Happy New Year – A Little Bit Late

I started writing this essay on January 2, as I was beginning to feel healthy again after a bout of pneumonia. I had to cancel my Christmas trip to Sorrento, Pompei, and Herculaneum and was feeling pretty down when I received an email that lifted my spirits. Unfortunately, some version of the influenza virus put me back in bed for a week, and now, in the middle of February, I’m still lethargic and coughing, and I never returned to my blog.

But the story is still worth telling, so I’ll let my friend Azra tell it.  Azra is one of the owners of Tortilla Flats, the lovely Mexican restaurant in Soquel that hosted a book talk for me on November 6.  Here is her story:

The Kindness of Strangers

On New Year’s Eve, 2022, Soquel Creek came up over its banks and flooded our back parking lot and our patio. The flooding happened so fast that it was amazing. Soquel Creek rose two and a half feet in two hours. Lucky for us, our wonderful staff had put sandbags in front of the back door so no water came inside the restaurant. As soon as we heard about the flooding, my husband, Erik Svehaug, and I ran from our home to the restaurant to join my daughter Zolina, the other co-owner, to see what needed doing.

We hunkered down with some regular customers and waited it out. After a few hours, the rain subsided and the water level dropped. Meanwhile, the business owners of Soquel village pulled together to support each other. It was such a sweet thing to experience. Owners came in to offer us extra sandbags, and others asked us for plastic bags. We had extra and were happy to share. Some people came in just to see how we were doing.

A regular customer was riding an Uber home. When the driver couldn’t get through the village, she walked to our restaurant for help. We were able to drive her home when the village opened about an hour later. We offered everyone who came in a shot of Tequila, and no one refused. Before long we were all laughing and having a great New Year’s Eve. A fabulous way to ride out a possible disaster.

The next day we had cleaned up and were open for business as usual, but with a fun tale to tell. I think a stranger said it best. While we were filling more sandbags in expectation of another storm, a young woman came up to ask if she could help me fill the bags. Shoveling sand is indeed a task, I was so grateful for the offer, and I thanked her profusely. Very humbly she said, “The only way we get through these things is by helping each other.” Wow, did her words take the chill out of my body and heart. We wait for a second storm and know we will be fine. We are here for one another and if the Tequila doesn’t run out, we’ll be fine!

Azra Simonetti, co-owner of Tortilla Flats.

Marlene Anne Bumgarner writes primarily about food, family, and traditions. Her 2020 memoir, Back to the Land in Silicon Valley, is about raising children, animals, and vegetables on a rural plot of land in the 1970s.   Organic Cooking for (not-so-organic ) Families will be out soon. Her next project is a book about Grandparenting, and in her spare time, she is plotting a cozy mystery.