Saddlers and their friends have talked about -- how there won't be an earthquake, but ...

"I'm really not afraid. Really," Sonya says.

Dennis chimes in: "I'm more prepared right now than anyone else around. Come a quake, I'm gonna be sitting pretty. If the freezer conks out, I'll just slaughter a hog. If the tank freezes, I'll just build me a fire underneath it."

If the roads buckle? No problem. Dennis has fitted a Ford Pinto shell onto a Boss 302 Bronco frame and slapped on some monster-truck tires that come to his waist. If the rivers rise? No worry. There's a boat in the barn.

A power outage? C'mon. There's a battery-operated television, a couple of transistor radios and a police scanner with a battery backup.

The Saddlers have stowed enough goods to take care of themselves and their friends for a month. They don't have much cash -- Dennis farms, and winter is a slow time for that -- but the way they see it, cash won't be worth the paper it's printed on if the fault awakens.

So instead of furrowed brows and worried voices, the Saddlers' mobile home is filled with laughter. Dennis passes around some venison tenderloins coated in cayenne pepper breading and cracks open another beer.

"Yessir, I'm ready," he repeats. Only this time he leans forward to make a point, and his smile becomes a little tighter. Instead of laughter, his voiced is tinged with the determination of a man ready for just about anything thrown his way. He points to a corner of the living room, right next to his pregnant wife. A shotgun.

"I've got that and a buncha boxes of extra shotgun shells. Let them looters come on out. I'll show them what ready really means."

===

Dec. 2, 1990

BRAGGADOCIO, Mo. -- "Are you prepared?"

The Rev. Bill Luttrell's question, amplified by the thumb-sized microphone attached to his red silk tie, rolls across the pews inside the Braggadocio Baptist Church. There is a second of silence as 39 men, women and children ponder the three words, let them slide from their minds to their souls.

"Are you prepared?" Luttrell again asks, and one by one, the people begin to nod, begin to smile and say, "Amen."

They begin to understand. Luttrell senses this and presses on.

"I know there is much anxiety going on," he says. "I look out today and notice some people missing. One went to Sedalia. Another went to Branson. Many fear this thing called an earthquake. And by the way, if there is an earthquake during services today, as fast as you possibly can, get under these pews. They are oak and they will save your life."

Someone taps lightly on their pew. Several other people glance at the ceiling, at the glass chandeliers some 20 feet above, and mentally calculate whether they can beat the chandeliers to the green carpet. It would probably be a close race, especially for the elderly, who are the majority of the congregation.

Luttrell throws open wide his arms and gestures to the congregation. "We do need to prepare. The earthquake might happen. Will it? I don't know. But I'm prepared as much as I can be for the thing I know will happen. I'm prepared to meet my God. Are you?"

It is an intensely personal question, one that requires a thorough sounding of the heart. But the people inside this modest brick church have no problem with such soul-searching question. For the past several weeks, the men and women of this farming community, some 30 miles south of New Madrid, have wrestled with an agonizing dilemma, as talk increased of a possible earthquake along the fault beneath their feet.

The possibility of a killer temblor is no longer fodder for coffee-shop jokes. It is palpable now, as real as the dog-eared Bibles they clutch in their hands.

Yes, they have fear. Laverne Waldrop slept in her clothes Saturday night; she didn't want to get caught in her nightgown if an earthquake struck while she slumbered. "I felt a little silly this morning," she says. "But I'm nervous."

Yes, they have prepared physically. Waldrop has a survival kit in her car. Others -- including Luttrell -- have stockpiled food and water and supplies at home.

Yes, they have prepared spiritually, these faithful few. They have prayed to their God, searched Scripture for guidance and have concluded that flight would be folly -- as foolish as trying to bargain with the reaper, in Luttrell's words.

If Iben Browning's much-ballyhooed guess is correct, if there is a major earthquake sometime this week, Luttrell's reaper will most likely visit this community of cotton farmers and retirees.

