It is that time of year again when we have a thread about the eruption of Mount Saint Helens.

Do you remember?

That morning I got up early and read the paper with my Dad. I was crossing the street -- about to go on a bike ride -- when I looked north down 60th Avenue. I dropped my bicycle right in the road when I saw what I was sure was an atomic blast. It had begun just seconds before I reached the edge of the yard. The rumble was like a thunderstorm, but it didn't register until I saw it. It climbed higher and higher into the sky. Soon, I grabbed my bike, dashed back inside and woke up my brother. My Dad took the three of us to the top of the old Portland Sanitarium to watch it erupt.

I also recall seeing the Mariners play on television. It was a day game against the Chicago White Sox at old Comiskey Park. The Sox had those awful polyester uniforms that made them all look like fatsos. The game was on one half of the screen while the volcano continued to erupt on the other half. It was fun to find the box score since I remembered little of the action. A classic "almost comeback win" in the Mariner tradition of the 80s.

What was your May 18, 1980 like?

My father had JUST moved us to New Orleans.

The ash cloud dipped down enough that you can look to the north over the horizon and see just black.

My mother lived in Hillsboro at the time, so she freaked out ... she sent all sorts of pictures and that.

My grandmother STILL has bottles of ash in her basement. She's convinced that they are collectors items!

Six years old living in Creswell....

My mom and I were supposed to be camping at Spirit Lake with our horse club and trail riding. Thank goodness that trip was cancelled.

We all ended up at Rock Creek Horse Camp in Dole Valley and were out riding when we heard it...but were so deep in the woods we couldn't see it. I remember the ash falling on us like a light rain, but it wasn't wet, of course. We finally got up high enough to see the mountain, and couldn't believe our eyes!

The horses couldn't turn around fast enough...they had been fidgety since we arrived, and it was a wild ride back to camp.

Two hours later, we were back home in Battle Ground, which had a good dusting and looked like a ghost town. At school, they asked us to stay off the grass or any hard surface that hadn't been hosed off, and gave us masks to wear outside until they felt it was cleaned up as much as possible.

We all collected ash to save and send to friends elsewhere, and they still sell Mt. St. Helens Ceramics and Glass at the Cougar Store.

I was living in St. Louis at the time and remember seeing it on the news and thinking "Holy cow, what a mess"

Then they started reporting that the ash cloud would scatter and eventually cover the whole world.

I remember seeing some dust on my van in St. Louis, and thinking it might be from Mt. St. Helens.

My dad was the Director of Market Research for Ralston Purina and traveled a fair amount.

He used to go to Seattle fairly often and there was a market research firm they did business with there.

On a trip shortly after the eruption, he brought me back a little plastic container of Mt. St. Helens ash.

I took it with me when I moved to Tampa, 3 years later it returned to St. Louis with me, 7 years after that it went to Chicago with me and 5 years after that it came with me out here to Vancouver. I still have it!

Who'd a thunk that after all those travels it would end up less than 50 miles from where it started!!

I was on the air at KCYX. My biggest memory was later that night announcing in a news bulletin that Spirit Lake had disappeared!

It's not everyday you announce a lake is just gone!

Who remembers hearing the song on the radio later in the month called "Harry Truman" (Your Spirit Lives On) by R.W. Stone?

I remember it well...and own a full box of mint condition 45's (with paper jackets) of "We Want Lava" by the Beaver Trail Boys, with Richard Purdy's "The Ballad of D.B. Cooper" on the flip side. The jackets have a picture of the Ariel Store on them.

Found them in the basement of the Paris Theatre last year...that's another story.

I've collected 14 different 45's that were released about the eruption. Just about every band around got on The Mount St. Helens Gravy Train!

It was my brother’s college graduation day in Spokane. I heard the news walking through our dorm TV room. Al Keck, the sports guy, was reporting the eruption.

Later that afternoon around 2:30pm we could see the sky beginning to darken. By the time we got out of the graduation ceremony ash was falling everywhere.

Mark Hatfield was the commencement speaker and he ended up going back to Seattle via a taxicab using Hiway 2 and parts of Canada as I recall. The cab was equipped with several filters for the trip.

Forward to July of 1980. It's my birthday and my folks wake me up early on a Saturday morning. Drive me out to Hillsboro airport to meet with Richard Miller, who did production at KGW at the time. He's also a licensed pilot. The four of us got into the Cessna and ended up flying around Mt. St. Helens circling it twice.

My dad was taking loads of pictures. One picture was from the south side of Mt. St. Helens with Mt. Rainer in the background. It's a great picture and my mom said "your dad put the top back on Mt. St. Helens." What a great birthday gift.

I was living in Vancouver at the time. What can you say but "Awesome". What a sight to see. My unfortunate employment at that time was a part-time job washing trucks at a Portland truck dealership. Washing a car was bad enough but trying to keep a lot full of big rigs clean was quite a job. FUN FUN FUN.

