(quick edit: And I guess we need to thank Josh Farley for all this excitement from yesterday that my blog died over a missing tag. Josh says we should give original credit to Brianne Pruitt (@briannepruitt on Twitter) as she mentioned it first. Thank you lots Brianne! One more time, with a little more html correction!!)
I will have to thank Josh Farley at the Kitsap Sun for this entry. On Twitter this morning, he reminded everyone that today was the 29th anniversary of the big eruption of Mt St Helens. Our question to you is, “Where were *you* that day?” Here’s my answer.
I had gone on a Girl Scout camping trip to Carnation, WA. It’s situated on the Snake River, right by Remlinger Farms (best fruits EVAR), and there is a wacky suspension type bridge that wobbles when you walk over it. It was made by the Army Corps of Engineers, and it takes you from one portion of the campground over to the actual campsites on the other side of the river. I really disliked this bridge as a youngster, I did. The bridge would wobble to and fro (because of design) and I always thought I was going to hurl into the river or fall or both. Hurl yes, fall, no…again, it’s the design of this bridge.
I’m on the bridge and it’s early in the morning. I want to say I was up because I had to go get something from the other side of the river. I’m on my trip back and I hear this loud “ka-booom” It sounded sorta far off and distant, but whatever it was, I was quite taken aback at just how loud it was. There was an old man on the bridge with me and he had one of those little transistor radios to his ear. “DIDYA HEAR THAT?” he yelled. “She blew, she finally blew…OMG the mountain blew!” he was screaming.
Now remember I just told you I disliked that bridge. The man jumping around on it screaming about Mt St Helens made it wiggle more. But I’ll tell you what, I put all that aside and ran to the campsite and my parents and told them all that Mt St Helens just blew. Every last one of them discredited me. They told me it was a shotgun blast of some sort. (We were in a park that prohibited firearms of any sort).
They stopped laughing when we came home and were greeted by huge headlines screaming that Mt St Helens did indeed blow and that half the mountain slid into Spirit Lake. I say that because, as you’ll recall during that time, that’s where Harry Truman lived. He lived at the base of the mountain (yes, I do know it’s actually a volcano) right on Spirit Lake and he refused to leave. I loved watching him nightly on the news go over why he was not leaving..it was his home, and he wanted to be there no matter what. When I was young, I could not understand that. Now that I’m older, I understand it all too well and had I been in Harry’s shoes, I probably would have sent the children packing and had been the same way, and my children would have totally understood.
How am I going to end this? Rest in peace, Harry Truman, because you *are* and always will be a Washington State hero to me. You “gave ‘em hell” (every news organization) till the end and your last wish was granted to you. Each time I pass by Mt St Helens, I think of you and I think of how you weren’t being a crabapple, you were standing up for what you believed in and what you believed was just and fair. Here’s to you sir.
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