Today is the completely insignificant 32nd anniversary of the great Mt. St. Helens eruption. I'd hold off on posting this for another eight years to make it an even 40, and therefore possibly significant, but I'm afraid I won't live that long, and If I do, I'm sure I won't remember it anyway, so here goes:

I was 17 yrs old and getting my first look at a real live P-51D at an airshow in Sandpoint, ID (KSZT) that day, "Cottonmouth" to be exact. (there were some other airplanes at the airshow too if I remember correctly) I was completely in awe, the crowd was allowed up close and I inspected every square inch of that puppy. It had those diamond tread tires like Robart made for R/C airplanes, I'd seen them in the Tower Hobbies catalog. The guy that owned it even did a couple high speed passes for us! I'll never forget the sound!

There was no internet, no live news feeds, nor any cell phones back then - we saw some "black clouds" moving in from the west and everyone just assumed it was building thunderstorms. Later in the afternoon some of the attending aircraft left the airshow early to get a jump on the thunderstorm - pretty soon a few of them returned. Apparently they'd been in contact with FSS and learned of the eruption. The airshow announcer finally came over the intercom and told us what had happened, that the airshow would end early, and everyone should go home because the ash cloud was heading our way. I was with my family, we drove the 35 miles or so back to Bonners Ferry in our barf-green '72 Ford Country Sedan without incident.

Woke up the next morning to what looked like a scene from a low-budget sci-fi movie, we got a very light dusting comparatively, yet some parts of my hometown were covered by as much as 3/4" of the stuff. I believe every pair of panty-hose in the county were pressed into service as a pre-filter of some sort, the local auto parts stores sold out of those white paper dust masks by 9:00 AM that day. My Dad owned a body shop, dust masks were not a problem for us, and he supplied several of our neighbors with masks as well. The schools were closed for several days, much to my dismay (not). There wasn't much traffic on the local roadways, most had sense enough not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. Some vehicles lacking adequate filtration were abandoned alongside roadways after the abrasive dust destroyed their engines. Everything had an orange cast from the dust in the air similar to the orange cast associated with forest fire smoke. I remember vividly the dust clouds any passing vehicle would churn up, it was strange though because the ash was heavy and dissipated quickly.

Several days later we finally got a good rainstorm which sort of stuck the dust to the ground, rinsed everything off, and life returned to normal. I think there is still a baby food jar full of the ash on the mantle at my Mom's house. Mom always did that sort of thing...