I was 8 years old and our family was coming back from a weekend trip to eastern Oregon via I84 early that Sunday morning. We stopped at a gas station to fill'er up and the gas attendant told us that the mountain blew it's top. As a second grader originally from the Midwest, I was enthralled with Mt. St. Helen's throughout it's active period and had been clipping newspaper articles about anything regarding the activity. I specifically remember driving to Portland through the Gorge that morning and watching the cloud. One of my most fondest and awe inspiring memories of my childhood. I still have several jars of ash from other eruptions that dropped ash in Portland stored in Orville Redenbacher popcorn jars.

LOL, Craig: I'd love to see the whole list of that collection. I'm happy to share the ones I have if anyone wants one. My email is in my profile. Littlesongs can attest to the mass quantites I have!

One of the first ash plumes happened on my 16th birthday: March 20.

Funny how we all adjusted to having an active volcano in the backyard: I remember her spitting ash during the Clark County Fair that year and all the folks around me saying, "Yeah, it's OK. She's just grumbling.", while standing in line for the Skydiver.

I had spent the night at the home of a school friend in the heights in Vancouver, Washington. It was a bright, warm, cloudless morning when we were directed towards the northern sky. Mt St Helen’s had blown that morning, sometime after 8am – and this time it was like nothing we had seen previously. For hours, we watched the massive mushroom cloud grow. It really looked like the aftereffect of an atomic bomb blast. From time to time, we’d go into the house and watch the television news reports chronicling the day’s events. We’d watch as I believe Richard Ross and Jim Bosley of KATU would show those black and white satellite pictures – ink still wet – showing the massive plum from the perspective of outer space. In what order I’m not sure, but we heard about the Toutle River being overwhelmed with debris. At some point, I’m pretty certain I-5 north of Longview/Kelso was closed. Quite honestly, there was so much to process with the local television stations providing wall to wall coverage of the event. As the day progressed, we stared hearing about the massive ash cloud moving east. First Yakima was buried in ash, with the sun completely obscured by the massive ash cloud trailing to the east. Yakima was in complete darkness. We all wondered if the ash cloud might travel south to Vancouver.

After awhile, I went home and watched events unfold from a better vantage point. From a street north of my neighborhood, you could stand next to an overpass and clearly see the massive ash cloud. Later, our family went to friends and watched it from their deck – slightly northwest of where we lived. Again, it was as clear as day and volcano continued to spew.

Prior to May 18th, I can still remember all the coverage of Harry Truman, the old man who lived at Spirit Lake with his many cats. As he said over and over, he would never leave. Too, I can remember the time leading up to May 18th. So much was reported on television and in the Columbian newspaper prior to the May 18th eruption. At one point during this period, we had to wear surgical masks when playing little league baseball. It was quite something.

May Harry Truman and all those who lost their lives on May 18, 1980 rest in peace.

I saw it mostly on the news, though a neighbor decided to scale Mt. Hood that morning and reached the summit right when it was going off, so he had a box seat for the show.

Later that spring there was a lot of concern about all the falling ash, and that businesses had a legal responsibility to clean it up. My friend and I both worked at Dea's In and Out in Gresham, and we were able to convince the owner that the parking lot needed to be hosed clean or else he would get cited. So we got two days of extra pay standing out in the sun hosing off the parking lot (very little ash fell in Gresham, btw). It sure beat peeling potatoes in the back room.

Entre_nous: Yeh, I'll type you a list. Give me a couple of days. I'm doing some fill in work right now.

We were out on a go get wood trip. Everything was going on, so I can't really know if I heard it or not, but I remember looking and thinking, "that's not on the list of things that is supposed to happen today!"

I was a kid then and it was powerful. All of the stuff we read about nature being a force resonated just then. I felt small, powerless and happy too! Happy that I was there, able to see and experience, but not really be impacted. Powerless because it really was just a random lot that I was not there, about to be buried in a lot of stuff!

That's also the day I decided the planet is a living thing. There are dead ones and live ones.

This one is a live one, of course. It's not the eruption that marks it. But the power of it made me consider all the stuff I had seen. Just like that, a bunch of things changed.

Over the few years after, it was great to see life just adapt, grow and heal. Any one small act is not all that powerful. So a blade of grass growing, plant taking root, etc... All small things. But together, acting in some harmony is very powerful --and bigger and more complex than we know.

I recall the eerie, pink-purple tint in the sky over Seattle/Tacoma. Never seen that color in the sky before. I don't think it was the ash itself because very little fell over the area, but some sort of reflection caused by the ash.

I rode a dirt bike within 3 or 4 miles of the summit due north of Cougar ONE WEEK before May 18 with my bike buddies. Buried under mounds of ash is an empty 6 pack of BEER beer.

We went to a friend's wedding in Eugene the day before, and were staying in a Motel.
While in the parking lot next morning, we heard what sounded like a sonic boom at what turned out the be the right time for the explosion.
We said "There goes Mt. St. Helens - Ha Ha Ha".

Didn't know anything about it until we got to Medford later in the day and turned on the TV.