kaboom!

Forty years ago tomorrow, May 18, was my father's 64th birthday.  To celebrate, he and my step-mom flew to Spokane to visit with my west coast brother and his wife and their first baby.  It was all very exciting and it got even more so when Mt. St. Helen's erupted.  It was quite spectacular, although I only heard about it from a distance.  Of course the mountain is some distance from Spokane but my brother thought that, if he spread some newspaper sheets in his yard he might be able to gather enough ash to save some and send me a little bottle of ash.  When he woke up the next morning to find his yard covered in 18 inches of ash, he decided he had collected enough.  On the positive side my dad and step-mom got to stay a few days longer because planes couldn't fly untill the ash cleared out of the air.  It was probably just a coincidence, but my father never flew to Spokane again.  Admitedly, it would be hard to top the reception he got on that birthday.