I learned a new term a few days ago – wickie.
No, it's not someone who's just a little wicked. A wickie is someone who used to trim the kerosene-fueled flaming wicks that were inside the huge lenses that provided the light from early lighthouses. I found this out by climbing the 115-foot tall Point Arena Lighthouse on the California coast a few hours north of San Francisco. It was like climbing a 140-step corkscrew. The docent gave us a moment to catch our breath, then continued.
"So the wickie would stand right where you are now standing. Only, of course, the room was filled with a giant Fresnel lens."
"This is great!" I whispered to my wife, imagining myself at the turn of the 19th century, wearing a heavy knit sweater and a captain's hat, saving ships from sure doom by keeping the lighthouse lit. I felt like singing an old wickie tune, but I didn't know any.
"It was important to keep the wicks trimmed," the docent said, "or they would smoke and fill the lens with soot. It took up to eight hours to clean all that glass."
"Eight hours. Wow. This is so cool," I whispered again.
"According to an account from one wickie early one morning..."
I pictured myself staring out to sea waiting for dawn to light up the pods of whales frolicking off the point.
..."even before coffee..."
I pictured myself waiting for my Starbucks caramel brule latte grande.
"...the lighthouse began to shake."
I pictured myself shaking. "Wait, what?"
"And the lighthouse swayed four feet one way, then swayed four feet the other way."
"Swayed? Did he say swayed?"
"Shh," my wife said.
"This happened several times. It was five a.m. on April 18th, 1906. The day the infamous San Francisco earthquake leveled much of that great city. Here at the lighthouse the windows surrounding you all broke and fell to the ground. The lens shattered into hundreds of pieces. Chunks of the tower fell a hundred feet to the ground."
"I think I left the car running. I'll be right back."
Several other people on the tour said: "Shh!"
"In an instant, the lighthouse and the building below it moved 16 feet to the north."
I didn't want to go north! Or south! Or up or down. Especially down!
The docent laughed. "You would think that the wickie might have decided to quit his job after that and move to Kansas."
"What do you think about Kansas?" I asked my wife.
"But the wickie didn't move, he stayed on. Fortunately, he was able to go down the stairs, which hadn't collapsed. In fact, that is the original staircase you walked up to get here and will walk down, good Lord willing, when we are finished."
I began to hyperventilate.
"Why don't you step outside, get some fresh air, take a few photos," my wife said.
"So when they dig me and my camera out of the rubble the kids will have something to sell to the tabloids?"
"That would be nice, yes," my wife said.
The group went down one level and outside to an observation deck as the docent pointed out other fun stuff. I looked over the little half- wall to see if there were any soft-looking spots a hundred feet below. There weren't.
"Out there, Point Arena Rock hides just below the surface, waiting for wayward boats."
Swell.
"And if you look behind us at the road you drove in on, you will notice that erosion is eating away at the coast. The entire road could go at any moment."
Nice.
"And finally if you look across the water, over Route One and the recently presidentially-declared California Coastal National Monument addition, you'll notice a ridge line. That's the San Andreas Fault, the one responsible for the huge quake of o-six, that runs through San Francisco and all the way down the coast into Mexico."
Super.
"How strong is this new lighthouse that was rebuilt in 1908 using steel and concrete instead of brick and mortar? Someday soon, we may find out."
We all headed back down the corkscrew stairs that were built in 1870.
"Where should we head next?" my wife asked.
"Inland!" I suggested.