It’s fitting that Nanette Asimov, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and Isaac Asimov’s niece, covered the failing of the Rapture for her newspaper. She details the story of a man who drove across the country with his family from Maryland to celebrate the event in the empty parking lot of the Family Radio station in Oakland, California, where this whole ridiculousness began.
There is no gloating, or smugness in Asimov’s words, only a simple recounting of the disappointment of a road-weary man.
“I was hoping. I think heaven will be a lot better than this earth,” the 36-year-old trucker told a knot of reporters who outnumbered visitors at the grimy hub of worldwide speculation about the world’s end at 6 p.m. Saturday.
Neither radio employees nor radio minister Harold Camping were in evidence Saturday morning in the station parking lot on Hegenberger Road near the Oakland Airport.
In the meantime, CNNMoney reports that Family Radio, which has a total worth of $72 million, received $18 million in contributions just in 2009, according to its latest IRS filing.