So be it. The faithful know the earthquake will not be the work of Browning or any other person. The faith have put their trust in divine hands, and in those hands they feel safe.

"I'm depending on the Lord to take care of me," says Noel Dudley, who works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "If he doesn't, that means he's called me home."

===

Dec. 3, 1990

FORT PILLOW, Tenn. -- The perfume of newness -- a blend of choice leather and fresh paint -- fills the air inide the West Tennessee High Security Facility.

That smell is especially pungent in the visiting room, a cavern 50 feet wide and twice as long, where dozens of brown contour chairs partially absorb the echo of voices as they ricochet off beige-painted walls.

In the center of the room, Warden Billy Compton stands at attention. An ex-Army man, his posture is always ramrod straight, even when he's trading pleasantries with the guards as they walk past.

Compton accepts a compliment on his prison, a $30 million, state-of-the-art lockup opened in April. It holds 587 of Tennessee's most serious felons. Death row may be at another prison, but Compton's facility contains plenty of murderers and those men branded "troublemakers" by the state.

This room is where the least troublesome prisoners get to visit with family. Its tile floor is waxed religiously, all the better to keep that fresh smell alive.

This is where the dead and dying might be warehoused if an earthquake erupts.

The prison sits about 45 miles northeast of Memphis, on the eastern edge of the New Madrid fault. Compton and his staff have devised a disaster plan that includes using the visiting room and the gymnasium as makeshift hospitals and morgue.

The prison was built to take the fault's best shot. Each wall was sunk into reinforced concrete, three feet deep and three feet wide on either side. Each pre-fab concrete slab was tested for sturdiness. The chain-link fence, fortified with rolls of razors, has two alarms with emergency backups.

If a quake comes, it may level everything else. The prison, in theory, should remain standing. The "in theory" part is what worries Compton. "They say it'll survive a violence quake, but I don't know," Compton says, patting a wall. "I sure hope it does."

On this day -- the date of a predicted major quake -- thoughts of a temblor come to the fore of Compton's mind. Nary a tremor Monday morning; Compton and several co-workers joke about quake forecaster Iben Browning's words as they walk from building to building, through steel doors that clang shut with a roar when caught by the terrific wind blowing outside.

Even the prisoners seem unconcerned. There are inmates like Joe -- prison rules prohibit the use of last names -- who say they've put their trust in God. "I think the whole thing was a hoax for some people to make money," says Joe, 46, stroking his gray goatee. "But if it isn't, it's not the work of man. It's God's work."

Then there are those like Charles, a 33-year-old Tennessee native. He's thought hard about Browning's words. There are few other things to do in prison. "I even thought about it until 1 or 2 this morning," Charles says. "But then I dozed off and when I woke up this morning, I wasn't worried anymore."

His relatives are concerned. They talked to Charles on Sunday night and told him to be careful and to not do anything "irrational." Translation: Don't even think about escaping if the walls come crashing down.

"Good idea, Charles," the warden interjects. "Keep that in mind. Don't do anything irrational."

Charles and Joe are in the minority among prisoners. Most of the men couldn't care less whether an earthquake demolished their enforced home. They know all about the hype, through television, newspapers and letters from home. Their relatives talk to them on the telephone and talk about how scary it must be, being locked in cages atop an earthquake fault.

But what are the prisoners supposed to do? Fret themselves into a frenzy, all because one man uttered the date Dec. 3? They have more important things to worry about, like making a good impression before the parole board, or keeping an eye out for enemies on the inside.

An earthquake they can handle, because when it comes, it comes, and no one -- not the warden, not the guards, not their dogs -- can do anything about it. The same cannot be said of their foes, who may kill them over something as trivial as a blocked shot during a basketball game in the yard.

Outside these walls, earthquake fever is rampant. Inside, no one's even running a temperature. "Sure, man, you have to think about it, just for the question of 'What if?'" says Willie, a 24-year-old from Tennessee. "But I got better things to go with my time."

