It almost seems like a lifetime ago, I was a young man 24 years old, newly married and my daughter Susan was just a little over one month old, she had been born on April 12, 1980. I was in the Army stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. It was a rainy nasty little day, and we had been getting the warnings that Mount Saint Helens was about to blow up.
No one had any idea on how bad it was going to be, or how far the effects of the explosion would be felt. The Army and Air Force had moved all of the aircraft from Fort Lewis and McChord AFB to parts unknown, but far away from Tacoma.
We heard the explosion but due to the rain we did not see any of the ash, yet it fell. I had painted a friends car 2 days before, I told him that it needed to be parked in a garage for a few days for the paint to harden, I painted 8 coats of a metallic green, it was a very deep and really shiny job. I use to paint airplanes for a living, so I knew how to paint, that big Buick looked sharp. But Luis Baerga had to drive the car and had it parked outside that morning, the rain and the ash dulled the paint so you couldn't even see your face in it.
He asked me if it could be fixed, I laughed at him. I told him that he shouldn't have taken it from the post paint shop and I doubted it could be saved. But I needed for the paint to set a few more days before I would even try to see if I could salvage it.
The news that night was not good all they could tell is that the top of the mountain was gone and the ash cloud was 80,000 feet in the air and that most of it was blowing towards Yakima and the farm valleys to the east. They were worried about it destroying that years crops, the apple orchards etc, they also grow a lot of hops in that area so they were worried about how that was going to effect the years beer production.
It would be a couple of days before we knew the full effect of the volcano, 57 people died on that mountain because they refused to be scared off of their homes. The mountain they loved killed them, and I imagine they died happy, they were at home.
SSG Baerga's car when I did get around to it, I used a 600 grain sand paper and wet sanded it, it was a very slow process and it would wear out a piece of sand paper every few inches, but the shine came back and it looked real good, I showed Baerga how to do it, and told him to make sure he used a lot of water, otherwise he would "burn" the paint. I made him pay me for the sand paper and showed him how to wrap it around the soft wood block and to keep moving it around. He asked me where I was going, wasn't I going to help him "fix it" hell no, I told him not to drive it, it wasn't my fault he got all that ash into the wet paint. He didn't pay me anough money to sand that big boat of his Buick down. The paint job I put on his car would have cost 8 or 900 even in 1980. That was one sweet paint job, the paint was 90 dollars a gallon and it took 3 gallons. I think it took him about 2 months to sand that car down all over.
We ran into the ash at Yakima Firing center about a month later when we went there to fire 4.2 mortars and TOW Missiles, every where you stepped a cloud of ash would fly up about 3 feet. The farmers had tilled the ash into the ground and they had the best crops in decades around Yakima. Even as the earth is destroying itself, it is rejuvenating another area.
I do know this, I don't ever want to live close enough to another Volcano to allow it to scare the hell out of me. That was more than half my life ago, but somehow in my mind it almost seems like yesterday. You never forget an experience like that, I love the Seattle/Tacoma area, I have been stationed there twice while I was in the Army, the first time in 1974/1975 and then again in 1979-1980.
When I left the Army and went to work at the Post Office in California, my then wife and I decided to move, the Post Office would let me transfer anywhere I wanted to go, it was a tough choice either Tacoma, or Augusta Georgia, being a letter carrier, it rains to much in Tacoma and Augusta has better weather, and no volcano's. We moved to Augusta in 1985 and then when I became medically disabled, my current wife and I moved to her hometown of Columbia SC and I have been happy here ever since.
There aren't any volcanos or earthquakes here, I haven't even seen a tornado and we are to far away from the coast to get anything more than rain during a hurricane. I like this place a lot, at my age I am to old and disabled to run very fast.
Damn I am getting old................