“I hate to say it, but it feels like earthquake weather.”

The groans around the bar were quite audible. It was not like we hadn’t heard Harry’s crazy predicitons before, but then he never let us forget that he’d been right in ’89.

He sauntered over to the bar, and laid down five bucks, as always. I fetched him a Bud and a shot and went back to cleaning glasses. Everyone else went back to their conversations, newspapers and so forth; everyone except for the woman sitting at the other end of the bar. She was clearly not local; the look on her face when Harry so glibly referenced earthquakes was enough to tell that.

I wandered down the bar to ask her if she needed another drink. As I approached she looked up, quite startled;

“Is there really a kind of weather that makes earthquakes more likely? I mean that old guy said it was ‘earthquake weather’ and then everyone just went back to their business, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.”

I chuckled and put the glass I was polishing on the countertop.