===

Dec. 4, 1990

OSCAR, Ky. -- Pull open the screen door covered with dusty, yellowing plastic and step inside. Emma Mitchell feels like talking a spell.

We're in Oscar today, a wide spot in the road about 25 miles northwest of Paducah. The New Madrid fault lies just southwest of here, at the marriage of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

The place: Mitchell's Store, a century-old frame building that looks perilously close to collapse. White paint peels from every outside wall. Tree limbs and winter-dormant vines obscure the sign above the front door. If it weren't for the OPEN placard, it'd be pretty easy to assume the place had long been abandoned.

But way back in the back of the store -- past the two refrigerators filled with soft drinks, the glass candy counter, the rack with one bag of pork rinds hanging from a clip -- there sits Mitchell, barely illuminated by the glare of a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. She's 88 years old, a frail whisper of a woman bundled in a red-and-white blouse, two red sweaters and a pair of pants covered by a patchwork quilt. A walker is close at hand. Mitchell broke both her hips a few years ago.

"Go on, go on -- sit down," she urges. "I'm just trying to keep warm by the fire." Shimmers of heat rise from the stove. A couple of feet away is plenty close for a dose of warmth. But it is chilly outside, and the combination of Mitchell's soft, cracked voice, the darkness of the store and the pleasant smell of burning wood makes this a comfortable way to spend a Tuesday morning.

"I've lived around here all my life, and we've had lots of little quakes," Mitchell says. "But I'm sure happy this big one didn't come yesterday. It probably would have knocked down this old building, with me inside."

Little doubt there. The far corners of the ceiling are covered with sheets of cardboard, and whistles of wind leak through cracks in the wood walls. It looks like the leaning wall behind Mitchell is supported only by a 7-foot-tall stack of firewood chopped and stacked by her neighbors.

But some things are built to last, and Mitchell's store appears to be one of them. It's the last remnant of the old Oscar, a place that used to have a few more stores, a few more townsfolk. Today's Oscar is generally known in these parts as a handy stopping point for goose hunters roaming the Ballard County Wildlife Management Area just west of here.

A few hunters have come in since goose season opened in earnest on Saturday. They sit and chat with Mitchell, warm their feet by the fire and buy their essentials -- candy bars, cigarettes, a few cans of soda. Mitchell likes the company.

Her daughter wants Mitchell to live with her in nearby Barlow, but the storekeeper likes her independence too much to sell the place. Besides, Mitchell says, anyone who bought the store would level it to make room for something new, something with bright lights and neatly stacked shelves. That's enough to keep Emma Mitchell here.

"Unless an earthquake comes," she says. "But there's nothing I can do about that, except hope and pray to God that he lets me stay here for a little while longer."

Time to go. Mitchell waves goodbye. "Now, any old time you're back in these parts, come on back."

A few miles up the road, on Kentucky 473, is a sign too tempting to pass up: "Monkey's Eyebrow Bait House. Good and Duck Processing." The bait house is closed -- damn the luck -- but Aulton Freeman opens the door to the house beside it. He's wiry, 73 years old, wearing a camouflage shirt, blue jeans and a camo hat bearing the title "The Undertaker." On it is a flying goose.

"You just come from Emma Mitchell's? Yeah, I've known Emma for about as long as I've known anyone," Freeman says, apologizing for his low rumble of a cough. He learned last December that he had lung cancer. Doctors removed a golfball-sized tumor, and so far the cancer hasn't returned.

Freeman is well enough, however, to answer the obvious question. "Well, I was born and raised here, and my dad lived here, and he was 79 when he died," Freeman begins. "He's been dead 20 years, and here's what he told me.

"Two brothers -- John Ray and Dodge Ray -- lived here. One ran a store, the other, a blacksmith shop. There was a drive between their places. They come out one morning, and one says to the other, 'How are you?' And the other says, 'Well, the monkey has his eyes open this morning.' And from that, they got Monkey's Eyebrow."

