Mount Saint Helens Eruption

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Out of sheer perversity, I have decided to skip the obvious choice for my first memoir post (the death of Michael Jackson) and have opted instead to post on the May 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens.  I was in elementary school then, living in the Kirkland area of Washington State.

Small earthquakes on 15 March and 18 March 1980 precipitated the eruptions that would occur on 27 March 1980.  A column of ash was sent 7000 feet into the air, followed by more earthquakes and further explosions sending ash as high as 11,000 feet above the crater.  This ash initially fell as far as 12 miles away, but winds carried it as far as 285 miles to the east in Spokane.

By 29 March 1980, Mount Saint Helens had two craters and blue flames could be seen coming out of both.  Ash clouds gave birth to static electricity, which in turn created enormous bolts of lightning in some cases as long as two miles in length.  Mount Saint Helens rumbled away and governor Dixy Lee Ray declared a state of emergency on 3 April 1980…

The big eruption occurred Sunday, 18 May 1980.  The following day would see yet another eruption.  Between the 25th of May and the 18th of October, Mount Saint Helens would erupt five more times.

Although nowhere near the immediate vicinity of Mount Saint Helens, which lay in Skamania County (we were three counties north of it), the ash wreaked havoc on our lives nonetheless.  The I-90 was closed for a week or two and airplanes were not allowed to fly as a result of the ash doing nasty things to their engines and the extremely poor visibility.  Flying was downright dangerous.  A few airports even shut down, as I recall.  (I remember seeing the stories on the television news and hearing them on the car radio in the morning.)  Fallen ash finer than cornsilk led to car engine troubles for some (my mother’s greatest fear) and indiscriminately scratched automobile paint.  Pretty much anything mechanical exposed to the ash was at risk for developing severe issues.  Things just didn’t work.

Nor were electrical systems immune to the ravages of the volcanic ash.  Power blackouts resulting from electrical transformers short-circuited by the ash were a regular occurrence.  What we ate or even if we ate could all be changed in the blink of an eye.

I remember the blackouts.  I remember the earthquakes, too.  However, of all the memories imprinted in my mind, the most indelible is the sheer amount of ash… and, yet, I remember a number of old timers bragging the dust was nowhere near the amounts they lived with during the dust bowl era.  It was enough “dust” for me, however.  I had mild anaphylactic reactions.

I recall Mother using her squeegee at 4:30 every morning to wipe the ash off her silver Chevette as we children sat in the car waiting to go to daycare.

I remember the store parking lots and parked vehicles blanketed in ash.  Most puzzling to me were the grown men and women attempting to capitalize on the disaster by bottling the ash and trying to sell it as a souvenir to passersby.  Few were buying.

Some few of these hucksters were desperate enough to sell their ash to me, a child!  To my mind, these volcanic ash peddlers were lunatics or idiots, as the ash was all around us, as omnipresent as God.  If I wanted a bottle of ash, I would scrape it off my mother’s Chevette and bottle it myself – and being much more outspoken than timid and having grown exponentially impatient with and hostile to the mere idea of suffering grown-up fools-who-should-know-better-than-a-child gladly, I told these fools as much.

These ash peddlers were apparently incapable of inventing a clever response to my argument and most slunk away slack-jawed in the search for more vulnerable prospects, realizing, perhaps, they had made a tactical error.  A few were driven away by my mother, who arrived upon finishing her shopping and wanted to know why I had gotten out of the car – “those people could kill you!”

The most clever response any ash peddler arrived at in my presence was that her ash was already bottled and for a small fee I could avoid the dirty work of having to bottle the stuff myself, to which I replied, “I’m a child.  I like playing in the dirt.  I do it every day!”

I had not yet reached the age of ten and my weekly allowance added up to 25 cents, which I received in nickels, dimes and pennies or the occasional quarter.  Or, most often in those days, a verbal IOU.  (Mother was newly divorced and we had a hard time making ends meet).  Regardless, I received my allowance if and only if I had performed every chore assigned to me that week with perfection and then, if and only if Mother had the money to pay allowances that week.  There were no rewards for half measures and you did not earn your allowance by doing the bare minimum.  In fact, doing the bare minimum of what was expected of you (make your bed and clean your room) would usually be rewarded with a good spanking because it meant you were slacking off and not doing your chores.  “There are no free rides in life.” Mother would say.  I could afford to maybe buy a candy bar with my allowance, but that was about it… and that would be gone in the blink of an eye with nothing to show for it.  Therefore, my allowance usually went into my piggy bank until I could afford to buy something good with it – a metal chestnut mare, for example.  I collected horses back then.  I knew the value of money and I knew bottled ash I could bottle myself free was a terrible purchase.

Temporary public insanity is not my only memory of the Mount Saint Helens eruption.  I was aware people had died as a direct result of the eruption and some people barely escaped the mountain with their lives.  I knew about the group of people who had been dropped off on the mountain the next day – a film crew, if I remember correctly – who had barely managed to survive the eruption that occurred that day, the 19th of May.  It was a sad and somber time, even for those of us who did not lose loved ones in the eruptions.  I remember the lump in my throat and the uncontrollable watering in my eyes accompanied by the pinch of light headedness that comes with shock and disbelief and the knowledge someone is gone forever.  I knew intimately the grief loved ones of those who died were feeling, as mention of the deaths brought my own memories of death flooding back to me… memories of my great grandmother’s death and my close friend’s death by drowning in his backyard pool when I was five years old.  I knew what death meant.  Doors forever slammed shut.

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