beautiful, funny, sad & true

On this day, twenty seven years ago, Mount St. Helens erupted.

At the time, my family lived in Yakima, Washington, which was the first decent-sized town in the path of the ashfall. The eruption happened at about 8:30 a.m. We were just pulling up to St. Johns Episcopal Church, where my dad was the vicar, when someone called and said, “I just heard on the radio. . .Mount St. Helens erupted!” The handful of us who were there sat and thought for a few minutes, but when we saw the whole horizon turning black (on a cloudless morning), we decided we should try to get home if we could.

The ash cloud hit us halfway home. Instantly, visibility went to about two feet. It was like a warm, grey snowstorm, and it smelled horrible. We were driving about ten miles per hour, but we still almost hit a turn divider and ran off the road because we couldn’t see.

We did make it home safely, and good thing, too, because the ash fell for the next day or two. We ended up with about an inch and a half of ash everywhere. It killed plants and pets. It choked the fuel systems of cars. (Interestingly, I remember that people were able to drive their cars by stretching pantyhose over their carburetors. Isn’t that ingenious?)

I was nine years old, and I wasn’t scared at all. That’s the perfect age to be during something like that. Old enough to remember it, but young enough to be mesmerized by it.

The town completely shut down for about a week, while people shoveled their driveways and sidewalks, and street cleaners ran day and night. My brother and I would stand under the awning on the back patio and watch the ash falling for a long time. People were saying things like, “Don’t let the ash touch you, it’ll melt your skin!” and “If you breathe it in, it will kill you!” So when we did venture out, we wore those little breathing masks and sweltered in our winter coats, at least until we realized that it wasn’t THAT hot, and we could catch it in our hands.

I’ll never forget the video of the gigantic logging trucks being washed down the Toutle River, or the huge logs destroying bridges, or the picture of the newspaper photographer’s car buried by boiling mud.

One of our friends in the neighborhood drew a volcano in ball-point pen on a bunch of white T-shirts with a caption that said, “Mount St. Helens–a pain in the ASH!” O, the hilarity.

The local news had a field day with the eruption, as you can imagine. “WILL VEGETATION EVER GROW BACK?? WILL THE VOLCANO KILL YOUR PETS?? TUNE IN AT FIVE TO FIND OUT.” Well, most of the pets lived, and before too long, trees and plants were growing back stronger than before. I still remember the pictures in National Geographic of the first little sprouts growing up out of the ash.

It was an amazing experience, and one that I’ll remember as long as I live.

For the last couple of years that I lived in Yakima, mountain biking became my Thing. Yakima itself may be a dump, but it’s close to lots of beautiful mountainsandtrailsandskiingandhikingandbikingplaces. So there you go.

In order to get my strength and stamina up for our weekend jaunts to the mountains, I started riding my bike to my job at LocalComputerStore, which was about four miles each way. My favorite way to ride home was the dirt road along the railroad tracks that went through the older, historic parts of town.

Oh yeah. In order for this story to be funny, you need to know that back then I used to have my hair pretty long, in a mullet. Yes, a mullet. I usually kept it in a ponytail, though. That’s gotta count for something, right?

So picture this. I was riding along the tracks, with my ponytail and my helmet and my T-shirt and my long shorts. These two guys in a battered white Ford pickup came up behind me and honked, and PassengerSideGuy rolled the window down to yell, “Hey, nice tight ass!”

As they slowed down and pulled up alongside me, I looked over and laughed, which is when PassengerSide saw my five o’ clock shadow and glasses. He turned to DriverGuy and said, “Oh, dude. . .it’s a GUY. GO GO GO GO!” and he did that rolling motion with his index finger as he said “go go go” that made me laugh so hard I just about fell off my bike.

I was also glad, in that moment, that I wasn’t a girl riding by herself out in the middle of nowhere, because things would have likely been very different. Then again, if I was a girl who looked like I did at the time, I would have been a very scary-looking girl indeed. Hairiest legs in the world, for one thing. Scraggliest hair and biggest glasses, for another.

Sorry I’ve been so absent from blogging this week. I’ve had rehearsals almost every night, and I had a gig somewhere in there too. I should have a little more time this weekend for writing about more ‘real’ stuff than this. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this story.

My brother sent this to me the other day, and I just about fell out of my chair laughing.

I did some nosing around to find out that this is a serious ad, brought to you by the Washington Wine Commission. They have the same type of ad running in lots of the wine-producing towns throughout the state (Woodinville, Prosser, etc.). Which is fine. Heck yeah, let’s promote the region as the great up-and-coming wine producer that it is.

But Yakima? The envy of France?

Words fail me.

If you’ve ever been to Yakima, Washington, you may or may not know about Ron’s Drive-In at 16th and. . .uhh. . .Lincoln.

My family moved to Yakima in 1971 from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Suffice it to say that I still wonder why we ever moved. If I’d had any say, I would have happily chosen to stay in Cambridge, rather than a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but whatever. It’s all water under the proverbial bridge, and I have a really good life now, in Portland, so it all works out.

I know, I know. All my Yakima stories start that way. And this post started out as a witty, insightful memoir! Le Sigh.

So anyway, Ron’s Drive-In. They were famous for chocolate and vanilla swirl ice-cream cones, so one hot summer day while my brother and I were driving around, and we stopped at the traffic light in front of Ron’s, we looked up to read their rotating sign. It said,

“HAVE YOU HAD YOUR 1 AND 1 TODAY?”

Then there was a space, and two 2’s almost underneath the 1’s. We sat at the light, confused, reading aloud, trying to work out what it said.

“Have you had your. . .one and one, two and two. . .one-two and one-two. . .one-over-two, one-over-tw–ohhh. Half and half!” I wish I could excuse our ignorance by telling you that we were too young to know any better, but in all honesty I can’t. I was in high school and my brother was in junior high.

Boy, did we feel intelligent that day.

In case you didn’t know, I grew up in Yakima, Washington. It’s a very isolated town in the middle of Washington. People who live there may tell you that “well, it’s a good place to raise kids” or whatever, but I was a kid growing up there, and I feel like it was a difficult place, particularly compared to the city in which I was born.

It’s long been one of the drug hubs of the entire nation, and that’s especially astounding when you consider that fact per capita. I used to have a little Honda CRX when I lived there, and I’d always leave the doors unlocked, because otherwise the windows would get smashed out by drug addicts looking for things to steal. It used to get rummaged through almost every single night. In fact, I was thrilled on the rare occasions when I’d go outside in the morning and NOT find the glove compartment open, the seats pushed forward, the carpet pulled up, the little storage hatch open, and the hatchback popped open. Very often, I’d find that all of those things had been done. Seriously; Yakima’s a shit-hole (and I don’t normally throw terms like that around, either), and I hated living there.

A friend of mine saw this a couple of days ago, in McSweeney’s, and e-mailed it to me. I had to laugh. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Yakima is now the meth capital of Central Washington. It’s been called “Crackima” for ages, since the 80’s, when crack was the Thing to Do. Even the mayor’s son got busted for using and selling it, back in the day.

Can I just say how much life has improved since I moved to Portland? It really feels like I’ve lived two entirely separate lives, even though Portland is (I’ve HEARD) the meth capital of the whole Pacific Northwest. I will always appreciate where I am now, and how much I enjoy life now, because I spent so many years wondering why life was even worth living.

Books saved my life; “The Little Prince” came along just when I needed it. Movies saved my life; “My Dinner With Andre” and “Mindwalk” came along just when I needed them. My piano saved my life. My guitar saved my life.

Glad to be outta there, Yakima. Good riddance.