Seventy-seven thousand people including all of UC Santa Cruz have been evacuated along the coast, where the nightly fog that’s supposed to keep the forest floor and the roots of the redwoods damp has gone missing, and who knows how many more folks inland had time to pack before they had to get out of there. The unheard-of August lightning storms? There are more in the forecast.

Yesterday it was smokey at Andy’s Orchard but it wasn’t terrible. Today the high school across the street from him had become the evacuation center and the area was marked Evacuation Warning: be packed, be ready.

I am so glad I went when I did.

The phone rang this morning, but the person was breaking up so badly that neither one of us could make heads nor tails. So they just came. The doorbell rang a few hours later: it was the mattress people. It was not Saturday.

I had told them that if the fires got worse we’d be happy to wait because their safety was the most important thing, to please check first. They appreciated that–and instead decided, okay, we need to get this done NOW. I wondered if they’d been driving since before dawn.

They put the new cover on the new mattress. We were supposed to have to do that part per the seller and watching them, I’m not sure we could have.

They got everything set up. I followed them outside to say where I wanted the old one to go till we could hire someone to come pick it up.

They knew that we had just missed the city’s semi-annual cleanup date when it would have been done for free.

They used the lift to get the old one onto the truck. No worries, they said, we’ll take care of it.

I was not expecting that at all.

When I told the one guy I’d bought the peaches at a farm yesterday, and how things were there today, his eyes got wide and he really, really appreciated it (and probably was really really glad they hadn’t waited till tomorrow) and headed outside to the truck to share with his co-worker. They waved thanks, I waved thanks, and they were out of here while the routes back out were still safe.