Monkey's Eyebrow used to be a booming little place; you could buy anything you could in Paducah. But most people abandoned the curving two-lane highway for the four-lane interstate that cuts through Paducah. Now, the only visitors to Monkey's Eyebrow are the hunters and the curious.

This is a busy time of year for Freeman. He walks out to his processing shop and shows off his wares. For $3 a bird, hunters drop off their geese. Freeman's helpers pluck, singe, gut, wash and freeze the carcasses. Freeman processed 3,468 geese last year. He netted 784 pounds of feathers, which he sold for $5 a pound.

The season runs through Jan. 31, so Freeman expects plenty of cars and trucks to stop by in the next couple of months. Now that Iben Browning's Dec. 3 earthquake projection is history, maybe people will start talking about blinds and decoys instead of tremors.

"Oh, that earthquake stuff, all that crap, it's silly," he says. "I'm not smart, but I'm not so silly to predict an earthquake. Besides, the Bible says at the end of time, no man will know. Not even the angels will know. So why would a little peon like me know when it's going to happen"?

===

Dec. 5, 1990

FUTURE CITY, Ill. -- First and Broadway. It sounds so uptown, so chic, a place for swank boutiques and restaurant. Especially in a place called Future City.

Someone's trash is scattered in the intersection.

Poverty, not posh, reigns in Future City, an encampment of about 100 people on the north edge of Cairo -- that's CARE-oh. Most homes are ramshackle. Roads are covered with pea gravel. There are no curbs, no sidewalks. No future.

It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, Future City was 10 times its current size, a boomer with cotton gins, stores and bars. But one by one, the stores closed and the people moved away. Now all that's left are retirees and those too poor to relocate.

"Kids grow up, they leave," says Lillian Thompson, 84. She lives in a decaying mobile home with Aaron Mohn. He's 55. He looks much older. They don't blame anyone for fleeing the squalor of Future City, a place where a white kitten, fur matted with filth, eats garbage next to a rusted sign: "$50 fine for littering."

Future City is where the New Madrid fault begins its serpentine path southward. The ground here is soft, sandy. A strong earthquake would probably turn the sand to soup; one county official says Future City would sink out of sight.

There is a sense that very few people would care. Future City is small, poor. It is also overwhelmingly black, and this is more than an insignificant aside. All along the New Madrid fault, racism is a reality.

When people worry about looting, they talk about "niggers" and "coloreds." In a New Madrid bar, a hand-lettered handbill featuring the face of Buckwheat offers bogus "Buck Beer." Asked about Future City, a sheriff's department dispatcher discourages a reporter from traveling there: "It's nothing but blacks and slums."

Ray Johnson, a resident, says no one cares. "This is the Gateway to the South, you know. I spent a couple of years on the East Coast -- New Jersey -- and a word I seldom heard was 'nigger.' But I hear it here."

Adds Thompson: "I don't know anyone here who doesn't want it to be better. But who's going to make it better? Not the people in Cairo. No, sir."

The chairman of the county board denies racism is the reason for the despair in Future City. Instead, Louis Maze blames high unemployment. One in every five Alexander County residents is out of work, he says. In Future City, unemployment is almost 100 percent.

"We all know the people in Future City. We get along with them well," Maze says. "And we've got a black treasurer and blacks in the sheriff's department."

Only an infusion of new businesses will save Future City, Maze says. "Factories can come in, they can give them jobs and those people can better themselves." But no one in Future City believes that will happen, and they don't seem willing to make it happen, either. The only solution, they say, is to wait -- wait and hope that attitudes change, that times get better, that white people along the New Madrid fault begin to think twice before automatically assuming an earthquake will create an army of rampaging black looters.

Aaron Mohn turns back to his black-and-white television and fiddles with the antenna wrapped in aluminum foil. Outside the mobile home, waist-high weeds sway in the wind. The kitten turns its attention to a mouldering Kentucky Fried Chicken box.

Originally published in the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader