The Hits Keep Coming on Pearl Harbor Day

"What's wrong?" Kate asked.

"It won't start," I said & tried to turn it over again.  "Hear that?  I think it's the battery."

We were about to leave for the Sony Thursday lunch market.  Instead, I called AAA & Kate called Dave, the market manager.  AAA showed up in about 30 minutes.  We ended up replacing the battery in the Ford Escape for $135.  Dave never answered Kate's call so we just made the drive to Rancho Bernardo as soon as we could.

We got there about an hour late, Dave didn't seem to mind but we didn't make enough to cover the cost of the new battery.  

From there, we continued on to Oceanside.  We always got up there with about an extra hour or so to before we had to start setting up at the Sunset Market.  I liked to park at the south end of town, "South O," as the locals like to call it, & walk around the neighborhood or along the beach.  

"Whoa," Kate said as I put the Escape in park next to Cassidy Street Beach.  "Luke gave us a bid.  Are you ready for this?  One seventy five!"

"Damn, that's a lot," I said.  "Well, I'm still gonna meet with a few other contractors.  Maybe he's just really high."

"I hope so.  Will your parent's let us borrow that much?"

"I don't know, but I'm about to call 'em & find out."

I found a spot on some rocks along the water & made the call.  My mom's reaction was about the same as Kate's.

"One seventy-five?  I don't know Zach, that's a lot," she said.  

I told her that was probably high & that I still had other bids to get.  The sticker shock was real on both ends of the phone.

"Ok, well, I gotta go.  We gotta get set up here at Oceanside," I told her.

"Are you guys close to those fires out there?  I seen something on the news about they were in San Diego county," she said.

"Yeah, I don't think we're that close.  Although, now that you mention it, there is a little bit of ash in the air."

I met Kate back at the car & told her about the phone call.  It was with an uneasy feeling that I drove the final half mile to downtown Oceanside.  We were parked & just started to unload when Kathy, the market manager at Oceanside came around with a megephone.

"Listen up everybody.  I have an important announcement," she said.  "Tonight's market has been cancelled due to the Lilac Fire.  For the interest & safety of all vendors & customers, we've decided that this is the best course of action."

I was just glad that we hadn't unloaded all of our supplies like some of the other vendors had already done.  It was the first Thursday that we'd drove home from Oceanside before it was dark.  When I say dark, I mean after sunset at night, even though on that particular day the sky was a reddish sort of gray that left a darkness over our hour ride back to OB.

When we got home, Kate & I decided  we needed a little cheering up.  We cracked a couple of beers & then decided to go to the OBMA Sundowner.  It was about a mile away at the Brown Marketing Group office next to the Point loma library, but that seemed like a welcome way to clear our heads.

"I thought you guys did Oceanside on Thursdays?" Denny asked.  She was the head of the OB Main Street Association.

"It got cancelled because of the Lilac Fire," Kate explained.

"Oh, wow.  Just be glad you guys got outta there.  Some people might not have been as lucky.  You never know with wildfires."

She was right.  And, even though Kate received an email on our walk there that the San Marcos Winter Wonderland, which we were due to setup at the next day, was also cancelled because of the Lilac Fire, things could have been a lot worse.

It was a tough day for sure, but the silver lining came for us when I won a $40 gift card to Pepe's Italian in OB in one of the Sundowner raffles.  The first time I ever won one of their raffles on a night when I didn't think we were attend at the start of the day.