Word on the Street - May 20, 2010

Where were you when Mount St. Helens blew its top?

“I was in Port Townsend, actually, working at Fort Warden State Park.”

Did you get much ash up there?

“We didn’t get any ash. We did get like three – shock waves, sonic booms, I don’t know what you’d call them. But it felt like somebody throwing a ball against the wall of our house.”

“I was working at Snyders on the dayshift. All of a sudden everything got dark and I thought I was back on the graveyard shift.”

“I was down on Poverty Flat… There was a vacant lot next door, and I got out a side-discharge lawnmower and at 8 a.m. I blew all the ash over onto it. By 9:30 there were a thousand robins on the yard, chirping away.”

“I wasn’t even alive. Wherever my dad was at the time, I guess.”