Short story

Today I woke up early, and just reading/no beer the night before, was all ready for a great day of sales. I was especially fired because at the close of last night, after the Sun had gone down, a young couple wondered in. I ended up selling a big piece that had been sitting most the summer. They’re all my babies, so when one piece of art doesn’t sell, I wonder what’s wrong with my baby. It’s really nice when one that hadn’t found a home, finds one.

Because I made the sale I fell asleep deciding to buy a power sander to bust out more pieces, quicker. Of course it’s always fun when you know what you need to purchase and have a lot of choices, and Gee, what power tool are you going to end up with? There was a sale at Ace Hardware so the choice was a no-brainer, and all stoked, I go back to Studio De Herrera at 120 Gray Avenue, Santa Barbara. I put my $10 Art sign up against the chain-link fence, put out all the pieces that hadn’t sold and were still available, and get to work. A double espresso and a hit of sativa and I’m good. I finish the silvery piece pictured (though not sure it’s finished) and start figuring out what I’m going to do next.

It’s warm, but in the shade down by the beach it’s not too bad. I walk out to the street to take a look, see if there is anyone I can call to, to get them to come in and take a look. Kind of dead, I turn to go back to work, and looking east see the clouds have become a 2,500 foot wall—top to bottom—of light gray, over Montecito. I look straight up to see which way the clouds above me are moving and sure enough that big gray wall is headed to the Funk Zone. I begin putting art under the overhang, and as I’m going about this, I look east again, and decide to pick up the pace. Now I’m trotting back and forth getting and gathering up smaller pieces on the quick, getting them under cover.

The first drops I heard were like feathered bursts of a machine gun. It reminded me of drops the size I had experienced once in the American southwest, drops the size of quarters. But as they hit, I carried the last baby to safety. I had successfully gotten everything under the overhang and began positioning my chair to take in the downpour in all its glory. Suddenly a strong gust of wind, another, and all hell breaks loose. Now I’m scrambling to save what is most important as a torrential downpour goes angular—like a fool I had envisioned water falling vertically. The sound of heavy things falling and banging on other heavy things makes itself known out across the immediate neighborhood. I abandoned saving art—even the monotypes—the biggest sellers—and grab my MacBook as lighting strikes less than a football field away. I turn to run to the open door of Boathouse Crossfit, a brick building, and in my periphery I see the ten by twenty foot tenting for the beer-peddle cart—a thing groups of people do where they drink beer and peddle a big cart around downtown—lift straight up twenty feet, roll, and turn into huge six-pointed mobile impaling device.

Between my space and Boathouse Crossfit is the Segway space, where they train people with little orange cones before tours, and as I’m traversing that space, their fluorescent sign blows up with a Frankenstein sound and sparks, as a transformer down the street blows up—or was it another strike of lightning—I’m not sure. Recoiling, in passive body language, anticipating the next loud bang to be the back of my head, I turn to see the parking lot of 120 Gray as a giant gyre of debris whipped in a circle of gray and white water. At that moment I thought, this is it, lights out buddy.

It’s not often you run for your life, but I did today.

Later, as things cleared and everyone was checking all the damage I called to a somewhat full street, “Hey, I got art—half price!” It got a good laugh. Cleaning up, there was my new power tool, used once, soaked.