When St. Helens blew in 1981, it was a remarkable thing. (There were a number of blows, by the way, but just one magor one.) I was going to school in Portland at the time and you wouldn't believe the grit- pumice on bushes, cars, walkways, window casings. It was stuck on everything.

My brother's family lived just 30 miles from the mountain on a small farm, and they found themselves in their pasture at 3 o'clock in the morning to bring the cows in so they wouldn't feed on the cement-consistency slop.

Later, when the ash blew, I remember the car filters, the airplane rerouteings, the news reports...

I actually "saw" the top of the mountain blow off, even though I was about 70 miles away. I saw the force field in the sky, I guess. I was driving over the top of an overpass on the Sunday morning when I looked north just in time to see the sky shiver violently, you might say. When I got home, my daughter met me with the news that it said on the radio that the mountain had just blown.

I think we all had visions of how it must have been at Pompei!