I was on my way home that Sunday morning after doing our laundry at a laundromat in McMinnville, Oregon. As I drove over a highway overpass on my way to Dayton, a little town 6 miles from Mac, I glanced in the direction of Mt. St. Helens. For weeks we had known she was going to blow- she had to - her side was bulging, even though from time to time some commentator would express doubts of its imminence.

But as I looked in that direction, suddenly there was a - how can I describe it - a silver expanse of flash. It was over in an instant -nothing like the time it took in real time for the pumice and ash to pour out and climb hundreds of feet into the air.

As I walked in my house, my daughter met me at the door. "Mount St. Helens has erupted!"

I was attending community college at the Sylvania campus in Portland at the time and for days the bushes and sidewalks and cars were loaded with the pumice and ash from the mountain. Airplanes were diverted, cars were issued filters and masks, roadsides grew deep with the stuff.