After visiting Daffodil Lane, I just realized that today, May 18th, is the 25 anniversary of the explosion of Mt. St. Helens.
This is significant to me because I am from Washington State and I experienced some of the devestation (on a comparably small scale) first hand. I was eleven years old when this happened and I remember this day like it was yesterday…well, on second thought, the memory gets a little bit fuzzier with age, but I do remember what I was doing when Mt. St. Helens exploded.
My younger brother, myself, and the neighborhood kids had walked to the local 7 eleven (it was, like, a mile or more away) to spend our allowence on candy. God, I think I even remember what candy I bought…Laffy Taffy, those cute little fruit flavored candies that had a really bad joke inscribed on the inside wrapper. It must have been a Saturday because it was in the middle of the day and we would have been in school otherwise. As we were walking home we noticed that the sky was getting darker and darker but didn’t think too much of it. I thought a rain storm was coming in. As we walked up to my house my mom met us in the street, and she was kind of acting worried. She told us to get into the house right away and told the neighbor kids to get home immediately. When I asked her what was going on she said that Mt. St. Helens erupted. I didn’t really know how significant that was or how it affected us. Until the ash came. About an hour later it started raining ash.
Now I don’t really remember much after that, but I do remember that we had to stay in the house for a long time. We couldn’t go outside without a surgical-type mask covering our mouths and noses. We were told that the air was dangerous to breathe because the of the ash particles.
I also remember that I got a silk screen t-shirt (that I still have) that says “I survived Mt. St. Helens” or something like that. (I’m going to see if I can dig it up tonight when I get home from work).
I also remember that my sister got stranded in the Tri-Cities for about a week. She was visiting friends there that weekend and couldn’t get back home.
I recently watched an Imax movie (rented via Netflix) called The Eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Watching that stirred up some more memories for me. The movie had footage of the huge amounts of ash that had piled up in the towns east of St. Helens (including Spokane). The ash would get into carburetors and ruin the cars. The movie also reminded me of the sense of humor of some people. I remember passing by business signs (the ones that have detachable letters) that would say silly things like, “Mt. St. Helens made and ash of herself” or something to that effect.
It was a really interesting experience to go through. It wasn’t particularly happy, but it was exciting for an eleven year old.
